He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Garden of Ruins: Occupied Louisiana in the Civil War, and reported the following:
From page 99:Learn more about Garden of Ruins at the LSU Press website.Alarmed at the rate of refugees, especially formerly enslaved people, who crossed the lines as the war continued, Union forces did their best to catalog the number and identity of refugees, as well as provide limited aid. “You will be pleased to make returns to this office monthly the numbers of males and also of females coming into our lines in your parish as refugees,” Bowen wrote to Provost Marshal George Darling in early 1864. He was also ordered to note the number of Confederate deserters. All refugees from beyond Union lines who entered New Orleans had to appear before the provost marshal, “who will immediately examine them with a view of determining their character and their motive in giving them selves [sic] up.” After December 1863, Union officers were required to read Lincoln’s Amnesty Proclamation to all refugees in case any of them desired to take the oath. Even as they provided relief and worked to incorporate southern refugees back into national society, Union officers still appraised the loyalties of refugees to prevent Confederate spies from infiltrating the occupation zone.Military occupation was crucial to the success of Union forces during the US Civil War because occupation forces held strategic supply and communication centers, patrolled important sections of Confederate territory, and slowly undermined the system of slavery. But, as page 99 of my book demonstrates in part, occupation duty was complex. Occupation commanders in Civil War Louisiana had to manage a large population of Confederates, white southern Unionists, and black people (both free and enslaved)—all of whom had competing visions about what the war should accomplish and what relation they shared with the military government. Page 99 of my text reveals some of the policies that Union forces engaged in when fighting the war and dealing with the occupied population at the same time. Commanders carefully identified refugees, distributed aid as best they could, required loyalty oaths, and even banished some of the more troublesome Confederates that yet remained behind Union lines.
To secure the occupation zone from Confederate infiltration and optimize their relief efforts for southern citizens, the Union army increasingly implemented banishment. This war tactic affected men and women across the occupied South who chose to maintain Confederate allegiance. Ardent Confederate supporters or simple public nuisances could be ejected from the occupation zone. As Banks informed a subordinate in May 1863, “All persons have had opportunity in New Orleans at least, to determine whether they can live under the government of the United States. The hour has now come when they must choose their destination.”
These were only a few of the tactics that both Union and Confederate governments employed as they struggled not only to militarily defeat their enemy, but also win the hearts and minds of the civilians in Louisiana. I describe my book as a social history of military occupation. It investigates the major policies of powerful leaders like Confederate Governor Henry Allen or Union General Benjamin Butler, and it also reveals numerous ground-level stories from common people and how they endured the troubled terrain of Civil War Louisiana. For most people during the war, the local matters around them was the Civil War, not major battles. Household order and survival were central themes for commanders and commoners alike in the war of occupation. With Louisiana as the setting, Garden of Ruins is my effort to uncover the complicated process of military occupation and indicate its historical importance to how the war developed.
--Marshal Zeringue