The Civil War Picket: Nov. 14

A Harper's Weekly depiction of the April 1865 disaster in the Mississippi River (Library of Congress)

Submitted by Gene Salecker

Ahead of the Nov. 14 grand opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., the Civil War Picket asked experts for submissions about the people involved in the story – the soldiers, the survivors, the heroes and the scoundrels. The overloaded steamboat exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. About 1,200 people perished, many of them released Federal POWs heading home at the end of the war. Noted Sultana author and collector Gene Salecker submitted the following about Maj. William H. Fidler, who tried to save a female passenger on the boat.

The highest-ranking officers among the 1,947 released Union ex-prisoners of war were two majors, James William Carlin, 71^st Ohio Infantry, and William H. Fidler (right), 6^th Kentucky Cavalry. Since Carlin had been captured in October 1864 and was not in good shape physically, and since Fidler had been captured in April 1865, only a few days before the loading of the Sultana, the 22-year-old was placed in command of the returning soldiers.

Born in Haysville, Ky., southwest of Louisville, in 1843, he was the second of eight children born to Samuel and Minerva Fidler. Samuel, a shop owner, died in August 1861, leaving the family void of a breadwinner. To help reduce the number of mouths’ to feed, oldest brother James enlisted in the 10^th Kentucky Infantry in November 1861.

Almost a year later, 20-year-old William and his 18-year-old brother Jessie both traveled to Louisville and joined the newly formed 6^th Kentucky Cavalry, William as the major and Jessie as a sergeant in Company K.

Always the dutiful son, William regularly sent most of his $169 per month pay home to his widowed mother and siblings. Over the next three years, he proved himself a competent officer by ably handling his cavalrymen in Middle Tennessee and throughout Gen. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. In the spring of 1865, the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry took part in Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson’s cavalry raid through northern Alabama and Georgia.

On April 6, 1865, while fighting a rear-guard skirmish near Tuscaloosa, Ala., Maj. Fidler and a large portion of the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry (flag at left) were cut off from Gen. Wilson’s main body and forced to separate and flee into nearby swamps. Tracked down by Confederate soldiers with bloodhound dogs, Fidler and two privates were eventually captured near Pleasant Ridge, Ala. First held in a city jail, he was eventually sent to the neutral exchange camp, Camp Fisk, set up four miles outside of Vicksburg, Ms.

As the ranking officer among the men from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky, Maj. Fidler helped organize the men into companies of 100 by state and assisted in getting the rolls called and the men placed on the trains that took them from Camp Fisk into Vicksburg to be loaded aboard the Sultana.

Coming in on the third and last train, Fidler immediately saw how crowded the Sultana had become with the first two trainloads of ex-prisoners, and stopped the third trainload of men, insisting that they should go on a different steamboat, the Pauline Carroll. Unwilling to divide the prisoners and mess up their rolls and books, one of the Union officers involved in the loading of the Sultana told Maj. Fidler that the Pauline Carroll had smallpox onboard.

Realizing that in their weakened condition, many of the men would not survive a bout of smallpox, Fidler agreed to put every last man on board the Sultana, to the number of 1,947.

During the trip upriver on the Sultana, Maj. Fidler and the other officers among the ex-prisoners were constantly reminding the men to stay in one spot and not crowd to one side of the boat, thus causing the vessel to capsize. As an officer, Fidler and his aide, Capt. James M. McCown, and all the other officers, slept on twin bunkbed cots set up down the length of the second deck main saloon.

At 2 in the morning of April 27, 1865, while almost everyone was asleep on the Sultana, three of her four boilers suddenly exploded, erupting upwards and tearing a huge hole in the center of the saloon.

Both Fidler and McCown were tossed from their bunkbed, with McCown being severely scalded in the face, neck and hands, and inhaling the scalding, spreading steam, thus burning his lungs and the mucous membrane on his tongue.

In spite of his horrible injuries, McCown followed Fidler down to the main deck so that they could find fire buckets to put out the slowly growing fire. Unable to do so, and with the flames growing in size, the two officers from the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry began tossing pieces of the Sultana into the water to help others stay afloat.

While the two men were thus engaged, they heard a female civilian passenger call out that her mother was in the water and drowning. Without hesitation, Maj. Fidler jumped into the water and went to the mother’s rescue.

Although Fidler reached the lady and took hold of her, they were soon swallowed up by the mad, panicked crowd. Both Maj. William H. Fidler and the mother of the young female passenger were soon pulled beneath the brown, swirling water. His body was never recovered. (McCown survived the tragedy.)

Only 22 years old at the time of his death, a military headstone was later erected for Fidler in the Lebanon National Cemetery in Lebanon, Ky.

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE MUSEUM

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