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Essays:"Appomattox to Red River" by - Arthur R. Carmody, Jr.

This paper paints with a broad brush, for it covers the final days of the War between the States in the capitol cities of Richmond and Shreveport, including the attempt by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to travel the 900 miles between the two in April and May of 1865. It will give emphasis to developments in and around Shreveport, as they are less known. Now to do justice to the latter, I need to tell you something of Shreveport as it was, and would become, in the war years.

By 1861 the rugged frontier town of Shreveport was a quarter century old. During the first two decades of its life it had acquired a reputation as a boisterous and often violent river town: yet, as the 1860's began, the aspirations of settlers, planters and merchants had begun to replace those of the steamboatmen, gamblers and frontiersmen.

It had a free population of 2,200 and 1,300 slaves within the city limits. By war's end, four years later, 12,000 civilians would crowd its limits, together with an equal number of soldiers. Confederate units, in division strength, were also bivouacked in

Essays: "Appomattox to Red River" by - Arthur R. Carmody, Jr.