Enlisting in the Civil War

CONFEDERATES ENLISTING AT THE NATCHEZ COURTHOUSE, EARLY IN 1861

This rare Confederate photograph preserves a lively scene that was typical of the war preparations in the South in the spring of 1861. The fresh recruits are but scantily supplied with arms and accouterments, for only the Federal arsenals in the South could supply munitions of war. The military population of Mississippi at the opening of the war has been estimated at seventy thousand, and that of Louisiana at eighty thousand. It is believed that nearly a hundred thousand from each State enlisted in the Southern armies. The two scenes on this page were duplicated in hundreds of towns throughout the Southland as the war opened.

RECRUITING AT BATON ROUGE—1862