A Perfect Picture of Hell: Eyewitness Accounts by Civil War Prisoners from the 12th Iowa

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE Iowa had been a state for less than fifteen years in 1861. Situated on the western frontier, far from the outbreak of fighting at Fort Sumter, the young men of the state were nonetheless swift to answer when President Lincoln issued his call for troops on April 15. The established quota of 780 men was exceeded by nearly 200; 968 officers and enlisted men were mustered into the 1st Iowa Regiment on May 14, 1861. By the time Lincoln issued his second call on July 25, 1861, for a national army of 500,000 — in the wake of the embarrassing Union defeat at Bull Run — Iowa had added another seven regiments. However, it was not until the 1st Iowa saw action at Wilson’s Creek in neighboring Missouri on August 10 that the reality of the war became tangible. For the first time, it became clear that the war would be fought in all parts of the nation. The 10th and 11th Iowa were organized hastily in the month following Wilson ’s Creek, but as the harvest approached and the threat of winter began to loom, numbers of recruits slowed.1 From September 14 to November 1, 1861, the 12th Iowa Infantry was organized into companies at Camp Union, Dubuque. They bought fatigues , canteens, blankets, and knapsacks and were constantly at drill — with their squads, companies, and battalions in quick succession, morning and evening — as their numbers slowly grew. The eventual 926 men of the 12th were mostly in their late teens or early twenties and hailed from the counties of Allamakee, Black Hawk, Delaware, Dubuque, Fayette , Hardin, Jackson, Linn, and Winneshiek. The overwhelming majority had never left their hometowns. Nevertheless, on November 25 they were mustered into active service and were soon ordered to prepare five days’ cooked rations and be ready to take the train to Benton Barracks in St. Louis. Within six months, these young men would see action at Fort Donelson and then would be positioned squarely in the center of the fighting at Shiloh, members of what became known as the Hornet’s Nest Brigade. They would also surrender their arms at Shiloh and begin their long and unique affiliation with Southern prisons. Before the end of the war, the { 1 } 12th Iowa would hold the dubious distinction of having had members captured on four different occasions. Even more remarkably, the captures came at nearly even intervals in the war: Shiloh, April 6, 1862; Corinth, October 3, 1862; Jackson, July 11, 1863; and Tupelo, July 13 and 15, 1864. As such, the men of the 12th Iowa were eyewitnesses to the steady decline of conditions in Confederate prisons, as well as the growing animosity Southern soldiers and citizens felt toward Union soldiers. And they were in a unique position to understand the causes. At the outbreak of the Civil War, most officials, military and political on both the Confederate and Union sides, believed the fighting would last only months, if not weeks. Therefore, no formal provisions were made for prisoners of war; instead, both governments decided in 1861 to follow the European tradition of parole and exchange. Under this system , captured soldiers were paroled and allowed to return home, so long as they signed an agreement not to participate in battle again until such time as they were granted official exchanges.2 When 127 Union soldiers were captured at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861, they were loaded aboard a steamer and taken north the following day to be paroled. Such small groups were easily accommodated for a period of days until their exchange, but as numbers rapidly increased, the Confederate government was forced to create a makeshift prison system. Under orders from Brigadier General John H. Winder, tobacco factories and cotton warehouses around the Confederate capital of Richmond were commandeered for the purpose of housing prisoners until their paroles could be formalized. As Lonnie R. Speer points out in Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War : such buildings seemed well-suited for the purpose: they were usually constructed of brick and were sturdy; they were usually rectangular and entirely without ornament, making them easily guarded; they were usually two or three stories high; they possessed good light and ventilation; they contained very little machinery; their floors were usually constructed of heavy planks; and quite often, the entire floor area of each story was one large room or several large rooms divided by partitions.3 Yet even these...