Immortal 600: Prisoners Under Fire at Charleston Harbor During the American Civil War

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The full heat of high summer made the interior of the jail stifling, and yellow fever began to take a frightening toll. General Jones reacted to the outbreak of disease by issuing orders to his provost marshal to remove all of the sick and wounded prisoners who were able to travel and have them sent back to the prison at Andersonville. Furthermore, he ordered that only extreme cases be allowed to enter Roper Hospital in Charleston.Food for the Federals was poor and scarce; sanitation was nearly nonexistent. Most of the men were exposed to the elements all day and night, and the constant crash of artillery was unnerving. Clearly, the Federal prisoners were in a deadly and harrowing position.

Foster became wrathful when he heard of the new prisoner shipments, thinking that they had also been sent to the city to serve as human shields. He wrote Jones that he would place Confederate officers ‘under your fire’ to retaliate. Construction began on a Union stockade in front of Battery Wagner on Morris Island and directly in the path of Southern artillery, and Foster ordered 600 Confederate officers removed from Fort Delaware, telling Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, the Union Army’s chief of staff, that ‘as soon as the rebel officers arrive I shall place them on Morris Island.’

On August 20, the Federal steamer Crescent City left Fort Delaware with its cargo of 600 Confederate officers packed into the fetid hold and shipped south in the blistering summer sun. Lieutenant George Finley of the 56th Virginia Infantry remembered sitting in ‘total darkness, without any clothing and drenched with perspiration.’ He ate but a ‘few crackers with a bit of salt beef or bacon’ during the journey. The prisoners remained on Crescent City near Hilton Head while the stockade on Morris Island was completed.

The Confederate War Department, meanwhile, kept sending prisoners to the Charleston area. Jones worried that the number of troops he had on hand was woefully inadequate to guard the captives. The Richmond government casuallydismissed his frantic telegrams for relief, however, stating that the military situation required the prisoners be kept in a secure area, and that no reinforcements could be spared for his command.

Jones was now anxious to make exchanges, and news of a pending deal reached the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at City Point, Va. The overall Federal commander, Grant had been among the leading advocates of ending exchanges. He fired off a letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on August 21 demanding that Foster cease all dialogue with Confederate authorities: ‘Please inform General Foster that under no circumstances will he be authorized to exchange prisoners of war. Exchange simply reinforces the enemy at once, whilst we do not get the benefit of those received for two or three months and lose the majority entirely. I telegraph from just learning that 500 or 600 more prisoners have been sent to Foster.’

Halleck summed up the Federal high command’s attitude toward exchanges in an August 27 letter to Grant: ‘To exchange their healthy men for ours, who are on the brink of the grave from their hellish treatment, of course gives them all the advantages. Nevertheless it seems very cruel to leave our men to be slowly butdeliberately tortured to death. But I suppose there is no remedy at the present.’

The situation in Charleston intensified when General Sherman’s forces captured Atlanta on September 2. The Confederate government was concerned that Sherman would move southward to Andersonville and Macon, freeing tens of thousands of prisoners and allowing them to wreak havoc on virtually undefended central Georgia. Richmond greatly desired to keep as many Federal prisoners as far away from Sherman as possible, and the captured Yankees continued to pour into the Charleston area.

On September 7, the Federal stockade on Morris Island opened and was quickly filled with the Confederate prisoners, numbering a little less than 600 due to deaths from disease. In a purposeful mirroring of the living conditions of their Federal counterparts, the Rebels were housed in A-frame tents and very poorly fed. At night they were subjected to clouds of sand fleas and mosquitoes and drenching thunderstorms, all common to coastal South Carolina. The Federals did not issue blankets, and the men were forced to sleep in the sand. All the while, they were exposed to cannon shells and the scorching summer sun.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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