At the end of the Civil War, Union forces confiscated most of the surviving Confederate War Department records. Records pertaining to service in Virginia’s Confederate and Union army units were later abstracted by the United States War Department. These abstracts, now in the National Archives and known as Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR), are the main source of information on individual soldiers.
CMSRs are arranged by regiment or other unit. Each soldier has one CMSR for each regiment in which they served. This record contains basic information about the soldier’s military career, which may include age, physical description, date and place of enlistment; when a soldier was present or absent; date of discharge or death; wounds and hospitalizations; and dates of capture and release as a prisoner of war.
CMSRs rarely mention the battles in which soldiers fought, and do not mention their families except in cases when relatives collected back pay or personal effects of a deceased soldier.
The Library has microfilm copies of the CMSRs for Confederate Army units from Virginia, as well as generals, staff officers, and non-regimental enlisted men (e.g., Quartermaster Department and Corps of Engineers) throughout the Confederate States.
The Library also has CMSR microfilm for the few small units of white Union troops from Virginia. The Library does not have microfilm for Union troops recruited in what became West Virginia or for African American U.S. Colored Troops recruited in Virginia.
Patrons visiting the Library may make copies of these microfilmed records, but remote requests for copies of CMSRs must be directed to the National Archives.
There are no Compiled Military Service Records for Union or Confederate naval or marine personnel. However, the following records are available:
Beginning in 1904, the Secretary of Virginia Military Records (later the Department of Confederate Military Records) collected material on Virginians’ Confederate military service. This resulted in twenty volumes of unofficial rosters arraged by regiment, which have been digitized:
These rosters provide the soldier's or sailor’s name, rank, date of enlistment, and sometimes include additional remarks. Individual entries give little or no personal or military service information.
Other papers of the Department of Confederate Military Records include files for individual regiments or companies, including postwar lists of veterans as well as original wartime muster rolls, payrolls, and other documents. These records may be viewed in in the Archives Research Room, where a printed guide to these records is also available.
Confederate authorities requisitioned thousands of enslaved and free African Americans to build fortifications and perform other war-related labor.
Requisition lists filed in local courts include names of laborers, locality of origin, occupation, location of fortification, names of enslavers, and monetary value of enslaved people. Requisition lists are available in the following collection:
Payroll records name the person who was paid for laborers' hire and usually give names of laborers themselves. Payrolls for African Americans who labored under the Commonwealth of Virginia are found in the following collection:
Payrolls for African Americans who labored under the Confederate central government are held by the National Archives. Digitized images of these payrolls are available at: