Bruce Vail
Captain
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2015
On a recent visit to the Maryland Center for History and Culture I came across an unusual cache of original Civil War documents -- the correspondence of a Confederate POW at the Union prison camp at Fort Delaware.
I was at the Center's library in search of something different when I ran across the prison letters of McHenry Howard, a young man of excellent education and important social connections. Howard was serving as a staff officer for Gen. George Steuart in 1864 when he was captured at the Muleshoe at Spotsylvania. Shipped to Fort Delaware, he kept up a regular correspondence with family and friends for the next six months until his exchange in late 1864. Howard was an unusual case: His parents were wealthy Baltimoreans who looked after their son's needs while behind bars. Young McHenry Howard was certainly one of the very few Civil War POWs who enjoyed a visit from his mother while incarcerated!
Howard's full Civil War story is well told in the memoir Recollections of a Maryland Soldier and Staff Officer, first published in 1914. His personal papers are preserved at the H. Furlong Baldwin Library of the Center (formerly known as the Maryland Historical Society) in Baltimore.
Bringing the