Louisiana Tigers

Renowned both for their courage and skill in battle and for their uncontrolled looting, vandalism, and violence, the Louisiana Tigers were one of the most effective and most feared Confederate battle units.

The term Tigers was first applied to the Tiger Rifles, a company in the First Special Battalion, Louisiana Infantry, which adopted slogans such as “Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death.” The term eventually came to refer to all of the 12,000 Louisiana Infantrymen who joined the Army of Northern Virginia in 1861. The Tigers generally operated on the very front of the offensive lines, often executing particularly dangerous and important offensive missions. The Tigers also distinguished themselves at the Second Battle of Bull Run/Manassas and the Battles of Spotsylvania.

The Tigers’ reputation for courage was marred, however, by the repeated acts of violence and theft that characterized their ranks and by the high desertion rate within the units. The desertion rate was partly the result of the high proportion of foreign-born recruits, many of whom had little commitment to the war and a few of whom had been forced into service. The soldiers who remained, however, became infamous, especially in Virginia, for their drunkenness and rioting. On a train ride from New Orleans to Richmond, Virginia, in 1861, for example, various Louisiana regiments, drunk on barrels of alcohol that they had smuggled onto their train, shot at livestock, broke into saloons, and destroyed property.

By 1865, the mixed reputation of the Tigers was shared by relatively few men, as the Tigers sustained some of the greatest casualty rates of the war. The Louisianans’ units had been organized and reorganized so many times that most of the Tigers felt they had lost their identity. By the time the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House, only 373 of the original Louisiana Tigers were present.

Further reading: Terry Jones, Lee's Tigers: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).

—Fiona Galvin