Terry, I was researching the 25th when I came upon your posting in which you doubt that soldiers would be able to cross the Mississippi following the surrender of Vicksburg. There is a story passed on in our family in which my great aunt tells of seeing a man with a waist-long beard walking up the road toward her house. Her husband, who had been paroled at Port Hudson and had already made it home, recognized the man as her brother and ran to meet him. He was in the 17th La. Inf. and had been captured at Vicksburg. After being paroled, he swam the Mississippi by holding onto a log. When he made it to the La. side, he walked about 100 miles to his home in Union Parish. He was obviously desperate to get home.

Now back to my research. According to Art Bergeron, the 25th traveled to Memphis by steamboat shortly after being organized on March 26, 1862. Does anyone know the date that the 25th left New Orleans. I am trying to tie down some details on another ancestor who enlisted in this unit.