Haunted by Atrocity

by Cloyd, Benjamin G.

  The campaign to recognize the Confederate dead continued as a part of the larger southern desire to remember the war on its own terms. In 1896 and 1897, the Veteran publicized and requested support for the efforts, often supported by northerners for very different reasons, to care for “the graves of our known and unknown dead buried” at such places as Camp Morton, Camp Douglas, Camp Chase, Point Lookout, and Johnson’s Island.48 The Veteran declared that “it is our sacred duty,” required by “the dictates of honor,” to “keep fresh the memory and green the graves of those of our heroes whose arms are nerveless, many of whose families are helpless, and they sleeping so far away from homes and kindred.”49 Although the Veteran expressed the South’s appreciation for northerners who assisted the process of decorating and memorializing the prison graves, the overall tone of the periodical in dealing with the prison controversy remained strident. According to Henry Howe Cook, in an article published in March 1898, “The Federal Government was criminally negligent in her treatment of Confederate soldiers, and in many respects” committed “willful, intentional cruelty.” Commemoration, even when both North and South participated together, still did not equate to a full reconciliation on the subject of Civil War prisons. Nor did it end feelings of southern defensiveness, evident in Cook’s declarations that “we were a more civilized and Christianized people than were our Northern brethren.”50 The wartime animosities of the 1860s remained evident in the angry rhetoric of the 1890s. As the frustrating and painstaking process of officially marking the northern graves of captive Confederates unfolded, southerners, ever conscious of the constant insult that the lack of proper tribute represented, continued to resent the injustice of northern memory and to insist in the struggle to rewrite history.

  And by the late 1890s, at least to the satisfaction of many white southerners, the southern defensive memory of Civil War prisons was firmly established as a part of the Lost Cause interpretation of the war. White southerners felt increasingly comfortable arguing that “there is no other feature connected with the great war in which the dominant power is so persistent as in keeping back the truth about treatment of prisoners” and expressing their disbelief that “good people North know of the ‘horrors of Andersonville,’ yet have hardly any knowledge that there were ever southerners in prison.”51 While they were not inaccurate, the nature of these selective criticisms showed just how carefully Lost Cause devotees were required to navigate in order to preserve an operational memory of the war. The singular focus on confronting northern failings ignored the Confederate government’s deliberately cruel treatment of prisoners and completely removed the vital role of racist Confederate policies toward black prisoners from the prison controversy. But selectivity should not be confused with futility. In defining white southerners as the victims of the Civil War, the southern memory of prisons helped encourage and justify the growing consensus of white supremacy spreading across the South in the Jim Crow era.

  Although whites, North and South, increasingly minimized and denied the racial implications of Civil War prisons, African Americans rejected those carefully edited memories in favor of their own. Throughout the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, African Americans steadfastly maintained a connection between Civil War prisons and the fight for racial equality as they remembered the prison controversy. The American Missionary Association continued its efforts to educate local African American children “near the spot made sacred by the sufferings of so many of the gallant Boys in Blue.”52 The gratitude felt by former slaves for what the Union soldiers had endured on their behalf manifested itself frequently at church gatherings in Andersonville. At an 1892 Thanksgiving service one elderly woman, remembering that the holiday used to be one of intense labor, remarked, “Thank the Lord I can come to the meeting myself to-day.”53 But the most telling evidence of the enduring power of the emancipationist memory remained the increasingly popular Memorial Day celebrations at Andersonville each May.

  These yearly gatherings were held at the old stockade grounds, which, during the 1880s, were owned and farmed by former slave K. G. Kennedy. No single event revealed the contested nature of the competing prison memories as did the enthusiastic Memorial Day festivities at Anderson-ville. Although the Grand Army of the Republic played a prominent role in organizing the ceremonies, especially during the 1890s, most of the attendees were black, and the event took place surrounded by the watchful eyes of white southerners.54 In 1888, a local newspaper report described how “the ground was literally covered with negroes,” and estimated that 3,000 people attended the exercises. Along with a series of speeches, the day featured “strolling over the grounds and decorating the graves.”55 Two years later, 4,000 visitors descended upon Andersonville. The occasion was marked by a “considerably greater” white audience and “several slight affrays.” These violent episodes occurred exclusively among the African American crowd, according to the local coverage, and testified to the atmosphere of rowdy revelry that attracted larger and larger crowds with each passing year.56 By 1892, 10,000 people crammed into the national cemetery and prison grounds for “a great day at Andersonville.” Although the GAR was “out in force,” white attendees were “greatly in the minority,” as the trains to Andersonville were reportedly “crowded to almost suffocation with negroes.”57 These commemorations helped preserve the unique emancipationist legacy of the Civil War, as blacks celebrated the sacrifices of the dead Union soldiers not just as the heroes of a reunited America, as did the GAR, but more precisely as martyrs to the cause of human freedom. Similar ceremonies occurred at other former prison sites. In 1895 approximately 1,500 African Americans decorated the graves of Union prisoners in Florence, South Carolina, as a sign of both appreciation for the changes wrought by the war and optimism that racial progress would continue.58

  The inherent challenge of the emancipationist memory to the white supremacist interpretation of Civil War prisons did not go unnoticed. The proud and persistent displays by African Americans unnerved the white citizens of Andersonville—already frustrated by the presence of the GAR and the virtuous northern memory of Civil War prisons—and by the mid-1890s sparked a “lively discussion” of the “prospect of a riot.”59 The Americus Times-Recorder reported that “bloodshed” was “narrowly averted” at the 1894 Memorial Day event. The chain of violence began when Marshal Thad Aycock, a white officer, attempted to break up a fight between two African American men. One of the men shot Aycock, who was painfully but not fatally wounded, and the shooter was quickly seized by several of Aycock’s companions. As the white mob began to depart the scene, they were in turn “overtaken by a mob of a hundred negroes,” who forced “the release of the prisoner.”60 The social anger that nearly incited a race riot continued to infuse the subsequent Memorial Day gatherings. During preparations for the 1895 event, the white residents of Andersonville were “said to be arming for self-protection,” since the promised arrival of 20,000 blacks ensured that “a drunken riot can very safely be counted upon.” Although the ceremony thankfully occurred without “the event of emergency,” the bitterness behind such real and imagined aggression indicated how tightly the conflicting prison memories were intertwined with racial identity by the l890s.61 Faced with the violence and oppression of the Jim Crow era, African Americans refused to accommodate the white desire to forget. As a result, each Memorial Day at Andersonville became a potentially explosive event at which African Americans ignored the social disapproval of whites and their sectional prison memories and instead celebrated the emotionally powerful memory of Civil War prisons as a symbol of their commitment to the legacy of emancipation.

  Others recognized that the same controversy that fueled racial hatred also represented a financial opportunity. A new dimension to the recollection of Civil War prisons emerged in the late 1880s and 1890s as Americans found a different reason—one with highly capitalistic overtones—for preserving Civil War prison sites. The commercial potential inherent in the outrage provoked by the prison controversy had b
een apparent since the first sensationalized newspaper headlines and prison narratives, but during the last decade of the nineteenth century, two Confederate prison camps, Libby and Andersonville, evolved into national tourist attractions. In 1888, a group of Chicagoans, led by industrialist Charles Gunther, proposed the purchase and transfer of Libby Prison from Richmond to Chicago, where he planned to turn the former warehouse and prison into a for-profit museum of Civil War memorabilia. Gunther’s project inspired sharp criticism from many Americans, particularly those in the North concerned about potential damage to the cause of reconciliation. Union veteran James Workman wrote a letter to the Loudoun Times Mirror in Virginia, declaring that the idea “horrified” him. Having lost his father and two brothers in the war, Workman wanted to let the past fade into “oblivion, which is impossible while a republican politician lives to wave the bloody shirt.” The blatant commercialization of Libby Prison “would perpetuate in the North all the animosity of the war,” he insisted, “and what can the people of Richmond be thinking about to permit it.” Instead of allowing this travesty, Workman believed it would be better to “burn the building to ashes than for a few paltry dollars allow it to stand in a Northern city a standing shame on the fair fame of the South.” But if some northerners, and veterans like Workman in particular, felt uncomfortable selling the memory of their sacrifices, southerners seemed content to let Libby go. Although the editor of the Times Mirror admitted that Workman’s points met “with hearty approval,” the lack of any organized attempt to preserve the Libby Prison site in Richmond not only indicated a southern willingness to distance themselves from one of the primary symbols of the prison controversy but also an acceptance of the memory of Civil War prisons as a viable commodity for commercial manipulation.62

  Gunther’s Libby Prison War Museum opened in 1889 and remained open for a decade. Ten years represented a successful run for a museum at that time, especially one that charged fifty cents per visit, far more than most workers in Chicago could afford.63 Tied to the larger fortunes of Chicago, the museum’s success rose and fell with the 1893 World’s Fair and the economic troubles that followed it. During its career, however, the museum remarkably generated more profit than controversy. Inside the reconstructed prison, most of the collection contained nonprison related Civil War memorabilia such as manuscripts, letters, and weapons, while other items, such as shrunken Incan heads, indicated the museum’s focus on entertainment rather than historical accuracy.64 Although the very act of reconstructing Libby in Chicago confirmed the north’s virtuous memory of the war—as the suffering in Union prisons such as the local Camp Douglas remained unrecognized—aside from the implicit reproach to the South the museum represented a new approach to the prison controversy. As a creatively presented commercial venture complete with its own gift shop, where one could purchase pieces of the old Libby Prison floor or small chunks of the Andersonville stockade, the new Libby Prison brazenly transferred northern resentment of the Confederacy’s treatment of prisoners into profit.65 By the 1890s, any misgivings about profiteering off the sacrifice of dead prisoners seemed prudish in light of the decades of hawking of prison narratives. History apparently possessed actual value beyond the intangibles of inspiring pride or the teaching of lessons learned in the past. In a culture increasingly driven by the siren song of consumption, history could be fabricated as needed to suit the needs of the masses. Many northerners enjoyed visiting the illusory Libby and purchasing prison souvenirs from Civil War prisons as a source of entertainment, even as they continued to commemorate the sacrifices of the heroic prisoners in a more solemn and sectional manner.

  In contrast to the transformation of Libby Prison into a museum, the Andersonville site in Georgia remained quiet for many years, with the exception of the yearly memorial gatherings in May. But by the 1890s, the annual event attained such stature that the townspeople of Thomasville, Georgia, desired to take advantage of their relative proximity to the festivities. In 1893, the Thomasville Review dedicated its front page to advertising “must see Andersonville!” As the “Mecca for thousands of tourists each year,” the paper asked, “can you afford to miss it?” After all, the prison inspired not only “patriotic pride” but also the “most wonderful forensic combat that ever occurred in our national legislative hall—that between the late lamented Senators Blaine and Hill.” Special “elegant” train excursions shuttled interested parties between Thomasville and Andersonville and offered the opportunity to view the site in a more genteel serenity—which, not coincidently, would mean the absence of large crowds of African Americans.66 Like their northern brethren, southerners embraced the opportunity to profit from the attention inspired by Civil War prisons like Andersonville and Libby. The mutual desire to use the controversial memories of Civil War prisons for financial gain marked a rare agreement between North and South on a prison-related matter.

  As Thomasville embarked upon its tourism campaign, the surging curiosity about Andersonville prompted an interest from the Women’s Relief Corps (WRC). An organization affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic, the WRC agreed in 1893 to purchase the prison site and care for the location. Although the government owned Andersonville National Cemetery, the prison stockade itself had been dormant under the ownership of the Georgia department of the GAR, which could not afford the expense of maintaining the location since purchasing it in the early 1890s. In 1896, the WRC started improving the site by building a cottage that also served as an informal visitor center and installing fences, bridges, roads, paths, and walkways.67 By 1898, according to one newspaper headline, “The Old Prison Pen Is Now a Pleasant Park.”68 Since the WRC was a nonprofit organization, its efforts to preserve and beautify Andersonville focused on a more genteel and reverential commemoration in contrast to Gunther’s overtly commercial Libby Prison War Museum. In practical terms, however, with nearby communities like Thomasville hoping to cash in on their proximity to a place of national interest, little difference separated the conversion of the old prisons into tourist attractions. The decades of animosity, and the ongoing bitterness of the debate over the horrors and responsibility for the treatment of prisoners during the Civil War, created a natural and abiding interest among all Americans, regardless of section, in these sites during the 1890s. The same desire to relive the halcyon days of the war that motivated Americans, and veterans in particular, to flock to the first national battlefield parks at places like Gettysburg, attracted visitors to the old prison grounds. Both the open commercialization of Libby and the “pattern of veneration and play” on display at Andersonville offered Americans an enjoyable opportunity to see for themselves firsthand the magnitude of what it meant to be a prisoner during the Civil War and simultaneously gain appreciation for the sacrifice of so many dead.69 As northerners and southerners embraced the idea of using the prisons as a source of financial profit, the intermingling of patriotism with capitalism helped unify not only tourists but the sections themselves. The buying and selling of an idealized prison memory redefined a controversial past as part of a safe and comforting interpretation of American nationalism during a time of uncertainty and offered the first grounds on which reconciliation between North and South over Civil War prisons could finally begin. The seductive power of the illusion obscured reality, but the entranced public preferred the reconfigured version of the past. Although the bitterness of the divisive memories of the prison controversy still lingered, the transformation of Civil War prisons into commodities reflected the needs of an America determined to look forward as the turn of the century neared.

  Although rancor still dominated the public perception of the wartime prisons, the exploitation of Libby and Andersonville indicated the beginning of a shift in the way Americans approached and conceived of the subject. Along with the increasing interest in memorializing and commercializing the prisons came the first opinions that, perhaps, it was time to let go of the old animosity over the prisons. In 1891, John Wyeth of New York wrote a letter to the editor
of the Springfield Republican, a letter later published by the SHSP, in which he declared that any “reasonable and fair-minded being” knows that there was “as much culpability on one side as the other.” The reason that passions remained heated after more than twenty-five years, Wyeth believed, was that “the Southern side of the prison question has never been made known to the Northern people. Though a good deal has been written, it appeared in Southern magazines” and as a result never found “its way to the masses of the North.” In contrast, Wyeth argued, “the narratives of Union prisoners have been widely diffused through the daily papers, made the texts of passionate oratory by the statesmen of a day, elaborated by the illustrated journals, and emphasized by the immense circulation and influence of the Northern magazines.” All this one-sided publicity, Wyeth asserted, prolonged the northern anger over the treatment of prisoners and prevented a true understanding of the “cold and unanswerable” facts.70 Sir Henry Morton Stanley, imprisoned at Camp Douglas, instead of blaming either side, thought that “it was the age that was brutally senseless and heedlessly cruel.” With this argument Stanley became one of the first observers of the prison controversy to find the real fault in the nature of modern war itself.71 Although both Wyeth and Stanley based their desire for reconciliation on an incomplete conception of Civil War prisons, one that excluded both the deliberate nature of the inflicted suffering and the connected issue of racial equality, they at least demonstrated a willingness to assess more objectively the prison controversy. Their opinions, although certainly in the minority, offered evidence that at some point the sectional hostility over the memory of Civil War prisons might cease.