Chalmette National Cemetery

President Abraham Lincoln approved legislation on July 17, 1862, establishing national cemeteries for American forces, and two years later near the end of the Civil War, Chalmette National Cemetery was established to receive Union troops who died in Louisiana. Nearly 12,000 Civil War-era Union troops are buried there, about half of them unknown, and the cemetery contains nearly 16,000 burials in all, serving as a final resting place for veterans from all major U.S. wars from the War of 1812 to Vietnam. Four Americans who fought in the War of 1812 are buried there, including an unknown Tennessean who took part in the Battle of New Orleans, died in Mississippi while returning home, and was reinterred there after the cemetery was established. During the Civil War, the site was also used as a refugee camp for slaves freed by advancing Union forces and as a burial ground for former slaves, black hospital patients, and troops from both sides; in 1868 many of these civilians and the Confederate troops buried there were reinterred elsewhere. The National Park Service took charge of the cemetery in 1933.

Chalmette, Louisiana · United States