On Christmas day, 1864, John Clark Ely shivered against the cold wind that blew through the small prison near Meridian, Mississippi. A sergeant with the 115th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Ely had been captured by forces under Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest twenty days earlier near LaVergne, Tennessee. The weeks following his capture had been difficult for the former school teacher and his fellow prisoners. By Christmas, several had already died of exposure. Ely must have wondered what the future held for him when he wrote in his diary: '[C]hristmas Day and such a day for us prisoners. Hungry, dirty, sleepy and lousy. Will another Christmas find us again among friends and loved ones?'

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Ely was transferred to the infamous Andersonville, Georgia, prison camp where he was housed until March 24, 1865. On that date, their Confederate captors finally released Ely and the other half-starved, sickly survivors of his company for exchange. One prisoner later wrote of their exodus: 'Coming like cattle across an open field were scores of men who were nothing but skin and bones; some hobbling along as best they could, and others being helped by stronger comrades. Every gaunt face with its staring eyes told the story of the suffering and privation they had gone through, and protruding bones showed through their scanty tattered garments. One might have thought that the grave and sea had given up their dead.'

Sergeant Ely joined approximately 5,500 other prisoners released from Andersonville and Cahaba prisons at Camp Fisk, a parole camp located on the Big Black River four miles east of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Arriving at the camp on March 31, Ely expressed relief at his impending release when he wrote in his diary that he and his fellow prisoners had come to the place 'we have looked for … Oh this is the brightest day of my life long to be remembered.'

When news that the war was over reached the prisoners at Camp Fisk, they knew that at long last they were out of harm's way and would shortly be released. On April 14, Sergeant Ely recorded in his diary: 'Today Major Anderson again raises the same old flag over Sumter and today the North rejoice over their victories and today came an order from General [Napoleon] Dana for us to be paroled and sent North. Bully, may we soon see our sweethearts.'

While the men were still at the parole camp, word reached them that President Abraham Lincoln was dead. Since all telegraphic communications between the North and South had been cut off by the order of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the sad news was brought to Vicksburg by way of the steamboat Sultana.

Built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in early 1863 for Captain Preston Lodwick, the 260-foot-long Sultana was reported to be 'one of the largest and best steamers ever constructed.' With a legal carrying capacity of 376, the Sultana, which had a crew of eighty to eighty-five, was permitted to take on only about 290 passengers. Lodwick owned the Sultana until March 1864, when he sold her to three investors, one of whom was J. Cass Mason, the steamer's captain and master. However, to off-set his financial problems, Mason had, by mid-April of 1865, sold most of his interest in the Sultana to his first clerk, William J. Gambrel and others.

After the Sultana docked at Vicksburg, Mason went into town on a quest for passengers for his boat's return trip. General Dana, the Union Commander for the Department of the Mississippi, had ordered that the soon-to-be paroled prisoners at Camp Fisk be sent northward from Vicksburg on privately owned steamboats, with the vessels' owners receiving five dollars per enlisted man carried and ten dollars for each officer.

Mason, in an effort to get as many of these soldiers as possible for his upriver trip, met with two army officers — Brigadier General Morgan L. Smith and Lieutenant Colonel Reuben B. Hatch — while the Sultana was stopped at Vicksburg. Because Smith, commander of the post and the District of Vicksburg, was, like Mason, from St. Louis and had been a riverboat captain for several years prior to the war, the two may have been acquainted. In any event, Smith promised Mason a full load of soldiers for his upriver journey.

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