Posted on 12/20/2024 6:44:29 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
We give below the concluding portion of a long list of names (furnished recently by our correspondent who accompanied the exchange fleet to Savannah and Charleston,) of Union soldiers who have died under the terrible hardships of their treatment in the Southern prison pens. It is a dismal record. For its entire correctness our correspondent makes no claim, as it was mainly copied from small detached slips and fragments of dingy paper, each containing a single name -- the writing upon which was often nearly illegible, requiring in its slow deciphering a great expenditure of patience. Many of the names therefore are doubtless misspelled. Long as the lists of the dead have been which we have published from time to time, it is sad to reflect that they comprise but a tithe of the victims, and thousands upon thousands of our brave soldiers have been buried like dogs in unmarked graves. As nearly as can be ascertained the rebel prison authorities, generally speaking, were not themselves humane enough to have the deaths among our prisoners recorded, neither were they liberal enough to supply the cheap favor of a sufficient quantity of writing paper to the hospital attendants selected from our own men, that this last simple duty toward the dead might be properly performed. Imperfect, however, as this list is, we are sure that it will be eagerly scanned by thousands of our readers, to many of whom it will probably convey the first information of the fate of a dear relative or friend.
We also publish the copy of a document which was drawn up by the Union officers confined at Columbia, detailing their grievances and asking redress at the hands of the rebel Gen. HARDEE, commanding the Department of Georgia and South Carolina. Col. JOHN FRASER,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Link to previous New York Times thread
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The Union Captives: Additional Names of the Martyred Dead – 2-3
The Pennsylvania Oil Regions: “Rich as Mud” – 3-5
From the Army of the Potomac: Execution of Deserters – 5
Information Wanted – 5
The Situation: Operations of Gen. Thomas on Sunday – 7
Reinforcement of the Army: Important Order of the War Department – 7
The Great March: Review of Gen. Sherman’s Georgia Campaign – 7-11
News from Washington – 11
Thirty-Eighth Congress: Second Session – 11-12
Editorial: The Latest and Last Aspect of the War – 12-13
Editorial: The Oil Regions – 13
Necrology of the Southern Prison Pens – 13
Soldiers to the Front – 13-14
For perspective is the following.
Around 30,000 Union soldiers died in Confederate prisons, while roughly 26,000 Confederate soldiers died in Union prisons.
Both sides are guilty of prisoner abuse and neglect.
Orlin Bevier who died at Andersonville was brother to my mother in laws grandmother.
I visited Andersonville camp - haunting.
Wife and I went there, too
We were stricken by the kind of water they had to drink. And then we were amazed by the incident where lightning struck a rock and freshwater sprung forth. It was a good opportunity to praise God for his intervention.
The display of what the camp looked like was interesting, then too, the entrance gate as well. I saw the small water ditch going through the small building where the prisoners got their water. In the town there’s a small monument to the camp commandant - an obelisk with his name -Captain Henry Wirz.
I had three cousin’s from Pennsylvania who fought in the Civil war... One died in Maryland, one died at Gettysburg and the one that survived was captured at Spotsylvania Courthouse and ended up in Andersonville... Amazing that he managed to survive such a brutal prison and the war itself when his brothers didn’t.
There was a relative on my mom’s side of the family who died in Andersonville. His tale is haunting (as told by letters he got out and letters of a friend who was there till after he died). Many of the pictures from Andersonville remind one of scenes from the barely alive Holocaust survivors at the Nazi concentration camps - a skeleton and not much more.
It was horrible for the prisoners--but why didn't Sherman send some troops to liberate them when he was marching through Georgia?
I think some of the prisoners from Andersonville were among those killed when the Sultana exploded near Memphis on April 27, 1865 (estimated 1800 killed--more than died on the Titanic).
Thing is: Wirz couldn’t do anything to alleviate the situation. He wasn’t getting the supplies he needed, didn’t have the troops/resources to keep the camp clean, heck, even his own troops suffered - he had women keeping guard on a walkway around the camp and they too were near hunger starvation. Grant was offered a soldier exchange but he refused because once he had seen soldiers he had captured during an exchange of prisoners only to find that those returned were back on the battle field. So he turned down an exchange of prisoners from Andersonville.
My great-great-grandfather was a POW in a Union POW camp but survived the war. He lived near Winchester, VA. Later he belonged to a pacifist denomination but I don't know if he was a member of that church at the time of the war or how much choice he had in fighting for the Confederate side. He later moved to Kansas and is buried in Union Cemetery.
In actuality, the North treated Southern prisoners just as bad if not worse; Elmira and a place in Chicago as an example. There were bad Union prisons in Delaware as well.
Heard someone talk recently about his Confederate ancestor who became a prisoner of war and was sent to Chicago. To escape dying from disease there, he accepted an offer to serve as a cook on a Union ship which he did. He happened to be in Philadelphia when the end of the war was announced but just went home, didn't get official permission to leave, so later when he applied for a pension (he was disabled) he was repeatedly turned down, and died a few years after the war.
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