USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron brigade, known as the Detroit and Wayne county regiment > Part 39
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444
HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
of their horrible accounts. When Winder was laying out the Andersonville pen, he told Mr. Ambrose Spencer, a resident of Americus, Ga., near by, "The - Yankees who would be put in the pen would need no barracks." When asked why he was cutting down all the trees, Winder replied : " I am going to build a pen here that will kill more - Yankees than can be destroyed at the front."
The Confederate records show that the attention of Jefferson Davis was repeatedly called to these enormities, by the Andersonville surgeons. The receipts of such letters and reports were acknowledged * and confessed by indorsement on their back in Jefferson Davis' own handwriting! In August, 1864, when the pen contained 35,000 men Lieutenant-Colonel D. T. Chandler, C. S. A., after officially inspecting the Andersonville prison, thus reported to Jefferson Davis :
There is no medical attendance provided within the stockade. Small quantities of medicine are placed in the hands of certain prisoners and the sick are directed to be brought out to the medical officers at the gate. Only the strongest can get access to the doctors, the weaker ones being unable to force their way through the press. Many are carted out daily whom the medical officers never have seen. The dead are hauled out daily by the wagon load, and burried without coffins, their hands in many instances being first mutilated with an axe in the removal of any finger rings they may have. The sanitary condition of the prisoners is as wretched as can be, the principal causes of mortality being scurvy and chronic diarrhea. Nothing seems to have been done to arrest it by proper food. The ration is one-third of a pound of bacon and one and one-quarter pound of unbolted corn meal, with fresh beef at rare intervals, and occasionally rice-very seldom a small quantity of molasses for the meat ration. A little weak vinegar unfit for use has sometimes been issued. The arrangements for cooking have been wholly inadequate. Raw rations have to be issued to a very large proportion who are entirely unprovided with proper utensils, and furnished so limited a supply of fuel they are compelled to dig with their hands in the filthy marsh for roots. No soap or clothing has ever been issued. * * * My duty requires me to recommend a change in the officer in command of the Post, Brig. Gen. J. H. Winder, and the substitution of some one who unites good judgment with some feeling of humanity for the comfort of the vast number of unfortunates under his control-some one at least who will not advocate deliberately and in cold blood the propriety of leaving them in their present condition, until their number has been sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangement suffice for their accomodation ; who will not consider it a matter of self laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade, a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and which is a disgrace to civilization.
The above report from Jefferson Davis' own appointed agent, was acknowledged as received by him in his own handwriting, and yet, with the guilty knowledge of such enormities, instead of removing this fiendish keeper, Jefferson Davis promoted him-John H. Winder -to the command of all the prisons in the Confederacy, thus becoming a particeps criminis of all those murderous methods. The above is a
445
CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
Confederate's official testimony of the horrors of that prison pen which will ever disgrace the Confederate cause.
The following document in possession of the Government is unanswerable proof of the settled policy of the Richmond Government towards Union prisoners :
CITY POINT, VA., March 17, 1863.
SIR :- A flag-of-truce boat has arrived with 350 political prisoners. I wish you to send me all the military prisoners (except officers) and all the political prisoners you have. The arrangement I have made works largely in our favor. We get rid of a set of miserable wretches, and receive some of the best material I ever saw. * *
ROBERT OULD,
Confederate Com'r of Exchange. To Brig. Gen. John H. Winder, C. S. A.
No apologies from the southern traitors or their northern cowardly sympathizers can wipe out such evidence. It is idle to attempt to parallel it with averments as to the treatment of Confederate prisoners in the North. Such an effort has recently been made in the Century magazine, wherein certain atrocities of similar kind are charged. If true, they deserve the branding shame of the perpetrators. If false, the statement deserves the opprobrium of falsehood. Is it not strange that these things have not been disclosed until after the lapse of a quarter of a century? What southern or northern press ever alluded to them in those days? The place of such averred mistreatment was at the camp for Confederate prisoners near Indianapolis, Indiana. Here were the headquarters of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a society inimical to the administration of Lincoln, an opposer of every war policy of the government and a treasonable organization. The averred mistreatment of the Confederate prisoners then escaped entirely the attention of those marplots against our government. However, the comparison of the death rates and the evidence of the people in the vicinity prove the falsity of the Century article. As previously stated in this article, the Confederate prisoners had the same treatment, the same rations, the same medical attention and care, the same fuel for warmth, that the Union soldiers had who guarded them, and when released were placed right back in the Confederate ranks for field duty, while scarcely any of our Union prisoners were ever fit for duty after their release. We have diverged from our subject to repel the statements in the Century article, feeling that justice to history demanded a refutation of what even every sympathizer of the southern cause in the North believes to be a malicious fabrication.
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
The illustration on page 447 affords a general idea of Andersonville Prison. Far down towards the Florida line, sixty miles south of Macon, in Sumpter County, Georgia, was located this infamous den. The reader is on the east side of the prison looking west. In the distance the cars are leaving a fresh arrival of Union captives. The Sweetwater Creek, a sluggish stream from four to ten feet wide and six inches deep-flanked on either side by several rods of swamp, meandered from the railroad down through the pen. This was cut from a solid pine forest and every tree but three cut away that the men might have no shelter. The camp of the guards was located so that the stream received the offal from the vaults, and thus polluted, flowed through the pen. And of this the prisoners must obtain their supply of water.
The stockade was about 108 rods long by forty-eight rods wide and contained about thirty-six acres, of which six acres were swamp, so that over 1,000 men to the acre were turned into this pen like cattle, without shelter, subject to the cold rains and hot sun. Dense forests were all around whence they could have obtained material for shelter and for fuel, but these privileges were denied. The illustration is so reduced from the original drawing that the reader must observe closely and carefully, to understand it, but the study will repay him. The margin shows a few prison incidents. Commencing on the right hand is a picture of the author of the drawing, Thomas O'Dea, who spent several months in the den. Above him is an illustration of the modes of punishment for trying to escape, such as hanging by the thumbs, wearing a ball and chain, being bucked and gagged, and sitting in the stocks. The next shows the daily visit of Wirz to the bloodhounds, the large dog Spot appearing in front. Above this some escaped prisoners are being pursued in the woods and run down by the bloodhounds. Above shows a man coming out of a tunnel opening outside the stockade. The picture next above represents the men engaged in well digging and tunneling to escape.
The right-hand corner picture shows the breaking away of the stockade after a severe storm. The water flooded the swamp and carried off the putrid matter that accumulated. The men waded into the swamp and gathered up the logs for fuel, but they were taken away from them. To the left is an indistinct representation of the diseases that afflicted the men. Again to the left is a dying prisoner and adjacent thereto his final thoughts of home and loved ones-his wife reading his last letter, his babe in the cradle, etc. The top center
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CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
picture represents the grave yard. A load of dead is being placed upon the ground-their arms and legs hanging over the wagon sides. In a long trench two feet deep are closely placed side by side the emaciated forms of men of health but a few weeks before-now starved to the grave. This same dead wagon, reeking with filth and vermin, without cleaning, was used to bring back into the stockade the food for the men !
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ANDERSONVILLE PRISON. (CAMP SUMTER)
-
AS IT APPEARED AVOUST -1864 WHEN IT CONTAINED 15.00O PRISONERS OF WAR. DRING FROM MEMORY BY THOMAS O'DEA LATE PRIVATE C' 1 10 MEG MAINE IKA YOU -----------
MOSS EN&DAY
Next to the left is the shooting of a man too near the dead line, by the guard. Then appears the difficult efforts of the men to cook their rations, with such chips, sticks and roots, that they could barter for and dig from the ground. In the left-hand corner may be seen a representation of hanging the six raiders. Below represents the method of drawing rations. These were divided as equally as possible according to the number in the squad, and placed on a blanket. Each man had his number and one fellow turned his back to the rations. The sergeant then pointed to a pile and asked "Who'll have this?" The man with his back turned would say "No. 10," and the man who bore that number would step forward, take the pile and devour it.
The picture next below the ration scene represents the Providence Spring. Just inside the "dead line" on the northwest side of the swamp, one night after a terrible thunderstorm when shafts of
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN
lightning were frequent, a fine spring of pure cold water burst out of the ground which was regarded as a miracle by the men, many of whom averred that it was a stroke of lightning that caused it to come forth. It furnished a sufficient quantity of fine water for the men during their confinement therein. This spring was still in existance several years later when the author visited the prison and from which he quaffed the Nectarean liquid. The scene next down on the left represents an excitement in camp caused by false rumors of exchange, after which many died from despondency. The next scene represents the dead brought daily to the gate and laid down to be carried out in the "provision wagon." Below is a picture of Father Whelan, of Savannah, Georgia, praying among the living and dead.
All during July, 1864, the prisoners came streaming by thousands. In all, 7,128 during that month were turned into that seething mass of corrupting humanity to be polluted by it and to make it fouler and deadlier-fair youths in the first flush of hopeful manhood ; beardless boys rich in the priceless affections of homes were sent in to have their flesh rotted with scurvy and bodies burned with the slow fire of famine. These 35,000 young men were cooped up on thirteen acres of ground. There was hardly room for all to lie down at night, and to walk a few hundred feet would require an hour. The weather became hotter and hotter. At midday the sand would burn the hand. The thin skins of fair and auburn haired men blistered under the sun's rays, and swelled up in great watery puffs, which soon became the breeding grounds of the hideous maggots or more deadly gangrene. The loathsome swamp grew in rank offensiveness with every burning hour. The pestilence stalked at noon-day and one could not look a rod in any direction without seeing at least a dozen men in the last frightful stages of rotting death.
Immediately around my own tent in a space not larger than a good sized parlor was a scene that was a sample of the whole prison. On this small space were at least fifty of us. In front of me lay two brothers in the last stages of scurvy and diarrhea. Every particle of muscle and fat about their limbs and bodies had apparently wasted away, leaving the skin clinging close to the bone of the face, arms, hands and ribs- everywhere except the feet and legs where it was swollen and distended with gallons of purulent matter. Their livid gums, from which most of their teeth had already fallen, protruded far beyond their lips. To their left lay a Sergeant and two others, all slowly dying from diarrhea and beyond, a fair-haired German whose life was ebbing away. To my right was a young Sergeant whose left arm had been amputated and he was turned into the stockade with the stump undressed, where he had not been an hour until the maggot flies had laid eggs in the open wound and before the day was gone the worms were hatched out and rioting amid the inflamed nerves where their every motion was agony. I would be happier could I forget his pale face as he wandered about holding his maimed limb with his right hand and occasionally pressing from it a stream of maggots and pus, before he died. This is what one could see on every square rod of the prision .- McElroy's Andersonville.
With one exception, it is said that Catholic Priests were the only ministers of the Gospel who ever set foot in Confederate prisons. In February, 1865, on the last Sunday before the prisoners were sent
CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
449
9
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY THE U. S. GOVERNMENT OF UNION SOLDIERS, JUST AFTER THEIR RETURN FROM CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
North from Salisbury, N. C., three Southern Methodist Clergymen came into the pen and preached. They said they were Southerners and had for a long time been aware of the awful crimes that were being committed in that prison, but they were powerless to prevent them. They had sought for their liberation but in vain. They now came in to tell them that their exchange was near at hand and that " God Almighty would never prosper any government which practiced such awful cruelties upon its defenseless captives !" Several prisoners have told the author that some of the Southern people condemned these outrages in unmistakable terms, and the Southern women were moved to weeping at the awful looking skeletons and emaciated forms that emerged from that prison hell. The great trouble with the people of the South was their acquiesence in the wicked and treasonable acts of their leading men who involved the South in the War. Whatever their wicked and cowardly so called Statesmen proposed they meekly submitted to and half a million graves is the result of such homage.
The fiend Winder who superintended the southern prisons was stricken to death by apoplexy at the depot in Florence, S. C., on New Year's Day, 1865, and after the war his pliant follower at Andersonville, the infamous Wirs, was captured, tried and hanged. The cowardly and equally infamous Jefferson Davis, President no longer of the defunct Confederacy, was captured by the Fourth Michigan Cavalry while escaping disguised in his wife's clothes! Both he and his entire prisoner-starving cabinet should have swung from the same gallows with Wirz for their guilty knowledge of the crimes for which their tool was executed, and which they approved and abetted.
Though bereft of spiritual advisers from without, except as above noted, there were preachers among the prisoners who organized prayer meetings and held services frequently, which were largely attended. At Andersonville, these "Camp Meetings" were held almost nightly and were powerful in evidences of divine spirit. The charnel house in yonder field was receiving the men by the score, and by fifties and by hundreds each day, and notwithstanding the congregating in that pent up den of so many different characters,
[A very good pamphlet narrative on Southern prisons is published by S. S. Boggs of Lovington, Ill., for twenty-five cents. We are indebted to this comrade for two cuts in this chapter. McElroy's History of Andersonville, by the Toledo Blade Publishing Company, is a large and very complete history of prison life.]
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CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
there was a strong following at these religious meetings. It is said that the singing possessed a peculiar pathos from the surroundings and was never surpassed in fervor and divine beauty. One piece was the most popular of any and we here reproduce it as sung nightly at Andersonville prison :
My heavenly home is bright and fair, Nor pain nor death can enter there ; Its glittering towers the sun outshine , That heavenly mansion shall be mine.
I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home to die no more ; To die no more, to die no more, I'm going home to die no more,
My Father's house is built on high, Far, far above the starry sky. When from this earthly prison free, That heavenly mansion mine shall be.
While here, a stranger far from home, Affliction's waves may round me foam ; Although, like Lazarus, sick and poor, My heavenly mansion is secure.
Let others seek a home below, Which flames devour or waves o'erflow, Be mine the happier lot to own A heavenly mansion near the throne.
Then fail the earth, let stars decline And sun and moon refuse to shine, All nations sink and cease to be, That heavenly mansion stands for me.
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CHAPTER XXIII.
THE IRON BRIGADE.
H ISTORIES of the war make honorable mention of this celebrated Brigade, a name and record bought with blood. Fox, in his Book of Losses, ascribes to it a per centage of loss, in proportion to its numbers, the greatest of any of the Union brigades. It was composed of Western men who possessed the indomitable pluck of that section. Early in the war it won for itself a noble record for fortitude and bravery, and sustained its proud reputation to the end. Generals confidently relied upon it and gave it positions of danger and honor. Every soldier in it was proud to belong to his particular regiment and highly proud to be a member of this Brigade. Each of its five regiments was distinguished for some exceptional excellence and all combined to make a record second to none.
In a recent letter to the author, General John B. Callis of Lancaster, Wis., thus explains the origin of its name by which its fame has become world-wide :
General McClellan told me at the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia, when his grand reception was given there, what he knew of the origin of the cognomen Iron Brigade. Said he : "During the battle of South Mountain my Headquarters were where I could see every move of the troops taking the gorge on the Pike [ National Road]. With my glass I saw the men fighting against great odds, when General Hooker came in great haste for some orders. I asked him what troops were those fighting on the Pike. His answer was : 'General Gibbon's Brigade of Western men.' I said, 'They must be made of iron.' He replied, 'By the Eternal they are iron. If you had seen them at Second Bull Run as I did, you would know them to be iron.' I replied, 'Why, General Hooker, they fight equal to the best troops in the world.' This remark so elated Hooker that he mounted his horse and dashed away without his orders. After the battle, I saw Hooker at the Mountain House near where the Brigade fought. He sang out, 'Now General, what do you think of the Iron Brigade ?' Ever since that time I gave them the cognomen of IRON BRIGADE." The Twenty-fourth Michigan did not join us until after all this, but I am proud to say they proved themselves to contain as much iron as any regiment in the Brigade.
Thus it received its honorable title on the field of battle from the Commander-in-Chief of the Army - a distinction it excusably may be
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THE IRON BRIGADE.
proud to boast and a heritage its posterity will highly prize. The Iron Brigade was composed of the Second, Sixth and Seventh Wisconsin, Nineteenth Indiana and Twenty-fourth Michigan regiments of Infantry Volunteers. From time to time some other troops were temporarily attached to it, but the above five regiments constituted
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the Iron Brigade of the West. Gladly would we give a full history of each of these regiments but such would be wholly beyond the scope of this volume. A brief reference to each must suffice.
The SECOND WISCONSIN was enrolled under President Lincoln's first call for 75,000 three months' troops. It rendezvoused at Madison, Wis., during the first week of May, 1861, where its organization was perfected under Colonel S. Park Coon. On May 16, the men all enlisted for three years except one company whose place was at once supplied by the " Wisconsin Rifles" of Milwaukee. The regiment was mustered June 11, 1861, and on the 20th of that month left for Washington, with the following roster :
FREDERICK --
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
Colonel-S. Park Coon ; Lieutenant-Colonel-Henry P. Peck; Major-Duncan McDonald ; Adjutant-E. M. Hunter ; Quartermaster-James D. Ruggles ; Surgeon- James M. Lewis ; Assistant Surgeons-Thomas D. Russell and P. S. Arndt ; Chaplain -- J. C. Richmond.
Captains-George H. Stevens, Wilson Colwell, David Mckee, George B. Ely, Gabriel Bouck, William E. Strong, John Mansfield, J. F. Randolph, Thomas S. Allen, A. J. Langworthy. First Lieutenants-Edward H. Mann, Frank Hatch, C. K. Dean, A. B. McLean, John Hancock, A. O. Doolittle, A. S. Hill, A. A. Meredith, W. W. Lafleische, Caleb Hunt. Second Lieutenants-William W. Jones, Robert Hughes, William Booth, Dana D. Dodge, H. B. Jackson, Wm. L. Parsons, Samuel K. Vaughn, Nat. Rollins, Thomas B. Bishop and William A. Hopkins.
Soon after it was brigaded with three New York regiments under command of Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman, who afterwards became the celebrated Major-General. On July 16, in Tyler's Division, it moved out to Centerville, and four days later participated in the battle of Bull's Run, in which it lost twenty-three killed and mortally wounded, 109 other wounded, six of whom were officers and forty prisoners, besides thirty-two other prisoners. After the battle it was placed in defense of Fort Corcoran. Soon after Edgar O'Connor of the regular army became its Colonel, Lucius Fairchild its Lieutenant-Colonel and Captain T. S. Allen its Major. It was transferred on August 25, to General Rufus King's brigade which then consisted of the Fifth and Sixth Wisconsin and Nineteenth Indiana. On December 9, 1861, Company K was organized as heavy artillery and its place filled on the 30th, by a new company. Its subsequent history was identified with the Iron Brigade until May, 1864. After the battle of Laurel Hill, it was permanently detached, May 11, 1864, from the Iron Brigade to whose reputation its valor had signally contributed. It had now less than 100 men left for duty, with both field officers wounded and in the hands of the enemy. It was engaged as provost guard of the Fourth Division, Fifth Army Corps and on June II, left for home its term of service being done.
It was commanded in succession by Colonel S. Park Coon, Colonel Edgar O'Connor (killed), Colonel Lucius Fairchild and Colonel John Mansfield. Out of a total enrollment of 1,203 it sustained a death loss of 315 or 26.2 per cent. It had nearly 900 killed and wounded and according to Fox, "It sustained the greatest percentage of loss of any regiment in the entire Union Army." At Gettysburg, it lost 77 per cent. of those present, Colonel Fairchild lost an arm and its Lieutenant-Colonel George H. Stevens was killed. The recruits and re-enlisted men were organized into two companies and attached to the Sixth Wisconsin.
LUCIUS FAIRCHILD. (Brevet Major-General, U. S. Vols.)
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THE IRON BRIGADE.
The SIXTH WISCONSIN rendezvoused at Camp Randall, Madison, about June 25, 1861, and was mustered July 16, 1861, with the following roster :
Colonel-Lysander Cutler ; Lieutenant-Colonel-J. P. Atwood; Major-B. F. Sweet ; Adjutant-Frank A. Haskell; Quartermaster-I. N. Mason ; Surgeon-C. B. Chapman ; Assistant Surgeons-A. W. Preston and A. P. Andrews ; Chaplain-Rev. N. A. Staples.
Captains-A. G. Malloy, D. J. Dill, A. S. Hooe, J. O'Rourke, E. S. Bragg, William H. Lindwurm, M. A. Northrup, J. F. Hauser, Leonard Johnson and R. R. Dawes. First-Lieutenants-D. K. Noyes, J. F. Marsh, P. W. Plummer, John Nichols, E. A. Brown, Fred. Schumacker, G. L. Montague, J. D. Lewis, F. A. Haskell and J. A. Kellogg. Second-Lieutenants-F. C. Thomas, Henry Serrill, J. W. Plummer, P. H. McCauley, J. H. Marston, Werner Von Bachell, W. W. Allen, J. A. Tester, A. T. Johnson, John Crane.
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