When Governor Thomas Overton Moore realized that New Orleans was going to fall to Union forces, he issued orders for the destruction of stored cotton in the state to keep it from Federal hands. Otherwise, the Union would sell the cotton, for which there was still high demand, and claim the revenue. The planters and brokers supervised slaves who burned hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cotton in New Orleans and around the state. Governor Moore asked Brig. Gen. R. B. Todd, who commanded the Eleventh Brigade in northeast Louisiana, to call his own militia into active service, and all men between eighteen and forty who were not subject to conscription. These men from Madison, Carroll, and Tensas parishes were to cooperate with Confederate authorities to help repel Federal attacks in the area.