Salvation Close at Hand: Federal POWs Exchanged at Wilmington

Captured on the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga, Sergeant Samuel S. Boggs of the 21st Illinois had survived 18 months imprisonment in some of the worst camps throughout the South: Libby, Belle Isle, Danville, Andersonville, and now at Florence, South Carolina. Attached to the hospital squad, he remained at Florence when many of the haggard survivors moved off to another camp at Goldsborough.

          “We of the hospital squad stayed with the sick and gathered from in the prison all the sick we could put under our sheds and arranged the balance so we could give them water,” he wrote. “They were decreasing rapidly by death. The Rebels told us if we would take an oath not to go beyond the stockade, they would take off the guards. We consented, glad to get rid of those murderers and then swore not to hold conversation with the Negroes or slaves and not go beyond the limits of the stockade. The nurses counseled together and agreed to stay with the sick as it would not be long until our troops would release us.”
          Boggs was right as within a few days; he would find himself back in Union lines. His account of deliverance comes from his 1887 book Eighteen Months a Prisoner Under the Rebel Flag which is reproduced below.

 

Union prisoners of war gathered in front of their wooden sheds at the prisoner of war camp at Florence, South Carolina just before they were marched off to the waiting train to deliver them into Union lines. Sergeant Boggs recalled that some of the sick men crawled a quarter of a mile to be able to climb aboard. (Library of Congress)

          One morning about the last of February, a Rebel officer came in and ordered us to get every man over to the railroad about a quarter of a mile away and they would take us to our lines. Some of the sick were taken in wagons, some crawled most of the distance. We took all but those thought to be dying; those were left without help of any kind and there were perhaps 30-40 men in this condition. We finally loaded the sick in freight cars and started running all that day and night, and about the middle of the second day our train stopped in the rear of a Rebel line of battle.

          The Rebels were all excitement and soon ran our train back as fast as it could go. We would have jumped and taken to the woods if it hadn’t been for our sick boys. In time, the train stopped and we were ordered off the cars and camped in the woods; this was a picnic for us, but the Rebels acted like they expected an attack. Some Rebel cavalry helped them guard us that night and the next day we were sent back to our old quarters at Florence. This discouraged our sick, but we cheered them up and told them that the “salvation of the Lord was close at hand and the Confederacy was bursted.”

          We found some of those who were dying when we left still alive four days later. We wet their lips with water and fixed them as comfortably as we could. Some whom we took with us died and we left them near the railroad for the section men to bury. About the 1st of March we were ordered to the road again and worked our sick aboard the cars and started over the same road. We knew now that our forces had captured Wilmington. We ran along without adventure. Sometimes when the train would make a short stop, we would take out our dead and lay them beside the tracks.

          We were going in the direction of Wilmington, our engine flying a white flag. We were in suspense to know what was going to be done with us. After awhile some of the boys said, “Hello, there’s a blue coat!” We looked and sure enough, there were several blue coats out foraging. Peeping out the door, we saw bright guns flashing in the sunlight and soon made out that it was a line of Union pickets.

Union prisoners like Sergeant Boggs went back into Union lines at the Burgaw Depot near Wilmington, North Carolina. Over the course of a week, roughly 9,000 Federal POWs returned here. The depot, built in 1850, still stands. 

          The sick men crawled to the door and looked out. Our guards offered no objection but looked badly scared. Our train moves up with the engine through the line of pickets. The Rebel officer in charge of us salutes a Union major. They talk a moment and the major signals a Union officer at the picket line who advances with about 30 unarmed men and several surgeons. The Rebel guards now moved a few yards away and looked ashamed and sneaking. There is not a word exchanged between them and our men; our Union friends now come up to the cars and kindly help the sick out. These Union soldiers helping are wiping their eyes; others are setting their teeth hard and casting wicked glances at the Rebels, but there is a flag of truce that must be respected and they cannot express their thoughts.

          A Union soldier comes up and asks if there is a man with us by the name of Wilcox. A sick man recognizes the speaker and says, “That’s your brother,” pointing to one of the unfortunates whose mind is gone. He does not know his own name when called by his brother. All this does not affect us; we have seen nothing but misery for a year and a half and it seems strange to see people weep when we are so full of joy. We try to sing “Home at last from a foreign shore,” but the voices are weak and break down.

 

 

“The condition of these prisoners as they arrived here as they are now is beyond the power of the English language to describe. All the descriptions of the barbarous and inhuman treatment these poor fellows have suffered, the misery, pain, and privations they have endured, are but the faint glimmering of the reality as they presented themselves to our view at this place. When they were landed here from the cars, a large number of them were unable to walk to the pen or prison and fell down by the way, or were left on the ground when they were unloaded from the cars. Reduced as many of them were to mere skeletons, a living mass of filth, disease, and vermin, suffering the last agonies of death by starvation, lying nearly naked in the streets and by the waysides as well as in the pen they were driven to.” ~ Surgeon Lyman A. Brewer, 111th Ohio

 

          We went through the line of guards to the edge of the woods where the kind soldiers built up big fires and did everything in their power to make us comfortable. They divided their clothing, giving us shirts, stockings, everything they could possibly spare. Wilmington was more than a mile away and these troops on picket were part of General John Schofield’s 23rd Army Corps. Theye were as noble-hearted and fine-looking soldiers as I ever saw. Our forces had been in possession of Wilmington but a short time and they were not prepared to receive in clothe us.

          Some wagons came over from Wilmington loaded with rations. Camp kettles were put on the fire and coffee made, boxes burst open, and crackers given out along with vinegar and onions, all of which many of us hadn’t tasted for 18 months. Our surgeons looked after those who did not seem to have judgment and warned them not to eat too much; they said we could drink all the coffee we wanted and some drank until they seemed intoxicated. The surgeons took charge of the sick whose numbers were being rapidly reduced by death.

          Next morning, we got some soap from the soldiers and a number of us went to a little creek nearby and washed off as much prison filth as we could scour loose. We ate a hearty breakfast and all who were able to walk marched over to Wilmington, our boys yelling themselves hoarse when we sighted the old stars and stripes floating from a steeple over in Wilmington. We felt that we were in God’s country at last. It seemed as if we had been gone from it for 20 years or more and it seems now, looking back, that it cannot be possible that we did pass through those awful hells.

Eventually, about 9,000 Union soldiers were exchanged at Burgaw Station near Wilmington in the first week of March 1865. 

Sources:

Boggs, Samuel S. Eighteen Months a Prisoner Under the Rebel Flag. Lovington: S.S. Boggs, 1887, pgs. 55-58

Letter from Surgeon Lyman A. Brewer, 111th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Hillsdale Standard (Michigan), April 4, 1865, pg. 1


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