L’Ouverture Hospital

This Quartermaster General's map from the American Civil War (1861–1865) shows the L’Ouverture Hospital in Alexandria, a temporary hospital built to serve Black soldiers and emancipated people. The plot contained not only a hospital but a barracks, linen room, Sutler’s store (a kind of general store), and school. In 1864 more than 400 patients of L’Ouverture Hospital signed a petition demanding Black soldiers be buried in the military graveyard instead of in a segregated Black civilian cemetery. The petition argued that Black Union soldiers “are now sharing equally the dangers and hardships in this mighty contest, and should shair [sic] the same privileges and rights of burial in every way with our fellow soldiers, who only differ from us in color.”