Haunted by Atrocity

by Benjamin G. Cloyd

20. Arch Blakey, General John H. Winder, C.S.A. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), 120–39.

  21. Blakey, General John H. Winder, 158.

  22. O.R., VII: 1150.

  23. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 42–48.

  24. Leslie G. Hunter, “Warden for the Union: General William Hoffman (1807–1884)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1971), 28, 43, 58–59.

  25. William Hoffman to Edwin Stanton, September 19, 1863, Personal Papers of William Hoffman, entry 16, RG 249, National Archives.

  26. O.R., VIII: 997–1003.

  27. James M. Gillispie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2008), 217–38.

  28. Walt Whitman, Memoranda during the War [&] Death of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1875; repr., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 4.

  29. James B. Murphy, ed., “A Confederate Soldier’s View of Johnson’s Island Prison,” Ohio History 79 (Spring 1970): 109.

  30. Ruth Woods Dayton, ed., The Diary of a Confederate Soldier James E. Hall (N.p.: privately printed, 1961), 92.

  31. William Whatley Pierson, Jr., ed., Whipt ‘em Everytime: The Diary of Bartlett Yancey Malone (Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1960), 93.

  32. Walter L. Williams, “A Confederate View of Prison Life: A Virginian in Fort Delaware, 1863,” Delaware History 18 (Fall-Winter 1979): 228, 232.

  33. Robert Bingham, “Prison Experience,” pp. 7–8, Robert Bingham Papers, Folder 2, Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  34. L. Leon, Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier (Charlotte, N.C.: Stone, n.d.), 68–69.

  35. Joseph M. Kern, “Diary and Scrapbook,” p. 33, Joseph Mason Kern Papers, Folder 2, Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  36. Joseph T. Durkin, ed., John Dooley: Confederate Soldier (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1945), 165.

  37. Ted Genoways and Hugh H. Genoways, eds., A Perfect Picture of Hell: Eyewitness Accounts by Civil War Prisoners from the 12th Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001), 71, 78–79.

  38. Genoways and Genoways, A Perfect Picture of Hell, 209, 212, 207, 213.

  39. Samuel Fiske, Dunn Browne in the Army (Boston: Nichols & Noyes, 1865), 157.

  40. John Quinn Imholte, “The Civil War Diary and Related Sources of Corporal Newell Burch 154th New York Volunteers Covering the Period August 25, 1862 to April 21, 1865,” p. 108, Michael Winey Collection, United States Army Military History Institute.

  41. Don Allison, ed., Hell on Belle Isle: Diary of a Civil War POW (Bryan, Ohio: Faded Banner, 1997), 57, 65, 81, 65, 82.

  42. On other Confederate prisons in 1864–65, see Thomas M. Boaz, Libby Prison & Beyond: A Union Staff Officer in the East, 1862–1865 (Shippensburg, Pa.: Burd Street, 1999); Philip N. Racine, ed., “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994); Margaret W. Peelle, Letters from Libby Prison (New York: Greenwich, 1956); Joseph Ferguson, “Civil War Journal,” Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, United States Colored Troops, United States Army Military History Institute.

  43. Thomas Francis Galwey, The Valiant Hours, ed. W. S. Nye (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1961), 200.

  44. John Sawyer Patch, “Diary of John Sawyer Patch,” p. 17, Andersonville Subject Files, Andersonville National Historic Site.

  45. Henry W. Tisdale, “Civil War Diary of Sergt. Henry W. Tisdale,” p. 112, Civil War Prisoner of War Resource Files, Andersonville National Historic Site.

  46. Wayne Mahood, ed., Charlie Mosher’s Civil War (Hightstown, N.J.: Longstreet House, 1994), 240.

  47. C. M. Destler, ed., “An Andersonville Prison Diary,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 24 (March 1940): 65.

  48. Paul C. Helmreich, “The Diary of Charles G. Lee in the Andersonville and Florence Prison Camps, 1864,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 41 (January 1976): 19.

  49. Wayne Mahood, Charlie Mosher’s Civil War, 220.

  50. Francis M. Shaw, “Transcription of Diary,” p. 12, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, 3rd series, Box 5, Pennsylvania, United States Army Military History Institute.

  51. Leon Basile, ed., The Civil War Diary of Amos E. Stearns, a Prisoner at Andersonville (London: Associated University Presses, 1981), 77.

  52. George Foxcroft Read, “Transcription of Diary,” pp. 16, 14, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, 3rd series, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Box 1, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, United States Army Military History Institute.

  53. The Tritt and Umsted quotes come from Glenn M. Robins, “Race, Repatriation, and Galvanized Rebels: Union Prisoners and the Exchange Question in Deep South Prison Camps,” Civil War History 53 (June 2007): 123–24.

  54. Ibid., 132–35.

  55. New York Herald, December 23, 1861, www.accessible.com (accessed February 9, 2003).

  56. Harper’s Weekly, August 30, 1862, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  57. Charles Lanman, ed., Journal of Alfred Ely: A Prisoner of War in Richmond (New York: D. Appleton, 1862), 281–83.

  58. For early Confederate prison accounts, see George A. Lawrence, Border and Bastille (New York: W. I. Pooley, 1863), and J. C. Poe, ed., The Raving Foe (Eastland, Tex.: Longhorn, 1967).

  59. J. J. Geer, Beyond the Lines; or, A Yankee Prisoner Loose in Dixie (Philadelphia: J. W. Daughaday, 1863), 284.

  60. Harold Earl Hammond, ed., Diary of a Union Lady, 1861–1865 (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1962), 364.

  61. Charles F. Larimer, ed., Love and Valor: The Intimate Love Letters between Jacob and Eme-line Ritner (Western Springs, Ill.: Sigourney, 2000), 364.

  62. Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Woolsey Howland, My Heart towards Home: Letters of a Family during the Civil War, ed. Daniel John Hoisington (Roseville, Minn.: Edinborough Press, 2001), 373–74.

  63. G. Glenn Clift, ed., The Private War of Lizzie Hardin (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1963), 224.

  64. Charles East, ed., The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 598.

  65. Ernest M. Lander, Jr., and Charles M. McGee, Jr., eds., A Rebel Came Home: The Diary and Letters of Floride Clemson, 1863–1866 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 89.

  66. Thomas J. Green to Hon. W. J. Greene, Fayetteville, NC, 15 or 20 (date unclear) August 1864, Thomas J. Green Papers, Folder 41, Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  67. Charleston Mercury, February 18, 1864, www.accessible.com (accessed February 6, 2003).

  68. Macon Daily Telegraph, June 11, 1864, Civil War Miscellany Papers, Box 1, Andersonville, Georgia, Military Prison Folder, Georgia State Archives.

  69. The Manigault letter appears in an article edited by Spencer B. King, Jr., “Letter from an Eyewitness at Andersonville Prison, 1864,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 38 (March 1954): 85.

  70. Douglas G. Gardner, “Andersonville and American Memory: Civil War Prisoners and Narratives of Suffering and Redemption” (Ph.D. diss., Miami University, 1998), 180–96.

  71. Harper’s Weekly, January 9, 1864, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 9, 2003).

  72. New York Herald, November 22, 1864, www.accessible.com (accessed February 6, 2003).

  73. Harper’s Weekly, December 5, 1863, March 5, 1864, December 10, 1864, January 14, 1865, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 1 and 9, 2003).

  74. Ibid., April 15, 1865, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  75. Kathleen Collins, “Living Skeletons; Carte-de-visite Propaganda in the American Civil War,” History of Photography 12 (April–June 1988): 103.

  76. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 172–73.

  77. U.S. Congress, House, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Returned Prisoners, 38th Congress, 1st sess., 1864, Report No. 67, 1.

  78. Unit
ed States Sanitary Commission, Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities, Being the Report of a Commission of Inquiry (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1864). See also William B. Hesseltine, “The Propaganda Literature of Confederate Prisons,” Journal of Southern History 1 (February–November 1935): 60–61.

  79. O.R., VII: 618–19.

  80. Robert S. Davis, Ghosts and Shadows of Andersonville: Essays on the Secret Social Histories of America’s Deadliest Prison (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006), 153–61.

  81. Charles Sumner, Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, in the Senate of the United States, January 29th, 1865, on the Resolution of the Committee on Military Affairs, Advising Retaliation in Kind for Rebel Cruelties to Prisoners (New York: Young Men’s Republican Union, 1865), 8.

  82. Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 310–11.

  83. Bruce Tap, “‘These Devils Are not Fit to Live on God’s Earth’: War Crimes and the Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1864–1865,” Civil War History 38 (June 1996): 125–31.

  84. Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 312–16.

  85. O.R., VIII: 337–38, 347, 349.

  86. Ibid., 350.

  87. J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, ed. Howard Swiggett (New York: Old Hickory Bookshop, 1935), 340.

  88. O.R., VIII: 350.

  89. Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 299–309.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. U.S. Congress, House, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 38th Congress, 2nd sess.,1865, House Executive Document No. 32, 54–77.

  2. The controversial Wirz trial has been well documented. Accounts of significance include (but are not limited to) the following: William Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (1930; repr., Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 237–47; Charles W. Sanders, Jr., While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 294–96; William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Edward F. Roberts, Andersonville Journey (Shippensburg, Pa.: Burd Street, 1998); Darrett B. Rutman, “The War Crimes and Trial of Henry Wirz,” Civil War History 6 (June 1960): 117–33; Lewis L. Laska and James M. Smith, “‘Hell and the Devil’: Andersonville and the Trial of Captain Henry Wirz, C. S. A., 1865,” Military Law Review 68 (1975): 77–132; Gayla Koerting, “The Trial of Henry Wirz and Nineteenth-Century Military Law” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1995); Robert E and Katharine M. Morseberger, “After Andersonville: The First War Crimes Trial,” Civil War Times Illustrated 13 (July 1974): 30–40; James C. Bonner, “War Crimes Trials, 1865–1867,” Social Science 22 (April 1947): 128–34.

  3. New York Times, July 26, 1865.

  4. Harper’s Weekly, August 19, 1865, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 1, 2003).

  5. Ibid., September 16, 1865, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 1, 2003).

  6. New York Times, October 15, 1865.

  7. Diary of Abram Varrick Parmenter, August 25, 26, and September 27, 1865, Abram Varrick Parmenter Papers, MMC 696, Library of Congress Manuscript Room.

  8. Laska and Smith, “‘Hell and the Devil,’” 100–102; Koerting, “The Trial of Henry Wirz,” 69.

  9. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 239–42.

  10. Laska and Smith, “‘Hell and the Devil,’” 101.

  11. U.S. Congress, House, The Trial of Henry Wirz, 40th Congress, 2nd sess., 1868, House Executive Document No. 23, 802, 777, 764, 756, 813–14.

  12. Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940), 273–75.

  13. U.S. Congress, House, Trial of Henry Wirz, 814.

  14. Koerting, “The Trial of Henry Wirz,” 122.

  15. Laska and Smith, “‘Hell and the Devil,’” 106, 129; see also Rutman, “The War Crimes and Trial of Henry Wirz,” 127–28.

  16. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 244.

  17. William J. Cooper, Jr., Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Knopf, 2000), 540–41.

  18. Morseberger, “After Andersonville,” 37–40.

  19. Edward Younger, Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean (1957; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 223, 230.

  20. Randolph Stevenson, The Southern Side; or, Andersonville Prison (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1876), 133.

  21. U.S. Congress, House, Trial of Henry Wirz, 704.

  22. November 10, 1865, Parmenter Diary.

  23. Harper’s Weekly, November 25, 1865, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  24. The post-trial publication of The Demon of Andersonville; or, The Trial of Wirz, for the Cruel Treatment and Brutal Murder of Helpless Union Prisoners in his Hands. The Most Highly Exciting and Interesting Trial of the Present Century, his Life and Execution Containing also a History of Andersonville, with Illustrations, Truthfully Representing the Horrible Scenes of Cruelty Perpetuated by Him (Philadelphia: Barclay, 1865) indicated how much Wirz was reviled in 1865.

  25. Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War (1961; repr., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 59–66.

  26. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 152.

  27. Hans L. Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 2001), 168.

  28. U.S. Congress, House, Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th Congress, 1st sess., 1866, Report No. 30, x–xi, 278–87.

  29. Harper’s Weekly, June 30, 1866, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  30. Ibid., March 23, 1867, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  31. Ibid., July 21, 1866, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  32. Nancy Roberts, “The Afterlife of Civil War Prisons and Their Dead” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1996), 218–29.

  33. Quartermaster General’s Office, The Martyrs Who, for Our Country, Gave up their Lives in the Prison Pens in Andersonville, GA. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866), 8.

  34. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 247–48.

  35. Augustus C. Hamlin, Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1866); Robert H. Kellogg, Life and Death in Rebel Prisons (1865; repr., Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971); Joseph Ferguson, Life Struggles in Rebel Prisons: A Record of the Sufferings, Escapes, Adventures, and Starvation of the Union Prisoners (Philadelphia: James A. Ferguson, 1865), 72–73.

  36. William Burson, A Race For Liberty, or My Capture, Imprisonment, and Escape (Wellsville, Ohio: W. G. Foster, 1867), 41.

  37. Albert D. Richardson, The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing, 1865), 417, 412.

  38. Warren Lee Goss, The Soldier’s Story of His Captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and other Rebel Prisons (1866; repr., Scituate, Mass.: Digital Scanning, 2001), 257; Josiah C. Brownell, At Andersonville. A Narrative of Personal Adventure at Andersonville, Florence and Charleston Rebel Prisons (1867; repr., Glen Cove, N.Y.: Glen Cove Public Library, 1981), 7.

  39. J. F. Brock, “The Personal Experience of J. F. Brock in the Rebel Prison Pens,” p. 2, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, 3rd series, Kansas City Civil War Round Table Collection, United States Army Military History Institute.

  40. Decimus et Ultimus Barziza, The Adventures of a Prisoner of War (1865; repr., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 103, 91.

  41. A. M. Keiley, In Vinculis; or, The Prisoner of War (New York: Blelock, 1866), 5, 138–47, 141, 52.

  42. L. M. Lewis, “Introduction,” viii-ix, in W. A. Wash, Camp, Field and Prison Life (St. Louis: Southwestern, 1870).

  43. Rutman, “The War Crimes and Trial of Henry Wirz,” 133.

  44
. Harper’s Weekly, November 9, 1867, July 4, 1868, July 11, 1868, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  45. Ibid., October 3, 1868, October 24, 1868, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  46. U.S. Congress, House, Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Rebel Authorities, 40th Congress, 3rd sess., 1869, Report No. 45, 6, 7.

  47. Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 94, 21, 28.

  48. J. P. C. Shanks, Speech of Gen. J. P. C. Shanks, of Indiana, on Treatment of Prisoners of War (Washington D.C.: Judd & Detweiler, 1870), 3, 12; see also C. E. Reynolds, “Thirteen Months at Andersonville Prison and What I Saw There: A Paper Delivered before the N. L. Association, Napoleon, Ohio, April 24, 1869,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 27 (1955): 94–113.

  49. Mary R. Dearing, Veterans in Politics: The Story of the G. A. R. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 203. Also see Reinhard H. Luthin, “Waving the Bloody Shirt: Northern Political Tactics in Post-Civil War Times,” Georgia Review 14 (Spring 1960): 64–71.

  50. Harper’s Weekly, September 21, 1872, www.harpweek.com (accessed March 3, 2003).

  51. Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South 1865 to 1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 22, 33.

  52. Alexander H. Stephens, Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, edited by Myrta Avary (1910; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 233–36.

  53. John J. Craven, Prison Life of Jefferson Davis (New York: Carleton, 1866), 107–8.

  54. The Louis Schade quotes come from an unknown newspaper dated April 4, 1867, Joseph Frederick Waring Papers, Folder 1, Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  55. Blight, Race and Reunion, 2.

  56. See William A. Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865–1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005); Kathleen A. Clark, Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863–1913 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Donald R. Shaffer, After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).