"Caesar Carpenter "C.C."Antoine"(1836-1921)

Is best known  as a leading African American politician in Louisiana during Reconstruction (1863-1877).Caesar was born in New Orleans to an African-American father who fought the British as an American soldier at the Battle of New Orleans (1815),and to a West Indian Mother.His father mother was from Africa and the daughter of  a captured African chief.Her reputed self-purchase from slavery and accumulation of a minor fortune allowed Caesar and his father to live out their lives as free African-Americans.Prior to entering politics,Caesar ran a successful grocery business in New Orleans.In 1862, one year after the Civil War began,New Orleans was captured and occupied  by Union troops,he joined the Union Army and quickly rose to to the rank of Captain.From 1862 to 1865 Captain Antoine was attached to one of  to one of  of the nation's first all-African-American regiments,the Louisiana Native Guards.As Captain Caesar recruited former bondsmen for service and developed Company I of the Seventh Native Guard primarily stationed at Brashear (now Morgan City) about 85 miles southwest of New Orleans.At the end of the Civil War, he moved to Shreveport Louisiana,opened a family grocery store,brought land and became a farmer.He soon entered politics and held his first office as a delegate to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention in 1868.That convention set the parameters of Louisiana's Reconstruction-era state government.With African-American voting rights established under the protection of federal troops,Caesar served Louisiana as State Senator between 1868 and 1872 and Lieutenant Governor from 1872 to 1877.In 1876 he was briefly Acting Governor.Hisural causes  tenure in office ended soon after the compromise of 1877 which withdrew federal troops from Louisiana,allowing the Democrats to return to power.Caesar continued to be active in Republican Party politics,he never again held public office.He died of natural causes at his home in Shreveport.