Following the war, General Canby was retained by the army as one of only ten brigadier generals and served as military commander of various districts throughout the South. In an 1873 newspaper article, Mrs. Lew Wallace (née Susan Arnold Elston) would recall that Louisa practiced charity, tending to give things away to the needy wherever she went in the South, endearing herself to the local populace, but at some cost to her household. "I can hardly keep anything, there is so much suffering about us," Louisa wrote Wallace from New Orleans. She sometimes pleaded the case of someone in need to her husband if she thought he might help. Mrs. Wallace also said that Louisa was far more sociable than her husband and that she, rather than he, would arranged for any gatherings at the Canby residence.