Artillery-- Part 6: Leeds Cannons

**  Several years ago, Frank Crawford gave a talk to the McHenry County Civil War Round Table about the Leeds cannon which is in the Boone County Museum of History in Belvidere, Illinois.  It was shipped from Rock Island Arsenal to the museum.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend it and looked for information on it, but wasn't able to find it until recently.

The Leeds cannon was made in New Orleans for the Confederacy.  The fact that New Orleans fell so soon in the war makes Leeds Confederate cannons very rare.

Leeds cannons were small bore field pieces.

--Old Secesh

Camp Douglas POW Prison in Chicago: Deaths of 62nd North Carolina Infantry Prisoners

From ncgenweb  "Rock Island, Illinois  Confederate POW Camp and Cemetery.

Deaths of Prisoners of War from the 62nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, Camp Douglas Prisoner of War Camp.

Go to Confederate graves; Rock Island, Il  NCGenWeb.

The 62nd North Carolina was surrendered by its commanding officer on 10 September 1863, at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, after which 442 of its members were transferred to Camp Douglas.

Forty-four percent of them died there, including David Messer who I wrote about in the previous post.

There is a list of all the members of the regiment who died at Camp Douglas at the site.

--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

Wisconsin's Camp Bragg in Oshkosh-- Part 2

From HMDB.

Photo of the Camp Bragg Memorial with a plaque on stone reading: "Near this spot in the autumn of 1862 the 21st and 32nd Regiments Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry were encamped for organization before proceeding to the front. Erected 1915."

Some more information: It was eracted in 1915 by the Camp Bragg Memorial Association on plans drawn by sculptor Karl Bitter. It is flanked by 4 smoothbore Napoleon cannons mounted in concrete. They were shipped by railroad to Oshkosh on June 15, 1915 from the Rock Island Arsenal in Rock Island, Illinois.

The muzzle loading cannon were made by the Revere Copper Company (yes, that Revere as in Paul) in Boston. Each barrel weighs 1216 pounds and were inspected by Thomas Jackson Rodman (was he the man of the Rodman guns?).

Just Some More Info.. --Old Secesh

Truths From Rock Island's Arsenal-- Part 2: Copperheads

There is also a book on Copperheads, who were pro-slavery, anti-Lincoln Northerners.  Rock Island, Illinois, even voted against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election.

A leading Copperhead was the editor of the Rock Island Argus newspaper.  Historians have found the secret insignia used by Copperheads to identify themselves (under Lincoln you could be arrested very quickly for support of the South).

A "Copperhead" penny was one where the Liberty head was cut in half and stuck under the lapel.

The documentary is on DVD and available at the museum.

Copperheads.  --Old Secesh

Truths From Rock Island's Arsenal Island-- Part 1

From the July 7, 2012, Quad City (Iowa) Times by David Burke.

It has been 75 years since the Rock Island Prison (Rock Island, Illinois) was "dissed" by the movie "Gone With the Wind,"  and now a new documentary sets the story straight.

Ezra Sidran of Heritage Documentaries has made the 30-minute presentation  "The Rock Island Civil War Prison, Andersonville of the North?"  It was to be shown on the hour this date at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum's theater.

In GWTW, Margaret Mitchell wrote that the Arsenal mortality rate was 75%.  This number was not true,  Inmates were actually safer there than in the Confederate Army.  They were housed in solid buildings and each barracks had two stoves.

What killed the Confederates was a small pox epidemic.

Prisons were horrific on both sides during the war.

More to Come.  --Old Secesh