Cahaba to Charleston: The Prison Odyssey of Lt. Edmund E. Ryan

CAHABA TO CHARLESTON: THE PRISON ODYSSEY OF LT. EDMUND E. RYAN William M. Armstrong Although contemporary accounts of life in Civil War prisons are fairly plentiful, some of them occasionally accentuate the colorful or the sensational at the expense of the truthful. In a different category is the prison diary of Edmund E. Ryan, a Pennsylvanian who was captured on two separate occasions during the war and suffered eight months of imprisonment in more than a half-dozen Confederate prison camps. Throughout most of his wanderings as a captive, he kept a journal that in the main shows an acuity and detachment not always found in Civil War diaries published for the generation of the 1860's. Ryan, a twenty-seven year old law-book salesman from Philadelphia, was living temporarily in Peoria, Illinois when in 1861 he volunteered for service with the 17th Illinois Infantry Regiment. At Camp Mather, Peoria, he was mustered in on May 25 as corporal of Company A and sent with his regiment for training to Camp Butler, in Lincoln's home town of Springfield. The following autumn found Ryan at the scene of action in Missouri. The Company A morning report for October 20, 1861, contained this single-line entry: "Sergt. E. E. Ryan captured by Jeff Thompson while carrying a dispatch to the Ironton forces." The record is mute ( Ryan did not then keep a diary) for the next thirty days, but the morning report for November 18 noted that he had been exchanged and returned to duty. He was shortly promoted to second lieutenant.1 In the months that followed, Ryan was named company commander and saw action at Ft. Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. Again promoted Dr. Armstrong is associate professor of history at Alma College in Michigan . The author of E. L. Godkin and American Foreign Policy, 1865-1900, his field of specialization includes the post-Civil War period. 1 Much of the above information is contained in the moming reports, muster rolls, and descriptive book of Co. A, 17th Illinois, currently, with Ryan's diary, in the possession of the Peoria Historical Society. For additional aid, the writer is indebted to Ryan's grandson, E. C. Ryan of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and to Haskell Armstrong of Peoria. 218 (April, 1862), he served for a time as Provost Marshal to Major General McClernand's army. On February 1, 1864, he was detailed regimental quartermaster and ordered to accompany two corps under General Sherman on a grain raid from Vicksburg across the state of Mississippi. For twelve days the army pushed relentlessly eastward, burning stores and destroying railroad tracks as it went. On February 15, while leading a foraging party near Meridian, Ryan and six of his party were seized by the Confederates. Describing the event later, he indulged in a rare (and under the circumstances scarcely justifiable) outburst against his captors: "We were captured by a party of iouvlived thieves and robbers who stripped us of our money and everything else of value that we had with us."2 After processing the prisoners, their captors marched them eastward toward the Confederate prison at Cahaba, Alabama, roughly six days and 125 miles distant. Ryan had now begun to keep a diary, a narrative which portrayed him as a keenly interested observer of the terrain and somewhat indifferent to the conditions of his captivity. From Meridian to the Timbigbee River he found that "the public roads are good, and water quite plenty," but he made no mention of his captors. Most of the small towns through which they passed were deserted, but Ryan noticed that the country was "much better than any I passed through in coming from Vicksburg to Meridian." On February 19 the party reached the "small but pretty town" of Demopolis in Western Alabama. Here he met Nathan Bradley of Marengo, "a very kind gentleman" who gave him $100 in Confederate currency. Still, there was no hint of the treatment he was getting from his captors. The afternoon of February 20 found the party in Selma, Alabama, "quite a nice Uttle city," in Ryan's description, with a "large arsenal and armory." From this point onward his attention to his diary...