Union Soldiers in Louisiana
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The Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) preserves an internationally-renowned collection of Civil War documents. One of LaRC's special missions is preserving letters and diaries of Union soldiers serving in Louisiana.
While LaRC preserves extensive letters and diaries of Louisiana Confederate soldiers, those materials pertain to conditions where they were stationed, which was often outside of Louisiana. By focusing on Union soldiers serving in Louisiana, this collection reveals military and social conditions within Louisiana itself during the Civil War. Additionally, New Orleans fell to Union troops early in the war. Letters from occupying forces therefore extend over a greater period of time than for elsewhere in the South.
Union letters and diaries record a wide range of information about Louisiana, including the surrender and occupation of New Orleans, the fall of Fort Saint Philip, the siege of Port Hudson, vignettes of camp life, African American support of Union troops, relations with locals, and food and food preparation. Union military figures of note mentioned include General Benjamin Butler, Colonel Edward Jones, Colonel George Foster Shepley, General Thomas Williams, Admiral David Farragut, and General John Wolcott Phelps.
These documents were drawn from eight collections containing roughly five hundred pages and two diaries.
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Contact the Louisiana Digital Library
Permissions/rights/reproduction and information requests:
The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is composed of collections from many different institutions. Permission to publish and acquire images or requests for more information about materials that you find in the LDL should be directed to the institution that contributed the item to the LDL. To find the contact who can help you, find the field called "Contact Information" next to the image of interest to you. The Louisiana Digital Library is a service provider only and has no authority to grant permission to publish or supply high-resolution images.
- Louisiana State Museum: lsm@crt.state.la.us
- Louisiana State University: diglib@lsu.edu
- Louisiana State University Shreveport: libarchives@lsus.edu
- Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center: digitalarchives@lsuhsc.edu
- Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport: http://lib.sh.lsuhsc.edu/
- Louisiana Tech University: specialcollections@latech.edu
- Loyola University New Orleans: archives@loyno.edu
- McNeese State University: archivesdept@mcneese.edu
- Nicholls State University: http://nicholls.libguides.com/archives
- Northwestern State University of Louisiana: wernet@nsula.edu
- Southern University: archives@subr.edu
- State Library of Louisiana: lacoll@state.lib.la.us
- The Historic New Orleans Collection: louisquery@hnoc.org
- Tulane University: digitallibrary@tulane.edu
- University of Louisiana Lafayette: archives@louisiana.edu
- University of Louisiana Monroe: http://ulm.edu/library/archives/
- University of New Orleans: libspec@uno.edu
- Vermilionville Living History Museum and Folklife Park: curator@bayouvermiliondistrict.org
Technical assistant/site support
The Louisiana Digital Library platform has been developed by LSU Libraries on behalf of the Louisiana Digital Consortium. It runs on the Islandora open-source digital repository software.
LSU Libraries' Technology Initiatives: lsudiglib@lsu.edu.
Thanks for your interest in the Louisiana Digital Library.
About the Louisiana Digital Library (LDL)
The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is the front door to Louisiana's digital cultural heritage. Members include public libraries, academic libraries, museums, and archives from arcross the state.
Currently, there are 25 participating institutions in the LDL. Each institution contributes the digital items and the descriptive text for their collections.
- Calcasieu Parish Public Library
- Delgado Community College
- East Baton Rouge Parish Library
- Law Library of Louisiana
- Louisiana State Archives
- Louisiana State Museum
- Louisiana State University
- Louisiana State University at Alexandria
- Louisiana State University at Shreveport
- Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans
- Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport
- Louisiana Tech University
- Loyola University New Orleans
- McNeese State University
- Nicholls State University
- Northwestern State University
- Southern University
- State Library Of Louisiana
- The Historic New Orleans Collection
- Tulane University
- University of Louisiana at Lafayette
- University of Louisiana at Monroe
- University of New Orleans
- Vermilionville Living History Museum & Folklife Park
- Webster Parish Library
The LDL is built with Islandora, an open source digital library system based on Fedora, Drupal, and Solr.
Information about the Louisiana Digital Consortium can be found here: http://louisianadigitalconsortium.org