BPT HCtr Column - Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Here is  another story of our parish’s namesake, General Pierre Evariste Jean Baptiste Bossier.  Our last jaunt into the past with General Bossier (8/28/2024), the story ended with his fabled death in 1844. With the Day of the Dead just around the corner, this story takes up from there. 

 

In 1842, General Pierre Evariste Bossier, a Jacksonian Democrat of Natchitoches, became the first legislator elected to represent Louisiana’s brand-new Fourth Congressional District. He began his term in March 4, 1843 and barely more than a year later he died in-office of an unspecified illness on April 24, 1844. Stories later circulated that Bossier’s death was a suicide, prompted by the angst perpetuated by a deadly duel with his political opponent (yet childhood friend) Gen. François Gaiennie. Political acrimony was truly at an all-time high,  but pre-modern medicine, in actual swampland, Bossier was the tenth member of the 28th US Congress to die just four months into the session. Tuberculosis is just one example of a common, yet potentially deadly,  illness that could have sounded Bossier’s death knell. 

 

Reports by legislative correspondents for newspapers around the country of the elaborate funeral service for General Bossier make it plain that Congress was practiced in holding grand state funerals. Also notable in these reports is that the congressional witnesses were not practiced in observing Catholic rites, and their commentary runs the gamut from curiosity to awe to xenophobic disgust.  

 

These reports began with the information that on April 25, 1844, Bossier’s fellow representative from Louisiana, Mr. Slidell, rose and announced the death of his colleague, Pierre Bossier, who died at his Washington “lodging” early that morning. Mr. Bossier had been confined to his room during the greater part of the session, and that he departed “peacefully,” according to the Hartford (CT) Courant. The Charleston (SC) Mercury reported that “Madame Bossier,” Bossier’s wife Mathilda Blair Bossier, was with him and “consoled him in his long affliction.” The Courant continued about General Bossier, “He was identified with the French population of the State of Louisiana where he was born [on March 22, 1797] and was of a type of people wholly devoted to our free institutions.” This paper also pointed out that Mr. Slidell referenced the brutal political division of the day by “express[ing] the hope that the occurrence serves to soften the asperities of debate and to put an end to all recrimination among members hereafter.”

 

 

The funeral was held the following day at noon. Members of the House of Representatives took their places and opened their session. At a quarter past 12’o’clock, the President of the Senate entered the Hall of the House, now Statuary Hall, in the US Capitol followed by the Senators in a body. The President of the Senate took a seat on the rostrum beside the Speaker of the House of the Representatives. Both wore white sashes, as did the officers of the House and members of the committee for the arrangements seated below them. Next came several Catholic priests in their bright vestments followed by the bier supporting the body of General Bossier, which was placed in front of the Speaker’s seat. The scent of incense filled the air. Also present were the President of the United States, John Tyler, and members of the Cabinet. 

 

 

Rev. Dr. James Ryder, Jesuit priest and president of the Georgetown College (now University) ascended the rostrum, and delivered his sermon without notes. Enthused a correspondent of the Journal of Commerce, “His [Rev. Ryder’s] exordium (beginning words) was beautiful, and as he went on to speak of the uncertainty of life and the fleeting nature of all worldly honors and advantages, every one within his hearing, felt the ground slipping from under him.” 

 

A reporter for the National Anit-Slavery Standard of New York stated similarly, in the May 9,1844, issue, that they found Fr. Ryder’s sermon impressive, though within a coarser context, the strident political discourse of the day. (The dramatic presidential nominating conventions held in the days and weeks following General Bossier’s 1844 death culminated in the closest presidential election in US history). The Standard said Rev. Ryder’s sermon “was an eloquent performance, but too much in the spirit of propaganda for such as occasion. One thing I was glad to hear, and that was a faithful rebuke for the House for the scandalous disorders and outrages committed so frequently on its floor.“ 

 

The Standard’s editorial comments also betrayed their anti-Catholic prejudices: “I was disgusted, as I have often been before by the mummeries of the Catholic rites, but I must do homage to the superior moral grandeur of this intrepid and truthful testimony.”  Regrettably, this prejudice was not limited to the page. As Fr. Ryder left the ceremonies, he was pelted with stones by anti-Catholic protestors, called the “Know-Nothings.”   

 

Following the service, a procession from both Houses and others conveyed the coffin to the Congressional burying ground (the Congressional Cemetery). There Pierre Evariste Bossier was interred but only temporarily, until reburial was possible in the Catholic Cemetery in Natchitoches. A cenotaph, a marker for a normally empty gravesite, memorializes him in the Congressional Cemetery as the Anglicized “Peter Bossier.” 

 

 

To learn more about the beginnings of Bossier Parish, come visit us in the History Center, which is now within the new Bossier Parish Libraries Central Complex at 850 City Hall Drive, Bossier City, LA (across Beckett Street from the original History Center and “old” Central Library). We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

 

For other fast facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

  • Pierre Bossier. Digital copy in History Center collection. Original in private collection in Baton Rouge. NOTE: Portrait used previously for Pierre Bossier, by John James Audubon, on further research appears to be of Pierre’s cousin, Jean-Baptiste Bossier.
  • The House of Representatives by Samuel F.B. Morse, C.1820s. In the collection of the National Gallery of Art. Painting depicts the “Old House Chamber,” which was used by the House of Representatives for their assemblies until 1857. It now houses the Hall of Statues in the U.S. Capitol.
  • Father James A. Ryder, S. J. From the Georgetown University Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
  • Text of Cenotaph for Representative Pierre Evariste Jean-Baptiste Bossier in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.. His name has been Anglicized to Peter E. Bossier.

Article by: Pam Carlisle