Over at The Historic Struggle, Rob Baker notes that today is the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Camp Sumter, better known today as Andersonville. Camp Sumter is the most infamous of all prisoner of war camps on either side during the Civil War.
One thing that is sometimes heard is that Rock Island was “the Andersonville of the North.” That assertion is something that interested me personally, since once of my relatives spent almost eighteen months there in 1864-65, a period that includes almost all of Rock Island’s time as a PoW camp. It was a terrible experience, made worse by the vindictiveness of Union authorities who ordered a reduction in rations in retaliation for the treatment of Union PoWs in the Confederacy, specifically at Camp Sumter.
But was Rock Island objectively as bad as Andersonville? I recently watched a documentary, The Rock Island Civil War Prison: Andersonville of the North? (available for purchase here, or streaming here), that laid out some of the data. The documentary is pretty good, although it has an “unfinished” or “almost there” feel to it; there were several subjects barely touched upon that would justify its expansion to a full hour, instead of just 30 minutes. Nevertheless, it’s worth your time if you have an interest in CW prisons.
The documentary specifically challenges the claim that Rock Island was the “Andersonville of the North.” Taking a lead from that, I looked up some detailed numbers, broken out by month, that show the actual rate of deaths among the prisoners at the two camps, by month. Numbers for Rock Island are available for its entire existence from its opening in late 1863; Andersonville opened a few months later, and most of the prisoners were evacuated from the site in the fall of 1864. Although Andersonville remained in operation until May 1865, the vast majority of deaths among its prisoners occurred between February and November 1864. Death rates are calculated by comparing the number of fatalities with the prisoner population for each month:
Click the little one to get a big one. You can download a spreadsheet of the numbers here. Rock Island data is from the Appendix of Otis Bryan England’s A Short History of the Rock Island Prison Barracks (Revised Edition) (Rock Island, Illinois: Historical Office, U.S. Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command, 1985). Andersonville data is from p. 321 of John McElroy’s Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons (Toledo: D. R. Locke, 1879).
Of course, there’s a simpler way to look at this: more men died at Andersonville than were imprisoned at Rock Island during its entire time as a Civil War prison camp.
So where did this “Andersonville of the North” nonsense come from? The phrase doesn’t show up until the 1940s, and I suspect that, like so many other cherished themes about the war, it originated with Margaret Mitchell, who had Ashley Wilkes survive imprisonment at Rock Island. In Gone with the Wind, Chapter 16, she wrote:
No question, Rock Island was a bad place to be, with much unnecessary suffering. But it was not the horrific place Andersonville was, by any objective measure. Mitchell’s plot also underscores her shoddy research in this area: Rock Island was a camp for enlisted men only, and Ashley Wilkes was an officer.
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Larry Miggins (No. 4) playing opposite Jackie Robinson of the Montreal Royals, April 18, 1946.
Last weekend I was treated to a wonderful lunch with the organizer of the annual Dick Dowling Commemoration, Patrick Miggins, and his parents, Larry and Kathleen. Larry established the event 44 years ago, but the annual cleaning of the statue goes back more than a century, to the original installation of the statue at the old Houston City Hall in 1905. That tradition was established by Mayor John T. Browne (1845-1941), himself a former Confederate veteran who had been part of Dowling’s wedding party after the war. Browne passed along the tradition of caring for the statue to former City Councilman Tom Needham, who in turn passed it along to Larry Miggins in 1963.
What I didn’t know until we met was that Larry was a professional baseball player in the late 1940s and early ’50s, diving his time between the majors and the minors. Although he was signed straight out of high school by the New York Giants, he entered the Merchant Marine instead and, after World War II ended, played for the Jersey City Giants and the Houston Buffaloes in the minors, and spent two seasons with the Buffs’ major league parent, the St. Louis Cardinals. While Larry Miggins didn’t have a very long baseball career, it was memorable — he went to high school with Vin Scully and worked out with Honus Wagner.
One of Larry’s more notable games, though, occurred on April 18, 1946. That was the day Larry’s Jersey City Giants took the field against the Montreal Royals, and their new player, a former Negro Leaguer named Jackie Robinson. The Royals were affiliated with Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers, and 1946 would be a try-out season for Robinson, and two black pitchers, John Wright and Roy Partlow, for the majors. It was the first time an African American player took the field as a member of a professional team affiliated with any of the majors:
“His first time up, he grounded out,” Miggins recalled. “Then he hit a home run over the left field fence, which showed he was a pull hitter. His third time up, he dropped down a bunt and beat it out because I was playing back like the manager told me to do.
His fourth time up, he got another hit, and then he dropped another bunt in front of me, because I was still playing him back – which I never did again.”
For the day, Robinson had four hits in five trips with a homer, four runs scored, four runs batted in, two stolen bases and two forced balks in Montreal’s 14-1 win over Jersey City.
It was an auspicious debut in a career – and a life – that continues to amaze and inspire.
“Jackie Robinson led the league in hitting that year,” Miggins said. “Then he went to the Brooklyn Dodgers and was rookie of the year. He became the Most Valuable Player of the league, beat the Yankees in the World Series and went on to the Hall of Fame … “
At this point in the story, Miggins paused for dramatic effect – or, as it turns out, comic relief.
“And he was able to do all that because I played back and gave him two hits in that first game,” he said, breaking into laughter. “I got him off to a great start.”
The Montreal Royals walloped the Jersey City Giants that day, 14-to-1. When the Royals finally got back to Montreal for their own home opener, there were 14,000 people in the stands.
Larry met Kathleen McMahon in 1952 while on a road trip with the Cardinals, while she was working at the Irish consulate in Chicago. Her parents in Ireland were none too impressed with the prospect of them getting married and moving to Texas. “When I moved to Houston my parents were so scared. They said, ‘you’ll be living in a covered wagon. How will you get to Mass?'”
Covered wagon or not, Larry and Kathleen managed, in the process raising 12 children and 35 grandchildren. Larry retired after 21 years as the chief of probation and parole for the U.S. Southern District of Texas.
What wonderful people, who are still giving to their community. Thanks for the great time, folks. I look forward to seeing y’all around again soon.
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Sources: David Barron, “Best Seat in the House for History,” Houston Chronicle, April 12, 2013; Katie Oxford, “A Gullywasher Couldn’t Stop this Annual Irish Fete,” HoustonCultureMap.com, March 15, 2012.
Re-enactors fire a rifle salute to a tall ship on the St. Johns River as it passes by Fort Caroline during Sail Jacksonville in 2004. Via Jacksonville.com.
When told of the discovery of Fort Caroline near Darien, Zombie Colonel James Montgomery announced his intention to burn that, too.
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“Lay ’round the shack, ’til her husband comes back. . . .”
With the Yes Ma’am String Band in (where else?) New Orleans.
I think those are sparks coming off that steel guitar at the end.
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Blog reader Woodrowfan passes along this image, another way to remember Hunley:
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. . . the Confederate submersible H. L. Hunley sank the Federal warship Housatonic in the Atlantic Ocean off Charleston.
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Update, February 17, 3 p.m.: My colleagues Craig Swain and Robert Moore both have reflections on this day. Craig shares some thoughts on the the sinking of Housatonic, and its place in the Charleston campaign and the larger war effort. He closes with this:
And as it happens, Robert Moore was thinking exactly along those lines.
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The new issue of the Civil War Monitor is now available online, and will be arriving in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands soon. In this issue:
h/t to Mark Jenkins for the heads-up on this.
This weekend marks the 150th anniversary of the famous, fatal mission of the Confederate submersible H. L. Hunley at Charleston. Over at To the Sound of the Guns, Craig Swain has compiled an extensive list of commemoration activities going on there this weekend, including Monday, the sesquicentennial of the boat’s loss. Check it out.
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After I put up that post the other day about Newman Haynes “Old Man” Clanton, I pulled out Casey Tefertiller’s biography of Wyatt Earp, and skimmed the section that deals with the famous gunfight at the OK Corral. It seems the local coroner, one Henry M. Matthews, studiously avoided saying anything of substance about the incident, including (most importantly) whether a crime had been committed:
The Tombstone Nugget pounced:
Heh.
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 | Craig L. on Three Veterans |
 | Andy Hall on Lee, Pickett, and Mosby |
 | ExileDawg on Lee, Pickett, and Mosby |
| Andy Hall on Lee, Pickett, and Mosby |
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