I have just returned from the annual meeting of the Louisiana Historical Association, where Terry Jones told me about the online debate in regard to a photograph of seventeen African American men wearing uniforms and armed with rifles. The caption reads “1st Louisiana Native Guard, 1861.” The year, coupled with the unit’s name, clearly refers to black volunteers who were part of the Louisiana militia prior to the surrender of New Orleans in early May, 1862.

The photograph identified as the Native Guards has been around for about ten years, and there are several problems with it, starting with the caption. The Native Guards (plural) in the Louisiana militia referred to a single unit. It never was known as the “1st Native Guard” during its service with the Louisiana militia. Numeration for this unit occurred in the fall of 1862 when it was reorganized as part of the Union army under Butler in the fall of 1862. But that criticism is trivial compared to the real problem with this image.

The photograph identified as the Native Guards has been cropped to remove important information, namely a Union officer standing to the left of the men, as can be seen below. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I got this scan, but the unedited photograph is not too hard to find. For example, it is reproduced on page 381 of _Civil War: A Complete Photographic History_ edited by William C. Davis and Bell L. Wiley (New York: Tess Press, 2000). However, you may be more familiar with this collection of Civil War photographs in its earlier, six-volume edition, _The Image of War: 1861-1865_, which was published by Doubleday & Company in 1982. These volumes, with the exception of volume V, showed up routinely on remainder tables in the 1990s. If you have that set, the photograph is in volume III, “The Embattled Confederacy,” on page 233. In both editions, the caption reads, “Photographs like this one were used as the basis of recruiting posters. ‘Come and Join Us, Brothers,’ reads the broadside featuring these well-equipped soldiers.”

Reproductions of the recruiting poster based on this photograph are also available. . . . (Initially, I was going to post an image of the art work on the recruiting poster at this point, but discovered that I can attach only one image per post. Consequently, I will continue my observations in a second posting, which follows immediately.)

Jim Hollandsworth