Pierre Soulé

Pierre Soulé ( born August 31, 1801 in Castillon -en- Couserans, Ariege, France, † March 26, 1870 in New Orleans, Louisiana ) was an American politician of French origin, who represented the state of Louisiana in the U.S. Senate.

Soulé was originally from a Pyrenean village. As a young man he was banished from France because he had taken part in uprisings against the government. Although he received permission to return, but due to continued opposition actions, he was finally arrested. In 1825 he managed to escape from prison. He fled first to England, then to Haiti and finally to the United States, where he settled down in New Orleans and worked as a lawyer.

From January 21 to March 3, 1847 Soulé completed his first short term in the U.S. Senate. He was elected as a Democrat to the successor of the Whig Senator Alexander Barrow. The following year, he stepped up to the election to the second Senate seat in Louisiana and was again victorious. He took his mandate from the March 3, 1849 and was true then, among others, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, before he resigned on April 11, 1853, to become U.S. ambassador to Spain. Soulé remained in that post until 1855; during this time he co-authored the Ostend Manifesto, which had the planned annexation of Cuba by the United States to the content.

After his return from Europe Soulé again worked as a lawyer in New Orleans. Prior to the Civil War, he spoke out against the secession of Louisiana; but when it was completed, he was loyal to his country. At the conquest of New Orleans by the Union troops, he was captured and fixed Lafayette in New York State for several months in the Fort. Later, the flight to the Bahamas and from there he managed to return to the territory of the Confederacy; after the war he went into exile in Havana.

The federal government finally allowed the Soulé return to the United States so that he could spend his life in New Orleans.