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Post by gocav76 on Feb 10, 2008 20:34:18 GMT -6
At the end of the Civil War and the release of southern soldiers held in Northern POW camps--were they provided transportation home?
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Post by Scout on Feb 10, 2008 21:30:20 GMT -6
Some of the trains allowed each side some room in empty cars but for the most part you were on your own. Don't know anything about steamboats. Read about one Texas boy who walked from somewhere in Illinois all the way back to Texas. Those that had horses or mules were the lucky ones.
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 10, 2008 21:38:18 GMT -6
Thanks Scout. My GG Grandfather was released from Ft. Delaware, Delaware on June 21 1865. I have often wondered how he was able to make it back to Charleston,WV. My G Grandfather was 7 years old and remembered he was working the cornfield with his mother when his Dad came walking home.
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Post by Diane Merkel on Feb 10, 2008 21:45:35 GMT -6
That's a great story, GoCav. Unfortunately, my ancestor didn't need transportation home because he died at Elmira.
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Post by Scout on Feb 10, 2008 21:50:30 GMT -6
Cav...there are some great stories out there about the journey home. Soldiers asked for hand-outs from the civilian population and they responded fairly well regardless of the uniform, help themselves to whatever they could find, corn bins were looted, Cows gave up free milk, they slept slept in barns or in haystacks. I think for the most part farmers were pretty forgiving to the soldiers though. I haven't heard of any soldier getting shot for helping themselves along the way. Of course, once they were in the deep south the pickings got a lot more lean.
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 10, 2008 21:56:49 GMT -6
Diane and Scout, Thanks for the reply. I can only imagine ( knowing how terrible I am with directions) being released near Wilmington, Delaware, without a map of any kind-and then trying to make my way home. I have read that if a prisoner had friends or money they could purchase extra food and clothing. My ancestor was on his own. He told of eating rats to survive.
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 11, 2008 3:17:14 GMT -6
It wasn't that easy keeping body and soul together even for officers, from what I've read. When Keogh was imprisoned with Stoneman and others after the Macon raid, he said it cost them $8 a day just to survive. And it was only sheer good luck that they had any money at all -- Biddle's adjutant, a Lt. Brown, had captured a Confederate tax collector just before, and so had a stash of Confederate currency. In his wife's memoirs, Reminiscences of a Soldier's Wife, Biddle tells the story quite nicely. He entered the prison a little later than Stoneman and the rest. They'd already been searched for any money they might have, so he sneakily slung his saddle-bag full of money to them before he was searched in turn. After that, they had to play a merry game of hiding the money in the rafters or wherever every time their quarters were to be searched. (They were tipped off by the post trader, who of course was coining it handsomely by selling them their meagre food.) Without that good fortune, they'd probably have been relying on rats too.
It paid off for Biddle, so he says. Stoneman at one point jocularly agreed that he should be appointed Chief Commissary, since he was the one who was keeping them all fed. Eventually an exchange of prisoners was arranged -- but only for Stoneman and his staff. Biddle, as a brigade commander, wasn't included. With a bit of fancy footwork, Biddle added himself to the list as "James Biddle, Sixth Indiana Cavalry, Chief Commissary". He had a few more hoops to jump through, but it worked in the end, and he got to go home.
In this case, an officer exchange, the prisoners on both sides travelled to the exchange point by train.
The enlisted men captured with them had no luck at all. They were sent to Andersonville, where the dreadful Wirz gave the order: "Strip them! Strip them every one! Take everything away! They are all raiders and they are all thieves." (Evans, Sherman's Horsemen, p. 359.) So they had nothing left -- not a penny, not even a postage stamp, to buy anything with.
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Post by Scout on Feb 11, 2008 7:12:59 GMT -6
A lot of the men, Union and Confederate, were released in an extreme state of malnutrition, so not only did they have a long way to go they were physically impaired to do so. A lot of the Union boys were liberated as Sherman swept through th South, they were the lucky ones, in a way, The army fed them quite well and many were sent to hospitals.
Interesting to note that both sides were fairly cruel in there treatments to the prisoners. Neither side had any real large prisons when the war started and for the most part men were kept in converted warehouses with no water or facilities of any kind. Wirz was a scapegoat, they should have hung his immediate superiors. They knew what was going on. Wirz even wrote asking for advice. Some of the Union prison commanders should have been hanged as well. They actually had food to give the prisoners but didn't.
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 11, 2008 7:34:20 GMT -6
I believe Lincoln carries some responsibility, too; the prisons would never have got so disgustingly overcrowded if the exchange system hadn't been suspended for political reasons. The reasons were good, but the consequences weren't.
Agree, Wirtz was a scapegoat, despite also being an uncommonly nasty piece of work ... It was symbolic as much as anything, I think.
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Post by jellybean on Feb 11, 2008 11:16:38 GMT -6
Some time ago I read a haunting book written by a young Ohio man who migrated to the South before the War Between the States to take a teaching job. He became thoroughly acclimated as a Southerner and when the war broke out he enlisted in the Confederate army. He later received a battlefield commission. He was later captured and imprisoned in the prison for officers on Johnson Island in Lake Erie.
Here is the haunting part. His family had a prosperous farm just a few miles south of Johnson Island. He wrote to them describing his tenuous malnourished existence there as a POW. He begged them to bring him some food (of which they had plenty). They refused.
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 11, 2008 11:37:02 GMT -6
jellybean, that's haunting indeed. Really brings home what a civil war means.
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 11, 2008 12:00:38 GMT -6
Great story Jellybean. Elisabeth-I'll tell you my story. About 20 years ago I started searching for the grave site of my GGGGrandfather. He had a farm of 1100 acres during the Civil War and all 6 of his sons served Virginia, in the Confederate Army. I drove to the location (still farmland) and knocked on a mans door. He owned the property. I told him what I was searching for, and he agreed to show me the grave. After this he became defensive and told me how his family owned the land since the Civil War, and that I could check the county tax records. He also told me of a cemetery belonging to my family located on a hill, and even pointed in the direction. A few weeks later I came back to visit that cemetery, and this time the man as not helpful at all. He said he didn't have time to take me to the cemetery. I told him not to worry I would go myself. Then he said that I had better stop at his caretakers house and inform him as he wouldn't want me to get shot. I looked for hours in the woods and hill but could never find the cemetery. Several years later I located some distant relatives and they told me the story. It seems that during the war the mans family were members of the local Union Homeguard. Since the farm was behind enemy lines all the males in my family were gone. The mans family attacked and killed my GGGGrandfathers son's wife and three daughters, and buried them in a briar patch across from the persons house that I had visited. They were able to take all the land because of unpaid taxes during the war. That is why the man was unfriendly to me! And to this day those three young girls and their mother lie in an unmarked grave!
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Post by elisabeth on Feb 11, 2008 12:30:57 GMT -6
Oh, my. These things are so raw, still.
I wonder what the statute of limitations on memory is. In England, our Civil War is long enough ago for most of the wounds to have healed (though it's still shocking to see the churches desecrated by Cromwells' soldiers). In Ireland, of course, it's different: deliberate massacres, like Drogheda, leave a much longer-lasting scar. But yes, this isn't just "history" in the U.S., but very close to living memory. People you could see photographs of. Sobering indeed.
I suppose the War Graves commission doesn't cover civilians? Seems wrong somehow ...
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Post by gocav76 on Feb 11, 2008 12:40:58 GMT -6
Elisabeth, The unmarked graves are on private property and until that family sells the land I can never even place a marker. I should add that after the war, anyone who had sided with the south lost all rights in my state. You were unable to vote or bring a lawsuit against someone. I was told that around 1875 the court system once again became favorable to the ex-confederates. One day one of the men who had murdered the girls came riding by the house of the brother of the slain girls. My relative shot and killed the man. When he went to trial my GGGreat Uncle was fined some livestock. The judge (who was an ex-confederate) stated that my uncle "knew when a man needed killing!"
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Post by conz on Feb 11, 2008 12:56:59 GMT -6
That's a great story, GoCav. Unfortunately, my ancestor didn't need transportation home because he died at Elmira. Diane, On the flip side of our American coin, I had an ancestor that died in Andersonville! Still have his photo on my mantle, his enlistment picture with his brother, who was killed at the battle in which he was captured (Wilderness...they were in a Vermont regiment). Luckily for me, those genes were in a parallel branch of my family tree...my own branch survived that horrible war. Odd that my two family known infantry civil war vets were killed, whilst my cavalry ancestor lived. Well, somebody DID say that they never saw a dead cavalryman...odd sentiment for THIS forum! Clair
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