Three POWs in 1864

[TerryB]

These men are from the 49th Tenn Inf. They are at Camp Douglass. Dated Dec 14, 1864. Not so ragged-looking to me.

 

[Robert Gray]

The "ragged rebel" is pretty much a lost cause myth. The South did remarkably well in uniforming its troops after the first year of the war.

 

[TerryB]

The man's names are written on the back. One is Ed Read who wrote the inscription. Two on the left could be brothers. Name at the top looks like Armstrong. Only a few companies have online rosters, and i did not fine any of these men.

 

[TerryB]

The names on the back.

 

[RedRover]

These men are from the 49th Tenn Inf. They are at Camp Douglass. Dated Dec 14, 1864. Not so ragged-looking to me.

Confederate P.O.W.s were clothed in a measure by a combination of the US Army and civilian donations, and some Confederate contribution. Also condemned US Army clothing, including overcoats, etc., sometimes overdyed a butternut color.

The clothing was necessarily provided in part because of the dirty and lousy garments worn from the field required disposal in many cases.

Captain William B. Haygood of the 44th Georgia Volunteers, wounded at Gettysburg and captured, wrote home to Georgia that the prisoners had been provided clothes...

Besides the various government sources, the prisoners at Camp Douglas were allowed to write relatives in Tennessee or Kentucky, etc. to solicit supplies of clothing, shoes, etc. if they preferred.

....

When Confederate P.O.W.s were exchanged southward, they were often found among the better dressed men of their commands.

In February, 1865, Confederate General William N. Beall, reported that through the sale of cotton from the South in the Northern market, to benefit the support of the Confederate prisoners in Northern prisons, he had purchased for them a large quantity of clothing for them:

In February, 1865, as the Spring approached, and as the renewal of prisoner exchanges was pressed, General Halleck ordered no more shipments of Confederate Cotton for sale Northward to benefit the prisoners with clothing, as they would have just been better clothed than otherwise when exchanged and returned to service...

Some more Confederates photographed in prison:

The man's names are written on the back. One is Ed Read who wrote the inscription. Two on the left could be brothers. Name at the top looks like Armstrong. Only a few companies have online rosters, and i did not fine any of these men.

The men in the photograph are Charles H. Bailey and Charles D. Shanklin of Company A, 49th Tennessee, captured at Franklin in late 1864. And Edmond R. Read, of Company E of the 23rd Tennessee. Read had been captured at Chickamauga in September, 1863...

Portraits of Conflict

It's one thing to understand that over twenty-thousand Confederate and Union soldiers died at the Battle of Murfreesboro. It's quite another to study an ambrotype portrait of twenty-year-old private Frank B. Crosthwait, dressed in his Sunday best, looking somberly at the camera. In a tragically...

www.google.com

Confederate military records were spotty. Large numbers of men were poorly recorded, and large quantities of regimental records were lost at the close of the war. The US War Department compiled the surviving Confederate military records, so far as possible, in later decades. General Hall reporting to Congress that the Confederate personnel records were very incomplete, and the captured hospital records contained many names not otherwise found on surviving Confederate Army unit records...

Here are the compiled service records of the three chaps in the photograph, compiled from CS Army rosters, and US POW records, etc.

Shanklin:

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/181005748

Bailey:

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/180998047

Read:

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/180582149

 

[Nathan Stuart]

Those pictured three prisoners appear properly groomed, nourished and well clothed, considering at least two of them captured belonged to an army that was described as largely shoeless and raggedly clothed by the time of Franklin.

Given the high rates of death recorded at Camp Douglas, none of these names identified above appear on the register of Confederate soldiers who died in this prison camp, 1862 to 1865. (See https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/registerofconfed00unit/registerofconfed00unit.pdf @ pp. 36 - 42). It seems the three of them survived the war. (Although it's noted at page 37 of the register that the name of 'J. H. Bailey, Co. E, 48th TN, is recorded among the list of dead).

 

[TerryB]

One account I read of Fort Delaware was that on the ferry the sergeant confiscated everything the POWs had with any US marking--blankets, buckles--anything. Then he tossed them in the harbor, so many a POW experienced the biting cold without a blanket until it could be supplied.

 

[BMD77]

One account I read of Fort Delaware was that on the ferry the sergeant confiscated everything the POWs had with any US marking--blankets, buckles--anything. Then he tossed them in the harbor, so many a POW experienced the biting cold without a blanket until it could be supplied.

That sounds a bit barbaric.

 

[Lampasas Bill]

It was pretty common on both sides that prisoner guards who had not seen combat tended to treat enemy prisonars badly. When prisoners were under the control of fellow combat soldiers they were usually treated with sympathy.

 

[BMD77]

It was pretty common on both sides that prisoner guards who had not seen combat tended to treat enemy prisonars badly. When prisoners were under the control of fellow combat soldiers they were usually treated with sympathy.

That actually makes sense. Seeing the elephant changes a person and makes it a shared experience. I remember, in college, trying to explain the shared experience that combat veterans, North and South, felt with one another, and he just did not get it.

 

[ColonelBuckwalter]

One account I read of Fort Delaware was that on the ferry the sergeant confiscated everything the POWs had with any US marking--blankets, buckles--anything. Then he tossed them in the harbor, so many a POW experienced the biting cold without a blanket until it could be supplied.

I had direct ancestor who was heard at Ft Delware. He had been at Johnsons Island, Point Lookout, then there. Being that he had been enlisted and then elected an officer he might have been a bit of trouble.

From what I understand the guards were particularly ruthless there.

 

[TerryB]

That sounds a bit barbaric.

Oh, yeah!

 

[TerryB]

Bit off the thread, but Henry Kyd Douglas said that Butler treated them well while he was a POW, but Burnside not so much.

 

[ColonelBuckwalter]

Bit off the thread, but Henry Kyd Douglas said that Butler treated them well while he was a POW, but Burnside not so much.

Butler was thinking about his constituency after tge way. "Perhaps I can convince thrm to move to Dorchester..."

 

[TerryB]

My ancestor Ed Buford 3rd Tenn is in this video. He was captured twice and exchanged twice.

 

[TerryB]

Youtube also has one of these videos with Louisiana Confederates in it. They used the CDV image purported to be Morris Greenwall,having him walk toward the camera. Since I no longer believe that image to be Morris, I left a comment explaining my reasoning.