Rough and Ready POW Exchange September 1864

[debwallsmith]

Me again. I'm looking for publications that discuss the POW exchange that took place near Atlanta mid-September '64. According to Andersonville records, 1800 men were sent but only about 700 were actually exchanged. I would like to understand what happened and why it happened. Thank you.

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

Me again. I'm looking for publications that discuss the POW exchange that took place near Atlanta mid-September '64. According to Andersonville records, 1800 men were sent but only about 700 were actually exchanged. I would like to understand what happened and why it happened. Thank you.

I have no idea, but you tweaked my interest and I will be observing the thread.

 

[Gary Morgan]

Don't know if this is a factor or not, but there were at least three train crashes - one of them pretty spectacular where one car smashed through the car ahead of it, leaving it in splinters - in September, 1864, all three involving trains carrying prisoners leaving Andersonville. I wonder if any of the men who left Andersonville bound for Rough and Ready were involved. The survivors were returned to Andersonville to await further arrangements.

 

[debwallsmith]

Don't know if this is a factor or not, but there were at least three train crashes - one of them pretty spectacular where one car smashed through the car ahead of it, leaving it in splinters - in September, 1864, all three involving trains carrying prisoners leaving Andersonville. I wonder if any of the men who left Andersonville bound for Rough and Ready were involved. The survivors were returned to Andersonville to await further arrangeme

Don't know if this is a factor or not, but there were at least three train crashes - one of them pretty spectacular where one car smashed through the car ahead of it, leaving it in splinters - in September, 1864, all three involving trains carrying prisoners leaving Andersonville. I wonder if any of the men who left Andersonville bound for Rough and Ready were involved. The survivors were returned to Andersonville to await further arrangements.

I'm not sure how the train wrecks factor into this but the monthly recapitulation for Andersonville for September 1864 shows that 700 men were sent to Atlanta on September 18 and another 1100 on September 20 (581 were sent to Millen on September 16 and 17). The total number of prisoners received at Andersonville for the month was 282 with most of them arriving on 2 September (n=107) and 5 September (n=114). These prisoners arrived from Macon (n=187) and Atlanta (n=34). Somewhere I read that only about 700 were exchanged in Atlanta. There is an account of the train carrying those who weren't exchanged overnighting in Macon on their way to Savannah and damned if I can't find the diary notation. The author ended up at Millen and I'm assuming he wasn't the only one. I suppose I will just shelf this mystery and hope that I stumble across the diary notation at some point.

The underlying motive for trying to solve this issue is that the names of the 1800 sent to Atlanta are recorded in the departure records but the names of the 581 sent to Millen are not included in the ledgers and I'm trying to figure out why.

 

[Gary Morgan]

The dates of the crashes don't line up with the 18th and the 20th - they were earlier in the month. The biggest crash occurred on Sept. 13th. Could this be the group of prisoners who were sent off to be exchanged, but there was a hiccough and they ended up staying in 5 different places before being sent back to Andersonville (I think the last two were Thomasville and Blackshear, but I could be wrong; I have it on my to do list to resarch this.

 

[debwallsmith]

On the 13th, 3840 POWs were reported as being sent to Savannah. There were no incoming POWs so I think we can assume that they were not returned to the stockade. The Savannah-Blackshear-Thomasville group was much later. Those prisoners, estimated to be about 5,000 in number, and some of whom had been at Millen, were sent to Blackshear in late November. They were there for a couple of weeks then transferred to Thomasville for about 2 weeks. After that they were marched to the railhead in Albany and ended up back at Andersonville between 24 December and 27 December. Please let me know if you come across a diary entry from Macon written by one of those who wasn't exchanged at Rough and Ready. I suppose I could go through all 1800 names of those sent to Atlanta but I'm trying to finish up this article. I need to stop chasing CW rabbits down holes!

The dates of the crashes don't line up with the 18th and the 20th - they were earlier in the month. The biggest crash occurred on Sept. 13th. Could this be the group of prisoners who were sent off to be exchanged, but there was a hiccough and they ended up staying in 5 different places before being sent back to Andersonville (I think the last two were Thomasville and Blackshear, but I could be wrong; I have it on my to do list to resarch this.