One Drop in a Sea of Blue: The Liberators of the Ninth Minnesota

Chapter Nineteen: Coming Home

Via the River By mid-March , with Robert E. Lee besieged in Richmond and Petersburg , and Joe Johnston scrambling in North Carolina to protect his rear, the general exchange of prisoners that emptied Florence, Salisbury, and Columbia finally spread to other prisons deep within the rapidly shrinking Confederacy. Outside of Virginia and Texas, the vast majority of remaining Federal captives, perhaps nine thousand men, languished at Andersonville, Cahaba, and Meridian. Of the thirty-one from the Ninth Minnesota, sixteen , including liberators Frahm, Gordon, and Rodier, endured in Andersonville , while the rest (among them liberator Hilton) dried out after the flood at Cahaba. Mobile appeared the likeliest site for an exchange of Andersonville and Cahaba inmates, but complications soon arose. Fortuitously, in February local negotiations opened for an exchange in Vicksburg, a location convenient for swapping more than three thousand Union prisoners at Cahaba and Meridian for captive Rebels brought down the Mississippi. On March  the authorities agreed on a neutral zone to extend eleven miles east along the railroad from Four-Mile Bridge (four miles east of Vicksburg) to the Big Black River. Federal forces at Four-Mile Bridge would erect a special tent city, Camp Fisk, to detain their own paroled prisoners under Confederate control (but fed and supplied by the North) until the Union released the equivalent number of Rebels.1 The decision to establish Camp Fisk proved wise, for by March  the Confederates, eager to close out the remaining camps, had already started thousands of prisoners on the arduous trek west to Vicksburg. By March   chapter nineteen ‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬ Coming Home the Cahaba stockade had largely been evacuated. The former inmates journeyed , mostly by rail, through Meridian to Jackson, Mississippi. Beyond Jackson the rail link to Vicksburg no longer existed, forcing the hapless prisoners to hike thirty miles to the Big Black River. That hard slog proved especially difficult for sick men who were poorly clothed and lacked proper food. The roads were “terrible,” especially in the rain, and fording the many overflowing rivers and creeks cost several lives.2 On March  the first prisoners joyously crossed the Big Black River over a newly built pontoon bridge, where black soldiers welcomed them warmly. The starving men could not resist the stacks of hardtack boxes and barrels of whiskey stockpiled in neutral territory, and a few died from overeating. The survivors rode the recently restored railroad to Four-Mile Bridge and the relative luxury of Camp Fisk. For Melville Robertson, the medical orderly from the Ninety-Third Indiana, the march from Jackson to the Big Black River commenced in a downpour on March  and lasted two days. Edson Rice of Company C departed Cahaba around March  with the final group and reached Camp Fisk only on March  as the last of the fifteen from the Ninth Minnesota. He was very glad, he wrote home, that the “black-hearted rebs” no longer censored his letters but added that he still felt “very much unwell,” as his “hand trembles” and could “scarcely hold my pen.”3 The Rebels in the meantime decided unilaterally against any exchanges through Mobile because of the increasing military threat to the city. Instead they also began shipping Andersonville inmates westward to Vicksburg. As of March  Camp Sumter held , prisoners: , in the stockade and , in the hospital. In the next ten days, over , inmates left, including the entire Ninth Minnesota contingent except, for reasons now unknown, John Gordon. With priority ostensibly accorded the infirm, about half of the discharged inmates came out the hospital. While most of the others were also sick, some did get out by bribing Rebel sergeants as much as twenty U.S. dollars. Five dollars secured Uriah Karmany of the Second Minnesota a place on the third train. It is doubtful anyone from the Ninth Minnesota had much to pay guards. One who certainly lacked funds was Aslakson, who refused to believe he might be exchanged until he was actually on a westbound train. During the stopover at Meridian, he was delighted finally to be “quartered in barracks” and “served wheat bread for the first time since we were taken prisoners.”4 Only on March  did the Rebels bother to inform the authorities at Vicksburg that thousands of Andersonville prisoners, too, were en route. They warned if Vicksburg refused to accept all the prisoners—as had recently happened for a short time at Wilmington—the “suffering that will attend to the Coming Home  [52.15.63.145] Project MUSE (2024...