Surviving a Civil War Prison Camp

A couple years ago, I posted a blog entry about Edwin Chapman of the Ohio Voluntary Infantry, my great great great grandfather who fought in the Civil War and was imprisoned from June 1864 through the end of the war in April 1865. After his capture in Mississippi, he was transported to Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia.

On a recent drive through Georgia, I decided to explore the site of the former prison, now preserved as a National Historic Site, National Cemetery, and Prisoner of War Museum.

Me, the author, with my mother, at Andersonville, 2015

The prison was constructed with slave labor and opened in February 1864 on a piece of land large enough to hold 10,000 men. It was expanded by 50% in June, but the prisoners kept arriving by the trainload in nearby Andersonville and were marched into the stockade. At its peak, 32,000 prisoners occupied the encampment, making it the fifth largest city in the Confederacy. The grounds quickly became overcrowded, and diseases ran rampant.

"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then." -Robert H. Kellogg, Sergeant Major in 16th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers,camp, May 2, 1864

Indeed, the conditions were deplorable with insufficient food supplies and a single tiny stream to serve as a source of water for drinking and cooking and also as a sink and a sewage system. Our visit to the museum included the viewing of a 28-minute video presentation about the prison, and we were saddened by the human suffering that took place here. Through good fortune and good genes, my forefather survived his incarceration. But nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 inhabitants of the Andersonville prison died there, primarily from dysentary and scurvy.

“Within the circumscribed area of the stockade the Federal prisoners were compelled to perform all the functions of life, cooking, washing, the calls of nature, exercise, and sleeping…[A] considerable breadth of land along the stream…was low and boggy, and was covered with the excrements of the men and thus rendered wholly uninhabitable…The pines and other small trees and shrubs…were in a short time cut down by the prisoners for firewood, and no shade tree was left in the entire enclosure of the stockade…[T]he Federals constructed for themselves small huts and caves and attempted to shield themselves from the rain and sun, and night damps and dew…The irregular arrangement of the huts and imperfect shelters was very unfavorable for the maintenance of a proper system of police." -Dr. Joseph Jones, Medical College of Georgia. (From his testimony at the trial of Captain Henry Wirz in John Ransom's Andersonville Diary by John Ransom, published by Berkley Books.)  

Many prisoners tried to escape by tunneling out, but almost all who made it were quickly recaptured. A fence row constructed 19 feet inside the perimeter of the stockade represented "the dead line." If a prisoner so much as touched the line, he was to be shot without warning by guards, typically boys and old men who were stationed in pigeon roosts atop the stockade. To make matters worse, a group of prisoners who called themselves "The Raiders" roamed the camp and used violence to steal anything of value from fellow inmates.

The Northeast corner of the camp has been replicated.

“[I] walk around camp every morning looking for acquaintances, the sick, &c. Can see a dozen most any morning laying around dead. A great many are terribly afflicted with diarrhea, and scurvy begins to take hold of some. Scurvy is a bad disease, and taken in connection with the former is sure death. Some have dropsy as well as scurvy, and the swollen limbs and body are sad to see.” -Brigade Quarter Master John L. Ransom, 9th Michigan Cavalry and prisoner at Andersonville. (From John Ransom’s Andersonville Diary by John Ransom, published by Berkley Books.)

“Can see the dead wagon loaded up with twenty or thirty bodies at a time, two lengths, just like four foot wood is loaded on to a wagon at the North, and away they go to the grave yard on a trot. Perhaps one or two will fall off and get run over. No attention paid to that; they are picked up on the road back after more. Was ever before in this world anything so terrible happening? Many entirely naked.” - John L. Ransom

The cemetery as it looked in 1864.

The war ended in April 1865, and and Edwin Chapman was freed along with his fellow survivors. Headstones in the cemetery numbering 1 through 12,853 mark the grave sites of those who were buried in shallow trenches. 

Andersonville National Cemetery, present day.

Edwin Chapman was just age 17 when he enlisted in the 72nd Ohio Voluntary Infantry in Fremont, Ohio in 1863. It's difficult to imagine the horror he experienced during the year and a half that ensued. Read more about Edwin's service in the Federal Army and his life after the war here, Edwin Chapman of the 72nd Ohio Infantry.

Corporal Edwin N. Chapman (1846-1913)

72nd OVI reunion, Dillon House in Fremont, 1908

Alexander McIntire - Murdered By Tecumseh's Warriors

My great great grandmother, Mary Amelia McIntire, married into the Bramel family of Mason County, Kentucky in 1885. She and Alonzo Wellwood Bramel (known as Wood and Amelia Bramel) were parents to two sons (George Pierce and Leslie B) and two daughters (Nancy Mae and Miriam Hassel). Amelia was the paternal grandmother of my paternal grandfather, Vernon Bramel, son of George Pierce Bramel and Sallie May (Nolan) Bramel. Amelia's father was Alexander McIntire, who died in 1856 at age 65 from injuries sustained from a falling tree. His father's name was also Alexander McIntire (sometimes spelled McIntyre).

Amelia Bramel of Maysville, Kentucky (1849-1927)

The family's roots in America began when the elder Alexander McIntire emigrated from Northern Ireland at the age of nineteen. He went to Kentucky and settled above the banks of the Ohio River at the town of Washington, near current day Maysville in Mason County. There, he married a Miss Goddard, and they had several children.

In the pioneer days of Kentucky, the threat of Indian attacks was a normal part of everyday life. During the 1780's, these uprisings became less frequent with the arrival of thousands of new settlers. But the Ohio River formed a firm boundary between Indian Country and the safer pioneer lands. The Ohio Country in the Northwest Territory was the arena for skirmishes between the frontiersmen and the natives from the Shawnee and other tribes.

Such was the case in the Spring of 1792, just a few weeks before Kentucky became the fifteenth state in the new nation. It seems that a band of Shawnee crossed into Kentucky to the town of Limestone (now Maysville), and made away with 16 horses owned by Kentuckians. In the days to follow, the famous frontiersman Simon Kenton organized a militia of about three dozen men to travel into Ohio to recover their horses. It was presumed that the alleged horse thieves would have taken up at a well known Indian campsite in current day Clermont County east of Cincinnati.

During the trip that ensued over the next few days, about a dozen of the Kentuckians turned back due to bad weather, but the others, including Alexander McIntire, pushed on with their mission. They approached the camp along the East Fork of the Little Miami River across from its confluence with the Grassy Run. Soon they spotted a brave riding on a horse they identified as one of the stolen. Despite Kenton's orders to not fire guns or do anything to alert the Indians to their presence, one of the militia men fired upon the unsuspecting brave, killing him. At this point, several more deserted the mission to return to Kentucky. The others followed the trail of the dead Indian toward the encampment.

As they approached, Kenton could not get an accurate count of how many warriors they would be up against, but estimates ranged upwards of 100 men along with several women and children. A decision was made to wait until the cover of night to make a surprise attack. They listened as warriors called out to their comrade who had not returned to camp, and a drum beat through the midnight hour to direct the missing warrior back. The men could not have known the Indians in this camp were under the leadership of Tecumseh, perhaps the most famous and highly regarded of the Shawnee warriors.

In the rainy darkness, confusion reigned, and when a warrior stepped out of a tent to stoke the fire, panic-stricken riflemen began firing before the signal was given. From that point, confusion gave way to chaos. One Kentuckian was killed by a strike from Tecumseh's war club. The remainder of the outnumbered Kentuckians ultimately retreated in all directions, with the Shawnee giving chase through the next day. While the mission failed in that their horses were not retrieved, the retreating Kentuckians did manage to make their way safely back to Limestone, with one exception.

Alexander McIntire, known as "Redheaded Aleck" to Simon Kenton, was described as a man of extraordinary strength; another account describes him as a short, robust, middle-aged Irishman. McIntire had taken a lunch break to cook a small animal he had shot over a fire he had built. The shot was heard by the Indians, and he was captured by Tecumseh's men. His captors returned him to the camp, where he was tied and held prisoner.

Tecumseh left the camp to check on horses that had dispersed during the melee, leaving instructions that the prisoner was not to be harmed. Tecumseh had strong beliefs that is was wrong to injure or kill a tied and defenseless prisoner. But McIntire may have gone out of his way to antagonize his captors, laughing at one of the braves who had been complaining about injuries from the battle. The brave killed McIntire with his hatchet. One account paints a gory pictures of the victim's limbs being strung from trees, and the head being planted on a pole. When Tecumseh returned to the scene, he was furious.

Stories of the incident, which became known as the Battle of Grassy Run, have survived through the generations. A historical marker nearby commemorates the battle, during which the two Kentuckians died, along with anywhere from two to fourteen Shawnee, according to various accounts. Today, an annual celebration, the Grassy Run Heritage Rendezvois, is hosted by the Grassy Run Historical Arts Committee in Williamsburg, Ohio.

Sources:

A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities, Volume 3, E. Polk Johnson, Lewis Publishing Company, 1912

Tecumseh: A Life, John Sugden, Macmillan, Apr 15, 1999

Battle of Grassy Run, Richard Crawford, Clermont County Historical Society