In June, 1864, fifty Union prisoners of war, all officers, were held in the besieged city of Charleston, South Carolina within range of the Federal guns in an effort to discourage further bombardment of the city. Although they were eventually exchanged for 50 Confederate officers of similar rank, the use of these POWs as human […]

For the benefit of Gettysburg researchers, the following is a subset of the full list of the “Immortal 600” showing only those who were captured at Gettysburg. For the story of the Immortal 600, see this blog post. ALEXANDER, Capt. William J. Co. A, 37th North Carolina Infantry res. Wilkesboro, North Carolina; captured at Gettysburg, […]

Most of the approximately 5,000 Confederate prisoners who were captured at Gettysburg, including Brigadier General James J. Archer, were sent to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island, just south of Wilmington in the middle of the Delaware River. Some of those prisoners would eventually be sent to prisons at Point Lookout (MD), Elmira (NY), or, […]

Following is the complete list of the “Immortal 600,” a group of Confederate officers in captivity who were held as human shields in the line of friendly fire in Charleston Harbor and then subjected to some of the most inhumane treatment of POWs that was ever documented in the Civil War.  (This previous post focused specifically […]

Here’s a common question by users of our popular app, Pocket Gettysburg for iPhone/iPad. “Where can I find the monument to the 83rd New York Infantry?” (for instance) The easy answer is…         BUT keep in mind that this method searches the MONUMENT list for those monuments that have “83” in their […]

Described as a “identification tag,” this card was issued to each of the 22,103 veterans from Pennsylvania who attended the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913. (Some other states issued similar ones to its attending veterans). The veteran was asked to carry it in his pocket “in case of sickness or accident.” […]

The National Park Service maintains the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS) which is a database of the men who served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.  In the context of a larger project, I wondered how many soldiers served from each state so I did a geographic analysis of […]

A recent post by Randy Drais in his excellent Battle of Gettysburg Buff e-newsletter (randydrais@gmail.com) mentioned that he found my transcription of the 1860 Federal Census of Gettysburg to be useful.  This blog also had two posts (here and here) in which I analyzed that census with respect to age, sex, race, occupation, place of birth, […]

Of the 5369 Union soldiers that were reported “missing or captured” at the Battle of Gettysburg[1],  most of the captured were processed through Libby Prison in Richmond and then Belle Island on the James River.  At least 303 of them eventually found themselves at the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia.  The Andersonville records are incomplete, […]

  The Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia, also known as Camp Sumter, was designed to hold a maximum of 10,000 Union prisoners.  At its peak, it held more than three times that number under horrific conditions.  During its 14 months of existence, Andersonville Prison held more than 45,000 Union soldiers, of whom 12,920 died, […]