Placide Bossier was an American from Louisiana who died in the American Civil War. A Catholic Creole person who lived a privileged life in high society, for Clement Eaton he exemplified that lifestyle, "a gay life of parties, hunting, fishing, dancing, serenades, and constant fishing". [1]
Bossier came from Louisiana, the Natchitoches area, and was a Catholic Creole; historian Clement Eaton described him as a "young Creole of fashion". He attended Georgetown University in 1850-1851. [2] Around 1860, he briefly kept a diary (written in English, and corrected by the family's governess); apparently the study of law bored him, and he spent his time in a rocking chair, thinking about billiards, dinner parties, and the woman he was in love with. The American Civil War was approaching and he exercised with a cavalry company. In January 1861 he voted to secede. [1]
Bossier joined the 3rd Louisiana Infantry Regiment (Confederate). He was killed on the morning of August 10, 1861, during the Battle of Wilson's Creek, [3] and died shortly after being wounded. His friend and cousin Alphonse Prud'homme, likewise the son of a slaveholding planter, described his death, and said he met his fate "like a man and a Christian". [4] News of his death reached his friend in Maryland, James Ryder Randall, that same month. [5] Randall, who attended Georgetown University with Bossier, wrote a poem named for Bossier in his honor, comparing him to a Crusading knight and citing the motto of Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, "sans peur et sans reproche". [6] Father Pierre Dicharry, a chaplain, gathered a lock of Bossier's hair in his prayer book, and brought it back home. [7]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link), cited in Brennan, Thomas M. (2012). "A Planter's Son Goes to War" (PDF). National Park Service . Retrieved July 5, 2024.