Civil War History - General DiscussionFor Discussions on Civil War Era Personalities, Politics, Issues, Campaigns, Battles, and more. Serious Civil War Discussions Only Please! All other posts will be deleted.
189 dead in 3+ months operation...that's about 60 per month/720 a year...which means in a years time 20% of the camp population would be dead.
And in 4 years' time, about 50 percent of the soldiers, on both sides, who died would die of similar illnesses. It doesn't necessarily follow that the percentage of deaths in the first few months would hold for the second few months. Or the third. The weakest are the first to go -- in the army encampments as well as in facilities set up to take care of refugees.
Conditions were not good for any encampment -- even when everyone tried to avoid it. No one was set up to handle armies or contraband camps or any major mass of people. You'll note we still can't get a handle on our prison populations or illegal immigrants. If we could get a handle on where you're going with your postings, we might find a point of discussion.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
"There are some 2,000 (colored people) here, of all ages and descriptions, (150 more have this hour arrived). They are encamped in little huts and tents, a little back of the town. I learned from them, and from a gentleman employed by the Government to oversee their work, that the men had labored faithfully, from one to seven months, for Gov., but in not a single instance had they been paid, further than [sic] a few of them had received some old cast off garments. They also received light rations of meal and a little pork; upon this their families have subsisted, with what little the women have picked up in the town. The men are universally much discouraged – they are suffering much from lack of food and exposures: 22 died in one night. Three were buried to day."
This proves what to you in the scheme of the Civil War? The conditions of the contraband camps convey what to you?
Were all contraband camps guarded by Union soldiers to prevent former black slaves from escaping? Were all former black slaves restriced to such camps? Do you happen to know the percentage of former black slaves from those camps who enlisted into the Union army to fight as soldiers?
Do you know why the majority of former black slaves chose to remain in such conditions instead of return to their former masters and their former condition of slavery? How many DID return voluntarily to their masters?
Was the Union military required by military custom and law to provide for these camps? Or were they much like the Confederate army when unexpected tens of thousands of Union prisioners showed up and had to be crowded into POW camps?
Again, I look forward to your historical sources and answers to these questions as I know you have good ones for us to view. I would like to see them in context and gather a more overall picture if you could supply it.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana, p.117-118:
The Horrors of the Sugar House
Dr. George Hill, a distinguished physician and surgeon of Opelousas, whose nerves had been fortified by an active professional practice for forty years, has, under the solemnity of an oath, furnished us with a statement of what he witnessed. We copy the essential portions of his communication:
"In the summer of 1863, Berwick's Bay and a portion of the Lafourche country were taken possession of by the Confederate army. I, with many others who had lost property by the raid which the Federal army made between the 20th of April and the 20th of May of this year, visited the Bay for the purpose of recovering our property. I was among the first to cross the bay; and having been informed on the night of my arrival by a gentleman named March that several of my lost Negroes were at the sugar house of Dr. Sanders, and that others were there in a dying condition, I...entered it by a door on the west end.
The scene which then and there presented itself can never be effaced from my memory. On the right hand female corpses in a state of nudity, and also in a far advanced stage of decomposition. Many others were lying all over the floor, many speechless and in a dying condition.
All appeared to have died of the same disease: bloody flux. The floor was slippery with blood, mucus and feces. The dying, and all those unable to help themselves, were lying with their scanty garments rolled around their heads and breasts--the lower part of the body naked--and every time an involuntary discharge of blood and feces, combined with air, would pass, making a slight noise, clouds of flies, such as I never saw before, would immediately rise and settle down again on all the exposed parts of the dying. In passing through the house a cold chill shook my frame, from which I did not recover for several months, and, indeed, it came near costing me my life.
As I passed from the house I met with a Negro man of my own, who informed me that he had lost his wife and two children. I asked him if his friends--the Yankees--had not furnished him with medicine. He said, 'No, and if they had, I would not have given it to my family as all who took their medicine died in twelve hours from the time of its being given.' "
This deposition having been read to Dr. Sanders, the proprietor of the sugar house in question and now a representative of St. Mary in the State Senate, he declared that while it was faithful in the general description, it did not exhibit all the horrors of the scene; as, before the arrival of Dr. Hill, he had caused many decomposed bodies that filled the coolers to be removed an interred.
A hundred others would, if necessary, add their testimony to that of these gentlemen.
The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana, p.121:
The Negroes recaptured on the Lafourche and at Berwick's Bay in July 1863 almost unanimously declare that the Yankees poisoned the aged, the infirm, and the infants!
While we reject the competency of such testimony, as do our courts, we will add that we know the Negroes religiously believe what they state.
Two thousand Negroes fell victim to the perfidy of the enemy within the short space of six weeks. The flight commenced from Port Barre on the 21st of May; on the 29th of June General Taylor crossed Berwick's Bay; the planters and proprietors of slaves crossing immediately after found, after dilligent search and inquiry on comparing notes, that this number had already died.
The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana, p.117-118:
Battalion, who is the author of that book, please?
Terry
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
Battalion, who is the author of that book, please?
Terry
The actual author was Henry W. Allen, the confederate Governor of Louisiana.
The full title is, _The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana During the Invasions of 1863 and 1864: Official Report. Compiled from sworn testimony under direction of Governor Henry W. Allen, Shreveport, April 1865._ It was reprinted in 1988 and edited by David C. Edmonds.
This is all I could find on Henry W. Allen, and there's a book out by a Henry W. Allen, about the trial of a Henry W. Allen, who was a deputy US Marshall, who was on trial for kidnapping. The book also comments on the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act. Don't know if it's the same person or not.
The person below, obviously, would side with the Confederacy. The portions of the book posted are, IMO, invented by the author.
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
The portions of the book posted are, IMO, invented by the author.
Regards,
Wm42
The Conduct of Federal Troops in Louisiana...&etc...
Edited by David C. Edmonds
from Foreword-
"Several years ago while gathering sources for another project I came across a rare 1865 document entitled Official Report relative to the Conduct of Federal Troops in Western Louisiana during the Invasions of 1863 and 1864. Prepared under the direction of Governor Henry Watkins Allen, a Confederate general, and written by agents then in the service of the Confederate State of Louisiana--all of whom had suffered personal loss at the hands of the invaders--it appeared to be little more than wartime propaganda designed to inflame passions and whip up enthusiasm for an increasingly unpopular war. Certainly that was my impression as I read one heart-rending account after the other of sacking and burning, of brutality and wanton destruction, of enfilading crowds of Sunday worshippers, and of desecrating tombs and churches.
As my research progressed, however, I found similar accounts of the same outrages in the extant papers of planters, clergymen, Confederate soldiers and other Louisiana citizens, and in hundreds of legal claims filed by Louisiana residents against the United States after the war.
But the most persuasive evidence is in the letters and diaries of the Northern soldiers who fought in Louisiana, as well as in their regimental histories, memoirs, official war correspondence and newspaper articles. Not only are there corroborating accounts of practically every incident related in this work, but the circumstances described by Union onlookers are frequently even more sordid and deplorable than those depicted by Allen's Confederate authors.
I have subsequently concluded that Governor allen's report, though sometimes hostile in language, cynical, and replete with prevailing Southern attitudes with regard to slavery, is nonetheless a credible addition to the literature of the period. It has the additional merit of having been compiled from the sworn affidavits of residents along the line of match. Thus, unlike most Civil War sources, which focus on battles and skirmishes and the limited perspective of the writer, it tells the story of the civilian--the housewife and child, the planter and merchant, the clergyman and slave--all left behind or caught between the opposing forces."
But the most persuasive evidence is in the letters and diaries of the Northern soldiers who fought in Louisiana, as well as in their regimental histories, memoirs, official war correspondence and newspaper articles.
Fine. Now, let's see the Union sources that corroborate the charges of poisoning.
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
