Editing Concordia Parish, Louisiana (section)

===Historic era===
Concordia was named by Anglo-American settlers for a [[Latin (language)|Latin]] word meaning "harmony". They came mostly after the [[Louisiana Purchase]] of 1803, when the United States took over this formerly French colonial area west of the Mississippi. Like other parishes of the lands along the Mississippi River, in the antebellum era, the parish was developed for cotton cultivation on large plantations. The labor-intensive crop was profitable because of the labor of enslaved African Americans.

In 1789, Don Jose Vidal a resident of Natchez, MS and later the founder of the city of [[Vidalia, LA]] asked for land grants to move his family from Natchez to the other side of the Mississippi River. In Natchez, there was a mansion built called [[Concord (Natchez, Mississippi)]], this
was a residence lived in by Spanish governors. Vidal moved his family across the Mississippi River to the Louisiana side after the time era of the US began.

The Mansion started the name "Concord" and ultimately later led to the birth of what would be Concordia Parish. During the year of 1804, a ceremony of transfer was held and the citizens and Mayor of Natchez crossed over to the Louisiana side of the Mississippi to honor the new land that was founded. The Mansion was later struck by fire in the early 20th century (1901) and burned down. [[Natchez people]] also lived on both sides of the land.

"Concordia County" was a creation of the first Legislative Council held in New Orleans on December 2, 1804. Its territory that included parts of the present parishes of East Carroll, Madison, and Tensas.<ref>Calhoun, Robert Dabney. (1932). ''A history of Concordia Parish, Louisiana. (1768-1931).'' New Orleans, LA: n.p. pp. 33-34.</ref> Land between the Mississippi, Red, Black, and Tensaw rivers comprised the early local administration of Concordia.<ref>Brackenridge, Henry Marie. (1817). ''Views of Louisiana: containing geographical, statistical, and historical notices of that vast and important portion of America.'' Baltimore: Schaeffer & Maund. [https://books.google.com/books?id=7icVAAAAYAAJ&q=Views+of+Louisiana%3A+Containing+Geographical%2C+Statistical+and+Historical Google Books website] pp. 287-288.</ref>

Because Concordia's alluvial soil was unusually productive for cotton growing, it attracted large plantations, whose owners enslaved a very high number of people. In 1860, slaves made up 91 percent of Concordia Parish's residents, the highest percentage of any Louisiana parish. Only two counties in the United States — [[Washington County, Mississippi|Washington]] and [[Issaquena County, Mississippi|Issaquena]] counties in [[Mississippi]] — had a higher percentage of its population enslaved.<ref>{{cite web |title=Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860 |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3861e.cw0013200/?r=0.317,0.415,0.138,0.069,0 |website=Library of Congress|access-date=January 12, 2022}}</ref> As might be expected, the small number of white cotton planters in Concordia were fierce defenders of chattel slavery and strongly backed the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] during the [[American Civil War]].