Charles Gayarré

Charles Etienne Arthur Gayarre (1805-1895) was an American historian born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 9 January 1805. A historian and a writer of plays, essays, and novels, he is chiefly remembered for his histories of Louisiana.

The grandson of Etienne de Boré, he was born at the Boré plantation in what was at the time a suburb of New Orleans, but has long been incorporated into the city as Audubon Park. After studying at the College d'Orléans he began, in 1826, to study law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and three years later was admitted to the bar. In 1830 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of Louisiana; in 1831 was appointed deputy attorney general of his state; in 1833 became presiding judge of the city court of New Orleans, and in 1834 was elected as a Jackson Democrat to the United States Senate. On account of ill-health, however, he immediately resigned without taking his seat, and for the next eight years travelled in Europe and collected historical material from the French and the Spanish archives.

In 1844-1845 and in 1856-1857 he was again a member of the state House of Representatives, and from 1845 to 1853 was secretary of state of Louisiana. In 1853 he failed to be elected to the U.S. Congress, but remained active in Louisiana politics as an ally of Slidell in the "Regular Democratic" movement. He supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, in which he lost a large fortune, and after its close lived chiefly by his pen. During the Civil War, like most Louisianians, he sided with the Confederacy; in 1863 he proposed that the slaves be emancipated and armed, provided that France and England recognized the Confederacy. He had a long-standing association with the Louisiana Historical Society, of which he was President from 1860 to 1888. He died in New Orleans on 11 February 1895.

He is best known as the historian of Louisiana. He wrote Histoire de la Louisiane (1847); Romance of the History of Louisiana (1848); Louisiana: its Colonial History and Romance (1851), reprinted in A History of Louisiana; History of Louisiana: the Spanish Domination (1854); Philip II of Spain (1866); and A History of Louisiana (4 vols., 1866), the last being a republication and continuation of his earlier works in this field, the whole comprehending the history of Louisiana from its earliert discovery to 1861. He wrote also several dramas and romances, the best of the latter being Fernando de Lemos (1872).

Works

In French:

• Histoire de la Louisiane (1846)

In English:

• History
  • The History of Louisiana, successive portions under various titles 1847‑1854, then recast in a final comprehensive edition in 1866 (online here)
  • Philip II of Spain (1866)
• Novels
  • Fernando de Lemos, Truth and Fiction (1872)
  • Aubert Dubayet (1882)
• Plays
  • The School for Politics: A Dramatic Novel (1854)
  • Dr. Bluff, a comedy in two acts