Andersonville Prison circa 1865 (Library of Congress photograph)
On April 20, 1864, what little luck the men of the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry had ran out. Captured at Plymouth, NC, the enlisted men were sent to Camp Sumter, better known as the infamous Andersonville Prison.
Just three days prior to their capture Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant’s ordered an end to all prisoner exchanges. This decision was made to put pressure on the strained manpower assets of the Southern forces and also as a response to the Confederate policy that black Union soldiers were to be treated as runaway slaves and not prisoners of war (if they were not shot upon capture). [1]
Private William Smith, Co. F, 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry (photo: Connecticut State Library)
Families left at home were to spend months with no word of the fate of their loved ones. In a 1908 letter to George Q. Whitney, the wife of Private William Smith (Company F) described their plight:
The days, weeks & months of that spring summer and autumn of 64 can never be forgotten by those that lived in them. Except the reports printed in our papers we had no knowledge of the fate of our loved ones. We heard government was preparing for exchange of prisoners and made ready for their home coming. Waited and waited. [2]
Mrs. Smith read of her husband’s death in the Hartford Courant in December, 1864 – nearly 3 months after he succumbed to scurvy in Florence prison.
Approximately 35% of the Sixteenth’s captured died while imprisoned. [3]
Sources:
[1] Foote, Shelby The Civil War: A Narrative. New York: Vintage Books, 1986. Volume III, pg. 131. [2] Elizabeth Leete Smith to George Q. Whitney, December 28, 1908. Connecticut State Library, George Q. Whitney Civil War Collection. [3] Record of service of Connecticut men in the army and navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion. Hartford, Conn.: Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1889