KnowLA Looks at Confederate Louisiana

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the United States. By inauguration day, Louisiana, along with seven other Southern states, had seceded from the Union. But the state remained a self-governing entity until March 21, when it officially joined the Confederacy. Louisiana’s membership in this new nation of slave-holding states was characterized by a combination of cooperation and friction.

Over the course of time, many Louisianans complained that while they had provided much for the Confederacy-especially soldiers who fought in the Civil War-the Confederacy had offered little in return. In December 1862, Governor Thomas Overton Moore bluntly asked Confederate President Jefferson Davis, “What has been done for Louisiana?” In the governor’s view, the simple answer was “nothing,” and consequently Louisiana would have been better off if it had maintained an “independent sovereignty.”

Nevertheless, despite such statements, Governor Moore and the majority of other Louisianans remained loyal to the Confederacy, from its inception, to its defeat in 1865. To read more about Confederate Louisiana, visit this entry in KnowLA.org, The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana.