Answers to MCCWRT Prisons Quiz-- Part 2: Fort Fisher and a Great Lakes Warship

9.  Enlisted Confederates captured at Fort Fisher on January 15, 1865, were mostly sent to Elmira Prison Camp in New York.

10.  The Confederate nickname for this prison was "Hellmira" because of the horrific conditions.

11.  Two of the main prisons to which Confederate officers were sent during the war were  both in bodies of water.  One was Fort Columbus in New York Harbor.  The other was Johnson's Island in Lake Erie.

12.  Who was the highest ranking Confederate officer to die while a prisoner?  Maj. Gen. W.H.C. Whiting.  He was wounded at Fort Fisher, recovered from the wound, but died from dysentery.

13.What U.S. warship was the target of a Confederate plot to free officers held at Johnson's Island in Lake Erie?    USS Michigan

14.  The USS Michigan served for a long time but near the end of its career, its name was changed to the USS Wolverine.  Why?  So the name Michigan could be given to the battleship USS Michigan (BB-27).

How'd You Do?  --Old Secesh

87th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment-- Part 1

From Wikipedia.

I am still trying to find out some more about the death of Thomas Bailey Aumack.  What I have found is very confusing.  Was he wounded at the Battle of Antietam or wounded somewhere else?  Did he contract dysentery and was honorably discharged from service to die at home?

I'll first take a look at the 87th New York.  

I went through the list of Union regiments at Antietam and did not find the 87th New York among them.

The 87th  New York Volunteer Infantry was also referred to as the 13th Brooklyn or the  13th New York State Militia.

It was organized at Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1861, and mustered in for three years service on November 20 under the command of  Colonel Stephen A. Dodge.

The regiment became part of the Army of the Potomac and ceased to exist on September 6, 1862, when it was consolidated with the 40th New York Infantry.  Company B was transferred to  the 173rd New York Infantry on September 11, 1862.

--Old Secesh

David Messer, Federick Messer's Nephew Died at Chicago's Camp Douglas

George Washington Messer, Federick's brother died in 1862 at the age of 64 or 65.  No service in the Confederate Army is mentioned.

He did have a son in the Confederate Army, though, David Messer born in 1828 and died in 1864, in Chicago, Illinois.

He enlisted as a private in Company C of the 62nd North Carolina Infantry  in Waynesville, North Carolina, on July 14, 1862.  He was captured at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, on September 9, 1863, and sent to Louisville, Kentucky, and later confined at Camp Douglas in Chicago.

On August 11, 1864, he died of dysentery and is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago in grave #1264 (Confederate Mound).

My Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp, Camp Douglas, has had a ceremony at the Confederate Mound every year except this one.

--Old Secesh

Confederate Prison at Rock Island, Illinois-- Part 1: Rampant Diseases

From the Nov. 19, 2015, Quad Cities (Davenport, Iowa) .com.  "Rock Island Arsenal Inside the Gates:  Confederate Cemetery" by Chris Langlors.

The first Confederate POWs arrived in December 1863.  Many had small pox/variola and there was a very large number of deaths in the first month.  Officials from the U.S. Surgeon General's office came and ordered a hospital complex built to separate the sick from the healthy, then ordered a drainage system and the camp cemetery to be moved further away from the prisoners.

The three most common causes of death among the prisoners:  small pox/variola, diarrhea/dysentery and pneumonia.

--Old Secesh

PTSD in the Civil War? You Betcha.-- Part 5: Away From Home "Nostalgia"

Though the Civil War soldiers were less distant from home than today's soldiers, many were farm boys who had never been far from home.  They didn't have phones or Skype to keep in touch with loved ones back home .

This caused the condition Civil War doctors referred to as "nostalgia," an old term for despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died.  It was recognized as a serious "camp disease," but generally blamed on "feeble will," "moral turpitude" and inactivity in camp.  Few who had it were discharged or granted furloughs to go home.  Recommended treatment was drilling and shaming.  An even better cure was active campaigning.

After the war, the veterans faced not only wounds but also lingering ailments such as rheumatism, and chronic dysentery.

--Old Secesh