Baton Rouge National Cemetery

During the Civil War, Union control of the Mississippi River and New Orleans was vital to the war effort. In April 1862, Union gunboats steamed up the river, evaded Confederate-held forts below New Orleans, and the city surrendered without a fight on April 28. Expecting Baton Rouge to fall next, Louisiana Gov. Thomas O. Moore ordered all cotton in the city moved or burned, and residents fled as blazing cotton barges drifted on the river. The Union Army captured Baton Rouge on May 7, 1862. In August, the ironclad gunboat C.S.S. Arkansas and infantry under Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge tried to retake the city, pushing Union troops to the outskirts on August 5, but when fighting resumed the next day the Union held the line and the Confederates retreated, leaving Baton Rouge in federal control for the rest of the war. Union soldiers killed in the Battle of Baton Rouge were the first buried in the cemetery, followed by soldiers and sailors who died in city hospitals. The property was designated Baton Rouge National Cemetery in 1867, enlarged by the federal government with the purchase of 8 additional acres, and became a reburial site for soldiers originally buried in Plaquemine and Iberville parishes and Camden, Arkansas. Improvements in the 1870s included a Second Empire-style brick superintendent's lodge, a flagstaff, and gun monuments flanking the entry road, though the lodge was replaced in 1931. Section 3 also contains several private pre-Civil War burials moved in 1882 from the old Baton Rouge Army Post Cemetery. Massachusetts later funded a monument honoring its Civil War troops who served in the U.S. Army Department of the Gulf, a 40-foot granite obelisk built by J. N. White and Sons of Quincy, Massachusetts, for $5,000 and dedicated on November 15, 1909, in a ceremony attended by Gov. Ebenezer Draper, Gov. Jared Y. Sanders, Mayor Robert L. Pruyn, officials, veterans, music, speeches, a military salute, and the playing of "Taps."

Baton Rouge, Louisiana · United States