Burial trenches are in open area to right of monuments (Picket photos) |
Unlike at Camp Sumter (Andersonville) in Georgia, Union
troops held at Salisbury Prison in North Carolina had no Dorence Atwater to
record the names and number of fallen comrades.
When conditions in the overcrowded stockade reached a crisis
stage, Confederate officials resorted to burial trenches – an estimated 18 – to
hold the dead. Bodies were placed above one another in 240-foot lines; there were no markers and few coffins.
While initial Army death estimates ranged above 11,000, the
National Park Service now maintains about 3,700 men died between October 1864 and
February 1865. No one knows for certain.
On Saturday afternoon, I got off Interstate 85 and made a
brief visit to the bucolic site southeast of downtown. Save one car, I was the
only visitor to this portion of Salisbury National Cemetery on a fine spring day, a light breeze barely rustling leaves.
The cemetery has three monuments – for the unknown dead and men from Maine and Pennsylvania. Just beyond the Maine and taller monument to
the unknown is an open patch of grass above the burial trenches. It’s a sobering sight.
The Keystone State has an iron placard with a title that
speaks to the suffering: “Many Pennsylvania Soldiers Are Buried Here.”
I was taken by the eloquence of the panel’s message,
including a reminder that the 1910 monument was erected in memory of the dead
and “not as a commemoration of victory.”
Most of the individual gravestones are for unknown
soldiers. Medal of Honor recipient Lorenzo Deming is among those who died at Salisbury.
The prison opened in October 1861 on the site of an old
cotton factory. It was first intended to hold Confederates who had committed
offenses, but it was quickly switched to hold Union troops. By the end of
October 1864, the population had more than doubled to 10,000 on a site originally
built for 2,500.
Description of the 18 burial trenches |
Adequate shelter, rations and sanitation quickly
evaporated.
“The prison quartered prisoners in every available space,”
the NPS writes. “Those without shelter dug burrows in an attempt to stay warm
and dry. Rations and potable water were scarce. Adding to the poor conditions
was an unusually cold and wet winter. Disease and starvation began to claim
lives, and all buildings within the stockade were converted to hospitals to
care for the sick.
The trench graves were dug in a cornfield west of the
prison. About 200 Union troops died in a November 1864 mass escape.
Maine monument (left) and one for unknown dead |
With a death rate hovering near 28% in the camp’s last
several months, it’s no surprise Federal forces burned the site in April 1865.
(The death rate was much lower during much of the conflict). The cemetery opened in 1874.
NCpedia writes: “The most painful period for the Salisbury prisoners was from October 1864 until their release in February 1865. Accounts from POW diaries indicate that the prisoners took in about 1,600 calories per day, whereas 2,000 calories was considered the minimum for survival under the adverse conditions that existed at Salisbury. It is not surprising that diarrhea was the most common disease as well as the most deadly, due in large part to the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.”
NCpedia writes: “The most painful period for the Salisbury prisoners was from October 1864 until their release in February 1865. Accounts from POW diaries indicate that the prisoners took in about 1,600 calories per day, whereas 2,000 calories was considered the minimum for survival under the adverse conditions that existed at Salisbury. It is not surprising that diarrhea was the most common disease as well as the most deadly, due in large part to the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.”
Salisbury’s commandant was acquitted of war crimes.
Peaceful scene of Salisbury prison life (Library of Congress) |
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