THE ANDERSONVILLE HUMAN DISASTER WAS 100% THE FAULT OF THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION

By James W. King
SCV Camp 141 Commander Albany Georgia
jkingantiquearms@bellsouth.net
   
In defense of the Confederate government and Confederate prison officials in regards to Andersonville, an article was published in 1876 by the Southern Historical Society, consisting of 9 points that place the blame for deaths and suffering at Andersonville totally on Northern politicians and military authorities. Specifically President Lincoln, Sec. of War Stanton, Asst. Sec. of War Dana, and Gen. Grant shoulder the blame as noted in the following 9 points.

1. It is not denied that great suffering and mortality occurred but it was due to circumstances and conditions beyond CSA control.

2. If the death rate be adduced as "circumstantial evidence of barbarity" the rate of Confederate deaths was higher in Northern POW camps where there was an abundance of food, medicine, and shelter. The Confederacy captured and held about 270,000 Union prisoners from 1861-65 and 22,576 died. The Union captured and held about 220,000 Confederate prisoners and 26,436 died.

3. The Union POW's were given the same rations as Confederate guards and soldiers and equal treatment in hospitals as required by the CSA government and the death rate of CSA guards was the same as POW's.  The Northern Federal government did not have this humane policy.

4. The exchange of prisoners was refused by the North before the issue of black Union POW's became an issue.

5. The CSA government requested that Northern doctors and medicine be sent to treat Northern POW's and the request was denied.

6. The CSA tried to buy supplies including bowls and other utensils to use in feeding the POW's. They offered to pay with cotton and gold but the offer was refused by the  Lincoln  administration.

7. The Federal Government under President Lincoln made medicine contraband causing suffering and death of Union POW's and all Southerners military and civilian.

8. Prior to the period of greatest mortality the CSA authorities offered to release the Andersonville POW's without exchange but the offer was not accepted by the Lincoln Administration who was told by CSA authorities "we cannot feed or care for them-just come get them".   Sherman  's barbaric war crimes in   Georgia   consisting of stealing, destroying, and burning made food and supplies even scarcer and increased suffering and mortality.

9. The Northern press was furnished lies and propaganda by Union Sec. and Asst Sec. of war   Stanton   and Dana claiming deliberate cruelties and war crimes by the South. The control of Northern POW camps was transferred by Stanton and Dana to vindictive partisan criminal elements and deliberate war crimes of cruelty, torture, and murder were committed against Confederate POW's as proven by a joint resolution of the U.S. Senate and House SR97.
   
Final proof that the human disaster at Andersonville was virtually 100% the fault of the Lincoln Administration comes from statements by Confederate Col. Ould who was in charge of arranging prisoner exchanges and Union Assistant Secretary of War in the Lincoln Administration Charles A. Dana. Col. Ould is quoted as saying “My government instructs me to waive all formalities in this matter of exchange. I need not try to conceal from you that we cannot feed and provide for the prisoners in our hands. We cannot half feed or clothe them. You have closed our ports till we cannot get medical stores for them. You will not send us quinine and other medicines, even for their exclusive use. They are suffering greatly and the mortality is excessive. I tell you all this plainly, and still you refuse to exchange. What does your government demand? Name your own conditions and I have authority to accept them. YOU ARE SILENT!  GREAT GOD, CAN IT BE THAT YOU PEOPLE ARE MONSTERS? If you will not exchange, I will give you your men for nothing. I will deliver ten thousand Union POW’s at   Wilmington  . I will deliver five thousand here. Come and get them. If your government is so damnably dishonest to want them for nothing, you shall have them. You can at least feed them and we cannot.”
 
Post-War in the   New York   Sun Newspaper Dana wrote “CSA authorities and especially Jefferson Davis ought not to be held responsible for Andersonville. We were responsible ourselves for the continued detention of our captives in misery, starvation and sickness in the South”.

Post-war Union General Grant admitted that he had considered the Andersonville POW’s Expendable.

Confederates who significantly contributed to America Post-War

I am largely finished with my research on Confederate veterans who contributed to the building of postwar America. It would be impossible to research all 1,000,000 Confederate soldiers who survived the war, but I accessed all the available compendiums, biographical rosters, etc as I could identify. I would estimate that I probably checked 5,000-7,500 veterans and compiled a list of approximately 850 men who met my admittedly vague and subjective criteria. A successful farmer, teacher, or clergyman is no less important than a college president, governor, senator, or ambassador, but I had to set some limits.

Copy and pasted below is a summary letter that I recently drafted for the purpose of giving some ammunition to those who are defending our Confederate heritage and monuments. The information contained in the letter are the "highlights" of a book that I am frantically writing, with hopes that I can get it published before the anti-American History ANTIFA/Taliban have destroyed all of our monuments. Please feel free to share the letter.

I haven't yet decided exactly how I am going to organize and present the book; I want it to be more than a simple alphabetical roster of "accomplished" CSA veterans. I want to present the information in narrative form, with an extensive Appendix with rosters and groups.

Many thanks for your incredible research and information on former Confederates who made the ultimate sacrifice to their communities. If you don't mind I'll contact you again as my plans for the construction and presentation of the book takes shape.

All best,

Sam Hood


FROM: SAM HOOD

Date: Oct. 14, 2017

This is a partial list of positions held by former Confederates after the Civil War.

A Confederate veteran, Lt. Edward Douglass White of the 9th Louisiana Cavalry, became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court after the Civil War.

Two United States Supreme Court associate justices were former Confederate soldiers; Col. Lucius Q. C. Lamar of the 19th Mississippi Infantry, and Sergeant Major Horace H. Lurton of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry. Another associate justice, Howell E. Jackson, was a former Confederate government official.

Two former Confederates, Maj. Amos T. Akerman and Confederate Senator from Arkansas Augustus H. Garland, served as United States Attorneys General.

Former Confederate officer Col. James D. Porter was appointed United States Assistant Secretary of State in 1885.

A United States Solicitor General was Confederate cavalryman John Goode of Virginia.

Prior to becoming a Supreme Court justice, Lucius Q.C. Lamar served as United States Secretary of the Interior.

Former Confederate Col. David M. Key served as United States Postmaster General.

President Theodore Roosevelt appointed former Confederate Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn as Governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

A former Confederate soldier, Benjamin Morgan Harrod, was the United States Representative on the Panama Canal Commission.

A former Confederate, Col. Hilary A. Herbert of the 8th Alabama Infantry, became United States Secretary of the Navy.

A Confederate veteran named Patrick Henry Morgan was appointed as a district Superintendent of the United States Coast Guard.

Confederate veterans served as United States Ambassadors, Envoys, Consuls, and Ministers to Turkey (Ottoman Empire:) Brazil; Russia; Sweden-Norway; Uruguay; Costa Rica; Guatemala; Mexico; Honduras; Havana, Cuba; Bolivia; Hong Kong; Jerusalem; France; Peru; Dominican Republic; Bermuda; Japan; China; Tampico, Mexico; Ecuador; Chile, Austria-Hungary; Naples, Italy; Panama; Martinique; Venezuela; Vancouver, Canada; Colombia; Greece; Romania; Serbia, and Spain. A former Confederate, Lt. Col. Paul Francis de Gournay, was a citizen of France and became a French Consul to the United States after the Civil War, and another Confederate, Jose Agustin Quintero of Louisiana, became Consul for Belgium and Costa Rica in New Orleans.

Numerous United States Senators and members of the United States House of Representatives were Confederate veterans, including one Senate Majority Leader, Thomas Staples Martin, who co-drafted the United States Declaration of War against Germany in 1917. A former Confederate, William A. Harris, was elected United States Senator and to the U.S. House of Representatives from the strongly pro-Union state of Kansas.

Four Confederate generals served as generals in the United States Army and served in the Spanish-American War; Thomas Rosser, Matthew Butler, Joseph Wheeler, and Fitzhugh Lee, son of Robert E. Lee. Other former Confederates were appointed Generals of Volunteers during the Spanish-American War but their units were not deployed.

Numerous former Confederates fought for the United States Army and Navy, and at least one former Confederate soldier who volunteered, Lt. Col. William Crawford Smith of Tennessee, died in combat during the Philippine Insurrection.

Dozens of Confederates served as governors of the eleven seceded Southern states after the war, but also governed the non-Confederate states/territories of Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Alaska.  

Confederate veterans were elected mayors of numerous cities and towns, including the Northern cities of Los Angeles CA, Ogden UT, and Minneapolis MN.

Former Confederate Brigadier General John Stuart Williams was co-founder of the City of Naples, Florida.

An Adjutant General of Montana was former Confederate soldier, Charles William Turner.

Former Confederate Samuel Davis Shannon served as Secretary of State of Utah.

Native-American Confederate Col. Jackson F. McCurtain became Chief of the Choctaw Nation after the war.

Former Confederates became presidents of the American Bar Association, American Medical Association, American Chemical Society, American Society of Chemical Engineers, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Philological Association (dedicated to the study of classical literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, and cultural studies.)

Former Confederate soldiers founded or co-founded approximately 20 colleges, universities, and post-graduate schools, including Mississippi State University, Texas Christian University, Southwestern University (Texas,) Coker College (South Carolina,) North Carolina State University, Millsaps College (Mississippi,) Averett College (Virginia,) East Carolina University, Blue Mountain College (Mississippi,) Clemson University, Agnes Scott Women’s College (Georgia,) the historically  black colleges, University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Prairie View A&M University, Alcorn State University,  and predominately black Meharry Medical School in Nashville. Former Confederates founded several postgraduate schools including the Tulane University Medical School, the University of Arkansas Medical School, and the University of California Hastings School of Law,
Confederate veterans were presidents of numerous universities, including the University of California-Berkeley, Tulane University, Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the University of Alabama, the University of Mississippi,  Mississippi State University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia Military Institute, Bethel College (Clarksville, Tennessee,) the Citadel, the University of Maryland, Blue Mountain College (Mississippi,) Western Kentucky University, Shepherd College (West Virginia), Allegheny College (Pennsylvania,) the College of William and Mary, Washington and Lee University, Lander College (South Carolina,) Texas A&M University, the University of Arkansas, William Jewell College (Liberty, Missouri,) Jacksonville State University (Alabama,) Davidson College, and Randolph-Macon University. Former Confederates served on the governing boards of numerous colleges and universities, including the United States Military Academy (West Point,) and the United States Naval Academy.

A former Confederate Army surgeon in Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham’s Corps, Dr. Augustus Breysacher, delivered baby Douglas McArthur on Jan. 26, 1880. MacArthur’s father was a Union Army colonel, severely wounded by Cheatham’s Corps at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee on Nov. 30, 1864.

A former Confederate civilian surgeon in the 15th Alabama Infantry, Dr. Albert F. A. King, contracted to serve as a Union Army surgeon late in the war and treated Abraham Lincoln after he was mortally wounded by John Wilks Booth on April 14, 1865.

Over 100 former Confederate soldiers died in the line of duty while serving as law enforcement officers after the war.

Former Confederate Joseph LeConte was a co-founder of The Sierra Club.

A former Confederate engineer, Col. Samuel Lockett, designed the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York City, and another Confederate engineer, Sergeant Major Amory Coffin, designed the structural features of some of the late 19th and early 20th Century's most famous buildings, including Madison Square Garden, New York City; the Crocker Building, San Francisco; the Provident Life and Trust Company building, Philadelphia; the Prudential Life Insurance Building, New York City; City College of New York; the Wisconsin State Capital; and the steel superstructure of the New York Stock Exchange building.

Two Confederate veterans, Col. Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, and Maj. James Lide Coker were inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1986. In the year 2000 ex-Confederate senator from Florida, David Levy Yulee, was named that year’s “Great Floridian” by the Florida Department of State. Another Confederate Floridian, Col. Francis Littlebury Dancy, was a postwar agronomist and named to the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame in 2013.

Former Confederates were major postwar philanthropists. Prominent among them was former Texas cavalryman George Washington Littlefield, who funded many facilities and programs at the University of Texas-Austin, and New York City native, Maj. Lewis Ginter, who founded the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, containing a Conservatory, Rose Garden, Children's Garden, Sunken Garden, Asian Garden, Victorian Garden, and Healing Garden. Ginter also donated the land for the campus of the Union Theological Seminary. Col. John Peter Smith of Ft. Worth, Texas donated land for parks, cemeteries, and hospitals, one of which still bears his name—John Peter Smith Hospital.

The most prominent of all Confederate philanthropists was Dr. Simon Baruch, a Jewish-Confederate surgeon from Charleston, South Carolina who served in the 13th Mississippi Infantry and 3rd South Carolina Infantry. After the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg, Baruch remained to treat wounded soldiers, after which he was imprisoned and exchanged. He returned to the 13th Mississippi and served for the remainder of the war. After the war Baruch practiced medicine in South Carolina, and volunteered his services for one year in the slums of New York City. Returning to South Carolina, he practiced medicine for 16 years, and in 1881 moved to New York City where he practiced medicine and became an outspoken proponent of public health and hygiene. Simon Baruch is the namesake of civil monuments, educational entities, and academic departments in New York City and throughout the country, many of which were established by his son Bernard M. Baruch, including several Simon Baruch Houses, a public housing complex in New York City, as well as buildings, halls, and academic chairs at Columbia University, Clemson University, the New York University College of Medicine, and the Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University. New York City Department of Education’s Middle School 104 is named Simon Baruch Middle School, along with an adjacent Simon Baruch Playground and Garden, under the auspices of the New York City Department of Parks. In 1940, the younger Baruch endowed in honor of his father, the Simon Baruch Auditorium building on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Monumental Objection

(October 8, 2017) Last Thursday evening I spoke to the Cobb County (Georgia) Civil War Roundtable and visited the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park earlier in the day. Since my annotated and illustrated version of Confederate Private Sam Watkins’s Co. Aytch was my first Civil War book I was especially interested in visiting the battlefield’s Dead Angle. It was the Union army’s chief attack point and Sam’s was one of two defending regiments, assaulted from three sides.

For about ninety minutes on the morning of June 25, 1864 about 5,000 (mostly Illinois) Yankees attacked 1,000 Rebels at a defense line salient. Despite enduring murderous fire a minority of the attackers reached the opposing entrenchments where the fighting devolved into hand-to-hand struggles. Notwithstanding undeniable bravery, the attackers could not dislodge the defenders who were too well entrenched. Casualties totaled 825 Federals as compared to 170 Confederates.

Sam Watkins described the fighting as follows:

It seemed that the archangel of Death stood and looked on with outstretched wings, while all the earth was silent, when all at once a hundred guns from the Federal line opened upon us, and…poured their…shot, grape and shrapnel right upon [us] when, all of a sudden, our pickets jumped into our works and reported the Yankees advancing, and almost at the same time a solid line of bluecoats came up the hill.

My pen is unable to describe the scene of carnage and death that ensued…Column after column of Federal soldiers were crowded upon that line…but no sooner would a regiment mount our works than they were shot down or surrendered…

Yet still the Yankees came. It seemed impossible to check the onslaught, but every man was true to his trust…Talk about other battles…but in comparison with this day’s fight, all others dwarf into insignificance…[A] solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yankee guns poured into our very faces, singeing our hair and clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and mouths, and the awful concussion causing the blood to gush out of our noses and ears, and above all, the roar of battle, made it a perfect pandemonium.

I have heard men say that if they ever killed a Yankee during the war they were not aware of it.  I am satisfied that on this memorable day, every man in our regiment killed….All that was necessary was to load and shoot.  In fact, I will ever think that the reason they did not capture our works was the impossibility of their living men passing over the bodies of their dead.  The ground was piled up with one solid mass of dead and wounded Yankees.

Watkins went on to add, “a Yankee rushed me and said ‘You have killed my two brothers and now I’ve got you’…I heard a roar and felt a flash of fire and saw…Willam A. Hughes, grab the muzzle of the gun, receiving the whole (blast)…He died for me.

As Sam watched the litter carriers take Hughes away the dying soldier kept telling them, “Give me Florence Fleming,” his name for his rifle, which was engraved on it in silver lettering. “It was the last time I saw him,” Watkins wrote. “But I know away up yonder…in the blue vault of heaven…we will sometime meet at the marriage supper of the Son of God.”

Although twenty-first century traffic around Kennesaw is heavy, the Dead Angle is peaceful and thickly wooded.  The weathered remains of the Confederate entrenchments stand as remnants of the original earthworks much as the Appalachians are the residue of a range that was once as mighty as the Himalayas.

As I walked around the area I gradually became aware that there were no Confederate monuments. Although markers that described the action would mention both Union and Confederate participants, all the memorials were for Union soldiers. The most prominent was the Illinois monument pictured above. But there were also memorials for two slain Union generals and a third one for an unknown Federal soldier.

When I first visited the Gettysburg battlefield long ago, the spot where Joshua Chamberlain’s regiment turned back a part of the Rebel attack on Little Round Top was an obscure, seldom visited point. After Michael Shaara published The Killer Angels, however, the spot became one of the most popular sites on the park and a monument was added to memorialize Chamberlain and his troops. Even though the PBS Civil War Documentary in the early 1990's similarly popularized the Watkins memoir, there is no memorial to him and his comrades at Dead Angle.

The absence of Confederate monuments at Dead Angle reflects three factors.

First, Union veterans originally organized the site as a private park in 1898. For many years after the war Republican politicians “waved the bloody shirt” to remind Northern voters of Civil War casualties in order to gain political support among such veterans to promote hatred of Southerners, who were generally Democrats. Consequently, former Union soldiers formed the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) as their veterans association. It successfully lobbied for generous, federally funded Union veterans pensions paid from the taxes of all Americans, including their former, impoverished, Southern enemies. Not until 1890 did the GAR gradually start relaxing its advocacy for universal censorship of Confederate displays such as Rebel battle flags and Confederate statues.

Second, Southerners were too poor to pay for memorials after the war. It was not until the decades between 1890 and 1920 that they had even modest sums available while the declining influence of “bloody shirt” politics relaxed opposition thereby enabling most of the Confederate statues remaining today to be erected.

Third, the present political climate is an amplified echo of the “bloody shirt” dogma of long ago. It demands hatred toward the memory of Rebel soldiers as well as the censorship and destruction of Confederate iconography. 

Too few of us object and even fewer of those disdaining Confederate soldier memory try to understand a different viewpoint.

Philip Leigh

3911 W. San Pedro

Tampa, Florida 33629

Phil_Leigh@me.com

813-368-0764

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