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

Chapter Fourteen: Spreading the Misery

To Savannah By August the vastly overcrowded Andersonville prison, where nearly all the Ninth Minnesota prisoners were held, was a festering sore, impossible in current circumstances to improve and under increasing threat from Union forces. With Sherman tightening his noose around Atlanta, General Winder desperately required a larger prison in a safer location. Early in August he initiated construction of a huge new camp in northeastern Georgia near Millen, where rail lines linked Macon, Augusta, and Savannah. The fall of Atlanta in early September forced Winder to begin evacuating Andersonville at once, but Millen was not yet ready. The interim solution was to dump the prisoners on the two largest cities on the lower Atlantic coast, Savannah and Charleston. Both had strong garrisons, but since they were under siege, neither city could tolerate large numbers of captive Yankees for any length of time. By October  roughly , prisoners had been sent out of Andersonville to Savannah or Charleston, the destination depending mainly on which detachments the prisoners had been in while at Andersonville.1 Beautiful old Savannah, situated on the Savannah River, was known for its many parklike squares. Federal troops held the river’s mouth less than twenty miles away. Since the end of July, Savannah had custody of  Union officers (no Minnesotans) transferred from the Macon prison camp. Thousands more enlisted prisoners were the last thing Col. Edward Clifford Anderson, the Confederate officer in charge, desired. He built a stockade for , inmates on the southwest edge of town behind the castle-like Chatham County and Savannah City Jail. “High walls of thick pine plank” enclosed an area of roughly five acres. On September  the barely completed facility  chapter fourteen ‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬ Spreading the Misery Prison Camps in Georgia and the Carolinas received the very first , men shipped out of Andersonville. That “beggarly set of vagabond[s]” included liberator Charles Dietrich and as many as  other orphans from Company K. The next day another , captives (probably none from the Ninth Minnesota) arrived, but Anderson soon foisted  of them on Charleston. A few days later all the officer prisoners left for there as well.2 The “dirty and half-clad” newcomers were, according to Anderson, “altogether the most squalid gathering of humanity it has ever been my lot to look upon.” He sincerely deplored that the “stockade is entirely without shelter and the burning sun bakes down on them from daylight til dark.” Yet to the prisoners, the “cool, pure air” and delightful ocean breezes of Savannah alone were tremendous improvements over fetid Andersonville. Though the holding ground was merely a “bare common,” there was a large amount of wood left lying around for tent stakes and fuel. Most importantly, to the starved men the daily ration of a half dozen hardtack crackers with “meat or a little molasses,” plus vinegar, salt, and “a little tobacco,” constituted nothing less than “riotous luxury,” according to Pvt. John McElroy of the Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry. The guards were mostly sailors who were much friendlier than the hard cases at Andersonville. Compassionate local citizens donated food and goods to the destitute Yankees. More pleasant surroundings did not dissuade the new guests from tunneling through the soft soil. After numerous escapes, Anderson dug a deep trench around the compound and flooded it. The stagnant moat eventually “filled the air with a terrible stench” that often overwhelmed the sea breezes, and the tunneling ceased.3 On September  Savannah received a new batch of prisoners who were thoroughly disgusted even beyond the normal. “The boys are very downhearted , and still are very sick and don’t think will live long,” wrote one, Pvt. Simon Peter Obermier of the Seventy-Second Ohio. On September  during the “special exchange” that took place behind Union lines at Rough and Ready near Atlanta, things had gone very wrong for -odd prisoners from Andersonville . While awaiting his turn to be processed, Pvt. Jacob Hutchinson of the Seventy-Second Ohio had wandered across the “neutral ground” to the camp of some Michigan soldiers from Sherman’s army who eagerly fed their grimy, threadbare, and gaunt comrade. A little later, despite the protests of his new friends who urged him to stay, Hutchinson crossed back to the other side just to make things official. To his utter horror, he was shunted off to a group of infuriated and heartsick Federal prisoners who included Obermier, young Dwight Card of Company E...