Andersonville Prison Question:

Johnny_Reb_1865

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Nov 3, 2019
I saw someplace a few years ago that the Confedetates at Andersonville sent letters to the United States Government asking for aid for the prisoners there as they couldn't provide for them.

Is this true?

Can someone please provide primary source documents to support this?
 
According to Jon Rice of the University of Missouri-Kansas City:
" The conditions were so poor that in July, 1864 Captain Wirz paroled five Union soldiers to deliver a petition signed by the majority of Andersonville's prisoners asking that the Union reinstate prisoner exchanges. The request in the petition was denied and the Union soldiers, who had sworn to do so, returned to report this to their comrades."
Could this be what you mean?
 
I've never seen anything indicating that the Confederates at Andersonville sent a letter, but there are two incidents involving prisoners that come pretty close.

There was a party of six prisoners released in August, 1864 to bring a petition to Lincoln asking for supplies to be sent to the prisoners and for a resumption of prisoner exchanges. Lincoln declined to release with them. One of the six, Edward Wellington Bates, wrote about the incident for one of the Confederate Veteran's magazines after the War. The six were: Boate of the 42 NY; Henry Higginson 19 Illinois; Prescott Tracy, 82 NY: Sylvester Noirot or Norrit, 5th NJ; and William N Johnson and F. Garland, no regiment given.

Interestingly, Bates was the court reporter at the Raiders' Trial and Higgins was supposedly the raiders' defense attorney (although he was actually an insurance salesman).

Lincoln declined to meet with the delegation, to Boate's fury. The six did not return to Andersonville.

There was also a letter that circulated in several newspapers late in the war, which read:
At a mass meeting held September 28th, 1864, by the Federal prisoners confined at Savannah, Ga, it was unanimously decided that the following resolutions be sent tot he President of the United States, in hope that he might take such steps as in his wisdom he may think necessary for our speedy exchange or parole." It was signed P. Bradley. This passage is from John McElroy's book, and while McElroy was definitely a POW at Andersonville, he twists things so much that I do not consider him to be a reliable source.

This may be the letter you're thinking of. Since some of the Andersonville prisoners went home by way of Savannah, this may or may not have been from Andersonville prisoners.

John McElroy assigns this letter to Pete Bradley, who he claims was a NYC "shyster" who represented the raiders at their trial. Problem is, there's no record of a prisoner named Peter Bradley ever being held at Andersonville, and no record of anyone by that name ever practicing law in the state of NY between 1860 and 1865 (Trust me, I went through the names of every lawyer in the state at that point in time while researching my book on the raiders). There was Patrick Bradley, 2nd Mass Heavy Artillery, but there's no proof that he penned the petition, either.

I'll have to go dig for the primary sources, but it may take a bit. The superintendent has decided that I'm one of the teachers going back into the school building tomorrow, even though there were 200 new cases of covid last week, so when I'm not prepping, I'm stressing.
 
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Primary source info for the Andersonville delegation:


Primary source info for the P. Bradley letter, from my notes:


Newspapers that the P. Bradley letter appeared in:

Appears in the Houston Tri-weekly Times, Wed. Nov.9, 1864, Vol. 30, No 166, Ed 1 says it’s from the Oct. 12, Mobile News

Daily State Sentinel 12 Oct 1864 Hoosier State

Jasper Weekly courier 5 Nov. 1864 Indiana

Partially in M’arthur Democrate, Nov 10, 2865, p. 2 Thursday Ohio

Daily Ohio Statesman Oct 12, 1864, p. 2

Hope this helps!
 
There is a report of one of the guards writing to Jefferson Davis to ask for better conditions at the prison. If this is what you were thinking of, I can go searching for it. I think the letter is in an archive somewhere, but I have no idea about its authenticity. The guard who wrote it complained that his comrades were kind of trigger happy when it came to shooting the prisoners.
 
General Imboden after his sickness was appointed over all the prisons.during that time he was approached by a Group of Union prisoners headed up by a captain wanting permission to try to get food and meds.

They made the trip and returned with no success.
 
According to Jon Rice of the University of Missouri-Kansas City:
" The conditions were so poor that in July, 1864 Captain Wirz paroled five Union soldiers to deliver a petition signed by the majority of Andersonville's prisoners asking that the Union reinstate prisoner exchanges. The request in the petition was denied and the Union soldiers, who had sworn to do so, returned to report this to their comrades."
Could this be what you mean?
That's it. What's the source for that?
 
Just be aware that the account that says they went in July isn't entirely accurate. They went in August, and they did not return to the prison afterwards. After I finished my book on the Raiders, I went digging to see what happened to the jurors and the witnesses in the raider trial - two of them were part of the delegation that took the petition North. There were as many as seven of them, but not all of them reached Washington - at least one got sick on the way and made it North, but not to Washington.

I am a stinker for checking and cross checking (see my compulsive list of 1864 newspaper articles above, if you don't believe me!). I also don't trust things written in 1879 or later - that's when John McElroy's best selling "memoir" was published, and he played fast and loose with the facts on several occasions (inserting the line "I haf had nuttink to go vit it," to Henry Wirz's speech at the foot of the gallows, for example; no earlier version of the speech contains that line or anything remotely close to it, and Wirz had furnished the guards to make the arrests, held the accused, facilitated in the selection of the jury, been involved in two general orders (Numbers 57 and 61) authorizing the trial and executions, and even furnished the wood for the gallows!). A lot of stuff written after 1879 copied what McElroy wrote to fill in the gaps in later "memoirs."

I believe that the Jon Rice passage is from the website on famous American trials at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Wirz/anders1.htm
I don't think it's a quote from one of the prisoners.
 
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