"In A Black Patriot and a White Priest, Stephen J. Ochs chronicles the intersection of two lives in Civil War New Orleans - that of the first black military Civil War hero, Captain Andre Cailloux of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, and that of the Reverend Claude Pashal Maistre, the lone Catholic clerical voice of abolition in New Orelans and one of the first white radicals to emerge in the city.

Their paths converged on a humid day in July 1863, when Maistre, in defiance of his archbishop, officiated at a large public military funeral for Cailloux, who had perished while courageously leading a doomed charge against the Confederate bastion of Port Hudson.

The story of how Cailloux and Maistre arrived at that day and of what happened as a consequence provides a prism through which to view the complex interplay of slavery, race, radicalism, and religion during American democracy's most violent upheaval.".

"Combining social, African American, Civil War, and church history, A Black Patriot and a White Priest provides a picture of antebellum Afro-Creole society, of the black military experience, and of the complex relationship between Afro-Creoles and Roman Catholicism. It illustrates how the crisis of war transformed two relatively common men into symbols of freedom and hope for people of color and of dangerous radicalism for many whites."--BOOK JACKET.