Louisiana in the American Civil War

State of Louisiana
Nickname(s): "The Pelican State"
Flag Coat of arms Map of the United States with Louisiana highlighted.
Capital	Baton Rouge
Largest City	New Orleans
Admission to confederacy	February 4, 1861 (6th)
Population	708,002 total  • 376,276 free  • 331,726 slave
Forces supplied	total
Governor	Thomas Moore Henry Allen
Lieutenant Governor	Henry M. Hyams Benjamin W. Pearce
Senators	Thomas Jenkins Semmes Edward Sparrow
Representatives	List
Restored to the Union	July 9, 1868

Antebellum Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth century French and Spanish colonial period. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported southern states' rights and slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.

Louisiana declared that it had seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861. New Orleans, Louisiana, the largest city in the entire South, was strategically important as a port city due to its southernmost location on the Mississippi River and its access to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. War Department early on planned for its capture. The city was taken by U.S. Army forces on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the U.S. government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana then under U.S. control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress. For the latter part of the war, both the U.S. and the Confederacy recognized their own distinct Louisiana governors.

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