e popular sentiment of Louisiana, which put an end to Reconstruction
there by the Washington Government's recognition of General Francis T.
Nicholls, elected Governor by the people, instead of Packard, declared
Governor by the Republican Returning Board of the State. Judge P. H.
Morgan had proved his disinterestedness in his report to the President;
for the new Democratic regime meant his own resignation from the post
of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana which he held
under the Republicans. He applied then to himself a piece of advice
which he later was to give a young relative mentioned in the pages of
this Diary: "Always remember that it is best to be in accord with the
sentiments of the vast majority of the people in your State. They are
more apt to be right, on public questions of the day, than the
individual citizen."

If Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan's eldest son stayed within the Union
lines because he would not sanction Secession, his eldest
daughter--Lavinia--was on the Federal side also, married to Colonel
Richard Coulter Drum, then stationed in California, and destined to
become, in days of peace, Adjutant-General under President Cleveland's
first administration. Though spared the necessity of fighting against
his wife's brothers, Colonel Drum was largely instrumental in checking
the Secession movement in California which would probably have assured
the success of the South.

In the early days of Secession agitation, another son of Judge T. G.
Morgan, Henry, had died in a duel over a futile quarrel which
busybodies had envenomed. The three remaining sons had gone off to the
war. Thomas Gibbes Morgan, Jr., married to Lydia, daughter of General
A. G. Carter and a cousin of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, was Captain in the
Seventh Louisiana Regiment, serving under Stonewall Jackson; George
Mather Morgan, unmarried, was a Captain in the First Louisiana, also
with Jackson in Virginia. The youngest, James Morris Morgan, had
resigned from Annapolis, where he was a cadet, and hurried back to
enlist in the Confederate navy.

At the family home in Baton Rouge, only women and children remained.
There was Judge Morgan's widow, Sarah Fowler Morgan; a married
daughter, Eliza or "Lilly," with her five children; and two unmarried
daughters, Miriam and Sarah. "Lilly's" husband, J. Charles La Noue,
came and went; unable to abandon his large family without protector or
resources, he had not joined the regular army, but