A Broken Regiment by Lesley J. Gordon

Author:Lesley J. Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

“A LESSON IN PATRIOTISM”

If their unheroic performance at Antietam could be recast as heroic, so too could their dehumanizing captivity at Andersonville. Members intent on recounting their individual and shared stories of imprisonment sought to emphasize not merely the horror but also a new brand of manly bravery. Robert Kellogg had published Life and Death in Rebel Prisons in 1865, dedicating it to the “Brave Men” who perished “through unparalleled suffering” in prison. Others felt compelled to provide personal testimonies to ensure that the horrors would not be forgotten. Norman Hope presented his own “Story of Andersonville” in a public forum in Manchester, Connecticut. He heralded all the prisoners as brave, “demonstrating their valor” and “their superior patriotism,” which he considered on par with that of all courageous Civil War soldiers. He denied that any of his comrades accepted the “the safety and comfort proffered them by their enemy” and declared that they “remained faithful to their colors until death.” Hope emphasized the unique valor of prisoners of war. “We hear the prisoners of Andersonville described as heroes. They were heroes. Any man who enlisted and did service for his country was more or less a hero. But what of those poor unfortunates? In the midst of all the sufferings, temptations were put before the prisoners to induce them to desert their flag. But they remained firm and true.” Hope, like most of his other comrades, refused to acknowledge publicly that any Andersonville prisoners, let alone men in his own regiment, accepted Confederate paroles to work outside the pen or in the prison hospital to allay their condition.119

Members also refused to endorse southern apologists seeking to tone down the conditions they faced at Andersonville. George Robbins, who recorded his reminiscences in 1918, maintained, “A number of books have been written and published by men recounting not only their individual experiences but the conditions existing in this so-called Southern Military Prison, commonly known as the ‘Bullpen.’ None that I have read, and I have read most of them, exaggerate in the least degree the horrible conditions existing in the stockade.”120 George Whitney attacked the South’s reclamation of Andersonville in a lengthy public address entitled “Prisons of the Confederacy.” He observed that “history is being taught in the schools of the south, making Traitors Patriots and Treason commendable which should I hope be counteracted.” “There are,” he proclaimed, “many mistaken ideas about Andersonville.” Whitney viewed not just Henry Wirz but other Confederate officials, such as John Winder, James Seddon, and Jefferson Davis, as guilty of cold-blooded murder. As a survivor of Andersonville, Whitney reflected that it was “humiliating to humanity to know that men claiming to be civilized, boasting of chivalry and refinement beyond all the rest of the world” could “upon American soil be guilty of a barbarism such as has been sketched.”121

Telling their stories was important, but survivors wanted something more permanent to commemorate their terrible suffering at Andersonville. Encouraged by the success of other northern states in winning public

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