The Louisiana in the Civil War Message Board

Re: port hudson national cemetary

Shortly after the Confederates occupied Port Hudson and began establishing batteries on the bluffs, they buried soldiers who died there in a cemetery near what we call the Old Town Cemetery, north of the former town site. This practice continued during the subsequent military operations. Back during the 1960s, the SCV and/or UDC put up some markers on graves they thought were those of dead Confederate soldiers. Later archaeological examinations of the site found that these were post-war civilian graves, many of them probably of black citizens of the area. The site of the actual Confederate burials was eventually found by archaeologists in the near vicinity. It is possible that, during the heated siege operations, that the Confederates began burying their dead in mass graves or large trenches, but I doubt that this was very common. To my knowledge, no Confederates were buried in the trenches where they had been fighting. Their leaders were intelligent enough to know the resulting health problems (not to mention morale issues) this would cause. It may have been possible for a few individuals to have buried short distances behind the trenches, but this probably only would have occurred very late in the siege. Bodies could easily be transported from the trenches to the rear during the night, so there would be no need for such hasty burials.

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port hudson national cemetary
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