“A Good and Delicious Country”:

In 1862, a free boy of color named Lucien Lamaniere, age fourteen, wrote a letter addressed to Tampico, Mexico. After describing a trip he took to Europe he explained to this friend: “I am going next year and I invite you to come we will go to Paris together before coming back to New Orleans, we will go and visit that fine country called Hayti and if you are not satisfied of those two countries, we will go and visit Mexico the finest country after Paris.” Not only was this an “imagined” letter (which I will explain) but it was also a rather fanciful one, since Lucien had planned an impossible voyage around the Atlantic. This impossibility becomes clear at the foot of his letter. As a postscript Lucien wrote, “since the blockade I have not heard from you." ² Indeed, federal troops were just off the coast of Louisiana, and a few months later the Union army had occupied the city of New Orleans.