-- William Tecumseh Sherman's warning to an army quartermaster before the departure of Sherman's army from Chattanooga toward Atlanta.
Southern States Secede
Secession
fever hit the South after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The
South considered Lincoln's Republican party victory in the 1860
presidential election as a sign that the North was now going to end the
"peculiar institution" of slavery. For the South, the time of talk and
compromise had ended. In December, 1860 South Carolina became the first
state to secede from the Union. Secession of the rest of the states that
would make up the Confederate States of America occurred in two waves.
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The Sultana Disaster
April 27, 1865
The Sultana is the deadliest maritime tragedy in United States history.
Camp Fisk, near Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a prisoner of war camp holding many Federal prisoners. On April 10, 1865 Confederate authorities sent orders to Camp Fisk for release on parole of all its prisoners. This order came the day after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
The Union prisoners of war at Camp Fisk previously were prisoners at camps such as Cahaba (Castle Morgan), near Selma, Alabama and at the hellhole known as Andersonville, in Georgia. The majority of these freed prisoners from Camp Fisk had suffered long, hard, imprisonments. The strain of existing in a Civil War prisoner of war camp had taken a toll on these men. They were weak with disease and malnourished, their release from Camp Fisk was a welcomed blessing … and a supposed lifesaver.
The Civil War was ending. The freed prisoners looked forward to shedding their old, worn, filthy war uniforms for new, and soon happily returning to their families and homes. Now on their path to freedom, the parolees would have to make a trip up the Mississippi River from Camp Fisk to Cairo, Illinois.
To move these former prisoners of war up the river to Cairo, the Federal government contracted with private steamboat lines. The steamship Sultana was hired to help transport men.
The Sultana was loaded with over 2,000 parolees and other passengers as it began its voyage to Cairo. This steamship, designed to carry only 376 passengers, was severely and dangerously overloaded. The Sultana had four boilers, and all of them required patching at one time or another. The stress of hauling this overload of human cargo proved too much for the Sultana.
Three Sultana boilers exploded about seven miles above Memphis.
The parts of the Sultana not immediately blown to bits in the explosion, soon caught fire. Passengers not killed outright in the explosion now found they were facing flames, or they were thrown into the muddy currents of the Mississippi River.
The freed prisoners were weak and sick from their captivity, many of them did not know how to swim and were injured by the boiler explosions. The final fate for many, after surviving cruel prisoner of war captivity, was drowning in the Mississippi.
| Barnes&Noble: Sultana |
The figures vary, but 783 to 786 people were rescued from the muddy Mississippi waters. Those saved from the water were taken to Memphis hospitals. Sadly, 200 of them later died from their ordeal. Estimates are that between 1,500 and 1,700 people died because of the Sultana explosion. The remnants of the Sultana explosion drifted down the Mississippi River, eventually sinking opposite the city of Memphis. Today, the Sultana’s remnants are buried deep in mud at the bottom of the Mississippi River. |
More people died in the Sultana explosion, than died when the Titanic sank in April of 1912.
Suggested Posts to Learn More...
- Civil War Veterans
- Clara Barton
- Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy
- Ulysses S. Grant Notes and Facts
- Grant Asks Lee to Surrender
- Grant and Lee Plan to Meet
- Lee Surrenders to Grant
- Civil War Speech
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