The companies were organized as the 1st Louisiana Infantry Battalion at Richmond on 11 June, with Orleans Cadets captain Charles Didier Dreux elected lieutenant colonel.

On 5 July, Dreux led a detachment composed of twenty picked men from each company to ambush Union soldiers near Newport News.

The 1st Louisiana Battalion participated in a skirmish near the junction of the Warwick and Yorktown roads on 5 April.

[1][2] Most men of the battalion reenlisted in a battery formed by Captain Charles E. Fenner of Company A.

Besides Dreux and the other man killed on 5 July 1861, sixteen members of the battalion died of disease.