Louisiana secession Orleans. Two days before the city surrendered in April 1862, Moore and the legislature abandoned Baton Rouge as the state capital, relocating to Opelousas in May 1, 1862. Governor Moore began to organize military resistance at the state level, ordered the burning of cotton, cessation of trade with the Union forces, and heavily recruited troops for the state militia. However, despite a brief check at Baton Rouge, Union forces continued to advance into Louisiana and up the Mississippi, and the capital was moved again to Shreveport. New Orleans, Louisiana, the largest city in the entire South, was strategically important as
Feliciana Parish, Louisiana of Haiti, in 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana and its vast territories west of the Mississippi River to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. The West Florida section of what is now the state of Louisiana, however, was not included; the Louisiana Purchase was vague as to defining its eastern boundary. Though President Jefferson insisted that this area was American, Spain disagreed and continued their occupation. (Since the 1760s, the eastern boundary of West Florida had been the Apalachicola River, and Pensacola was the capital.) Feliciana colonists, unhappy under the Spanish regime, revolted in 1810 and established the short-lived Republic