Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

[paulcalloway]

Saturday, February 22d, the prisoners began to arrive. Sunday and Monday they continued to come, when it was found that no more could be accomodated in Camp Morton, and about sixteen hundred were sent to Lafayette and Terre Haute.

...

Their dress was not military, but almost uniform in texture and color, being of home-made cloth dyed a dingy yellowish brown with the juice of butternut. It fit their arms and legs as close as the skin, showing all the bows and angles which nature in her step-motherly way bends or sharpens in the neglected children of poverty and ignorance. Three-fourths of the number wore strips of carpet around their shoulders, while the remainder were wrapped in white or in grey blankets, in piano-covers and quilts. Their heads were covered with hats and caps of every hue and shape, with here and there a bare poll, surmounted by an enormous quantity of hair. Some carried frying-pans or tea-kettles. Some fearing starvation in a northern prison, had provided themselves with crackers and bacon, which now were slung over their backs. Nearly all had bundles of bedding or clothing, not in knapsacks, but tied up in old quilts, or stuffed into meal-bags. Gray old men of apparently sixty years tumbled along by the side of slender boys of fourteen.

The Soldier of Indiana, Indianapolis, IN 1866. Vol. 1. pp. 317-318.

[Huck]

Re: Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

Thinking about attenting this event; being that this might be the only event I will be able to attend after my trip from Iraq next year that my lovely wife has blessed.

I found the following article:

The following article is from the Confederate Veteran, Vol. VI, No. 12 Nashville, Tenn., December, 1898.


TREATMENT OF PRISONERS AT CAMP MORTON

Elder J. K. Womack

That den of misery a little north of Indianapolis, known as Camp Morton, was constructed as a fair ground. Temporary stables for horses were erected in long rows. These were converted into barracks for Confederate prisoners.

In the fall of 1863, soon after the battle of Chickamauga, Gen. Joe Wheeler made a raid into Middle Tennessee, during which event Joel Womack, Jim Hood, Pete Donald, Jeff Barlow, Josh Dillon, Will Pickett, and I were captured, near Cainsville, Tenn. We were first placed in jail at Murfreesboro, sent' from there to the penitentiary in Nashville, thence to the barracks in Louisville, and finally to Camp Morton. There was not a bunk in the division, so our bed during that winter was an oilcloth spread upon the earth in the aisle of these barracks. Those who had preceded us were in much want. They were dirty, pale, emaciated, ragged, and lousy. Only a few had a change of clothing. We slept in our clothing every night to keep from freezing. There were two hundred and fifty prisoners in No. 7, and about four thousand in the prison. Those who had occasion to be up at night walked upon us unavoidably, as we slept in the only outlet. We were often spit upon at night by comrades who had colds. Camp life as a Confederate soldier was hard, but prison life in Camp Morton was harder. Daily rations were eaten immediately upon being issued. We were supplied with one loaf of bread and one small piece of beef, and nothing more. It happened occasionally that we would draw this about eight o'clock in the morning, and then not get any more until the following day, late in the evening. When this was the case we became so hungry that we would stand and look for the wagons to come through the gates with our bread. Sometimes, by stealth, we would pick up potato peelings thrown out from the cook rooms, roll them into balls, and cook and eat them with a relish. The beef bones were broken into small pieces, boiled in clear water, the grease dipped off and poured into a saucer, and sold as bone butter at ten cents a half cake. Crawfish were caught in the ditches, boiled, their pinchers pulled off when hot, and then converted into most excellent soup. A cutler's dog, killed and barbecued, furnished food that we relished.

Every man who was able to walk was required to fall in line for roll call about sunrise each morning. The Yankee sergeant who called the roll for our division was named Fiffer. I never heard a kind word fall from his lips. He was about grown and really a demon in human flesh. I have seen him walk through our barracks with a heavy stick in his hand, striking right and left on the heads, faces, backs, or stomachs of the poor, starving prisoners, as though they were so many reptiles, crying out: "This is the way you whip your Negroes." I dislike to write this, but it ought to go down in history.

Our division was not the only one that suffered from inhuman treatment. Division No. 12, near the center of the camps, had a sergeant named Baker. One bitter cold morning while we were standing in line stamping the earth to keep from freezing a pistol shot was heard, and immediately the piteous cries of a prisoner were wafted to our ears. The poor fellow had stepped a little out of line at roll call, and for this crime(?) was shot down. I saw Fiffer strike prisoners over the head with a loaded pistol.

Death had thinned our ranks so much during the first winter that we had a bunk the next. We were packed in like sardines on our sides in spoon fashion. When one became tired he would cry out, "Turn!" when all would turn from right to left or left to right. We existed in this condition, with the thermometer below zero, in open stables without door shutters, hungry, and shivering with cold, having only one stove for two hundred and fifty men. How good a piece of corn bread from home would have been at that time! While memory lasts I can never forget the great war and that cruel prison.

http://www.civilwarhistory.com/Confederate%20Veteran/Treatment%20of%20Prisoners%20at%20Camp%20Morton.htm

[Huck]

Re: Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

View inside prison at Camp Morton near Indianapolis, Indiana, the summer and autumn of 1864.
Note substantial and comfortable barracks
Source: Prisoners of War, 1861-65

[Matthew.Rector]

Re: Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

More images, drawings, and letters about Camp Morton can be found by doing an image search through the online collection available at the Indiana Historical Society website:

http://www.indianahistory.org/

[fortdonelsonrelics]

Re: Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

This is a letter I have in my collection that is written by a private in Company H of the 4th Mississippi. These men were captured at Fort Donelson. His name is D.G. Heslep (Also listed as Heslip) and though might not give any tangible descriptions, it definately gives an minds' eye view of what the average soldier might have been going through.

John Walsh
FDR



Military prison Indianapolis, Ind June27th, 1862

Dear Sister,

If it were not that we are thus related the privaledge of would not be granted, but writing as it is I can write to you. I was taken prisoner at Donalson and have been at this place ever since. I would have wrote to you long since but I did not know whether I could get a letter through or not. I have not heard from home since the first of Feb, Oh how it makes a man feel to be placed in my present situation cut off from all communication with those whos feel near and dear to me but I have one consolation that there is a better day acoming. Give my respects to uncle Tom and family also to cousin Cate and Billie. You must write soon and if you can write to Father and Mother and tell them where I am. I cannot write much as money is very scarce. Tell uncle Tom to send me a few dollars if he can and I will refund the money as soon as I go back to Dixie. The news is now that we will soon get away from here I long for that day to come when we will start for home. There is a company here from Winchester the boys all sends their respects to you. So I remain your Brother,

D.G. Heslep
Co. H, 4th Mississippi Regiment

[paulcalloway]

Re: Description of the first Rebels to arrive at Camp Morton

View inside prison at Camp Morton near Indianapolis, Indiana, the summer and autumn of 1864.
Note substantial and comfortable barracks
Source: Prisoners of War, 1861-65

Huck -
This quote goes along with that particular photo pretty well.

The Camp Morton prisoners had been unique in several aspects. There, a fad developed [which was unique among the prison camps], with the POW's wearing their blankets, or whatever they had left of them, fashioned into capes or cloaks, which they tied around their necks and draped down their backs as they walked around the facility during the daytime. The fad had evolved out of the realization that failure to hold on to their blankets usually meant immediate loss of them to somone else before nightfall.

Source:
Speer, Lonnie R., Portals to Hell, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA. 1997, pg. 87