New Orleans: Services, Policies, Slaves


Request for Black workers, New Orleans, 1863

Request for Black workers, New Orleans, 1863
Item 76529   info
Maine Historical Society

Slaves also had value to the Union army as workers.

In December 1863, Brig. Gen. James Bowen, of the provost marshal general's office in the Union Army Department of the Gulf, wrote Shepley that the levees below New Orleans needed repair and that, "in the absence of adequate negro labor ... fifty negroes from the Parish Prison" had been ordered to do the repair work.

He asked Shepley to approve the order for the prisoners to work.

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