Henry A. Walke naval ledger and list of contrabands received on board the USS Lafayette

Henry A. Walke (1809-1896) was an officer in the U.S. Navy during the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. He joined the navy as a midshipman in 1827, and during the American Civil War he commanded several vessels including the the gunboat Tyler in 1861, the gunboat Carondelet in 1862, the gunboat Lafayette in 1862-July 1863, the cruiser Fort Jackson in 1863, and finally the steam sloop Sacramento through the end of the war. He was promoted to the rank of Captain in August 1862 upon his command of the Lafayette, to Commodore in 1866 and Rear Admiral in 1870 before his retirement in 1873. He lived his remaining years in Brooklyn, N.Y. with his family.

The USS Lafayette was a side wheel steamship built in 1848 and bought by the U.S. Navy in 1862 and converted to an ironclad ram. The ship was commissioned on February 27, 1863 under the command of Captain Henry A. Walke to serve as part of the Mississippi Squadron. As part of the Squadron, it was integral to seizing the Grand Gulf and the Mississippi River from the Confederacy. From May 3 - end of June 1863 the Lafayette was part of the U.S. Navy blockade along the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Red River.

During this period, the Lafayette as well as other ships in the blockade participated in the rescue of almost 900 runaway enslaved people from Louisiana and Mississippi at the site of the Acklen Plantation at Angola, Louisiana. The Acklen Plantation was owned by Joseph Alexander Smith and Adelicia Acklen. Adelicia Acklen had inherited the plantation upon the death of her first husband and was one of the wealthiest women in the Antebellum South. The plantation in Angola was one of the largest cotton plantations in Louisiana and after the Civil War became the site of the Louisiana State Prison and current Louisiana State Penitentiary.

As news of the blockade and the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson became known, slave owners in those states began arranging for their slaves to be taken to Texas in chain gangs. Many enslaved people began fleeing to the Union gunboats for safety. The escaped enslaved people hid in the woods along the shores of the river until daylight at which point crowds of people, including men, women and children, appeared with whatever property they were able to carry. The crew of the Lafayette was able to secure the land along the river and provide tents, food and basic supplies to the escaped people as they processed them as contraband on the gunboat each day. Once registered as contraband, they were sent to Port Hudson, Vicksburg and Baton Rouge under the protection of other gunboats in the blockade. The designation of contraband was instrumental to the freedom of enslaved people as it related to a federal policy instituted on August 6, 1861, which declared that fugitive slaves who crossed to Union army lines were classed as captured enemy property and could be constituted “contraband of war,” therefore ensuring that they would not be returned and would be declared free.

Francis Edward Walke (1861-1899) was the second of four children of Henry A. and Sarah Jane Walke. He was fourteen years old at the time of his diary entries in the ledger.