Reality becomes a prison for those who can’t get out of it.
— Joyce Cary, Anglo-Irish novelist
 |
| A monument at Andersonville National Historic Site in rural Georgia depicts the suffering Civil War POWs faced. Photo, Eastern National Park and Monument Association. |
Gruesome statistics only hint at
the shocking suffering and hellish deaths prisoners of war endured during the
American Civil War. Nearly 30,000 men among the 194,000 imprisoned Federals and
26,000 soldiers of the 215,000 captured Confederates died by war’s end. It's estimated that 56,000 men perished in prison camps, usually hastily built and open to the elements.
At Camp Douglas in Chicago, nearly
18 Confederate warriors succumbed to hunger, deprivation and disease each day.
In rural Georgia’s infamous Andersonville Prison, about 100 Union soldiers died
daily by 1864, nearly 13,000 total. Prison conditions North and South were
equally horrendous, as documented in letters, dairies and photos.
I can understand a soldier’s
preference for heroic death on the battlefield over the possibility of tormented
death in prison.
My ancestor, Robert McFarland
Welborn, bewildered, wistful and sick, gave an interesting if somewhat mundane glimpse of life at a Confederate prison in
northeastern North Carolina in a letter to his father. Robert, recently drafted at age 17 into the N.C. Junior Reserves, wrote from Camp Weldon, where his unit was stationed, in the summer of 1864:
Aug the 5th 1864
My Dear Father
I
take the opportunity this morning to write you a few lines to let you know that
I am well and harty and i hope thes few lines will find you well
…
They
have got two of our boys in the guard house here and have had them ther a
month
there
was a yankee broke out of the guard house and the guard shot two balls through
him and killed him dead on the spot
there
was two boys got into a dispute and they got to fighting and one of them stabed
the other in the shulder but did not hurt him overly bad
…
 |
| This period photo captures the horrors of Civil War prisoners at Andersonville prison camp. Photo, Library of Congress. |
The routine — and common — opening line of Robert’s report on everyday soldiering
life belies his true circumstances at Camp Weldon, where he had little to eat and
suffered an illness that soon would hospitalize him. But Robert continues his business-as-usual
tone in describing the violence and death in the prison yard. Had Robert already experienced so much
of war’s hardness that he had become hardened? Or were these musings the simple observations of an
overwhelmed farm boy. Or both?
More of Robert’s letter, hand-written on a notepad, lacking
punctuation and full of misspellings:
we
are formed into a regment Armistead* is our colonel Broadfoot is lieu col Lineberry captain … and if the
war lasts and they don’t get us kilt you may have my hat
 |
| One side of the letter my ancestral cousin, Robert McFarland Welborn, 17, wrote to his father Joseph in 1864. For full letter, go to LETTERS page. |
i
am going to try to get off every day but i think it will be a hard chore if i get to go to Camp Holms i think i will get off or signed to
light duty but i do not want to go to hospital duty for it is as hard as
regular ….. but they get to sleep in the house and get better rations than what
we get
i
was at the election yesterday and at Weldon got word was that Govner Vance** got most of the vote that
was given
i
bring my letter to a close write as soon and tell me the news
and tell me how corn looking and
whether you got your (illegible word)
out or not
tell
all the boys….. that was 17 when I left home (they) had better come Oh if they knowed when they
was best off
no more at present but another day
your
son R M Welborn
Between the pedestrian lines of everyday news, Robert lamented the sorry reality of his soldiering life, a
life he apparently dreamed of escaping ("I'm going to try to get off") but couldn’t, at least then. While researching my Civil
War book-in-progress, Dear Father I Am Sorry To Tell You,
I'v uncovered three military documents that hint Robert’s situation in fact did later change.
 |
| Copy of Robert M. Welborn's application for pension in 1918. For more on Robert, see previous blogs. |
Document 1: Robert’s handwritten resignation, dated May 18, 1864;
Document 2, dated July 13, 1864, confirming Robert was “transferred to
hospital;” and, Document 3, dated Aug. 10, 1864, alleging Robert had
“deserted.”
Haphazard record-keeping could explain the change
from “Absent, transferred to hospital,” to “Deserted Camp Weldon Aug. 10th”. What I know for sure is that on July
18, 1918, more than 50 years later, North Carolina granted Robert his request for a soldier’s pension.
Robert stated in his pension application that he is the owner of a house and lot assessed
at $500.00 but that he can’t make a
living or support himself as there is not sufficient land for farming.
I’m left wondering if the boy soldier, who personified the ordinary guy caught in the extraordinary human disaster of the Civil War, ever really escaped his
prison.
###
* Col. Frank S. Armistead, a West Pointer and brother of Gen. Lewis A.
Armistead, who died at Gettysburg; Lt. Co. Charles W. Broadfoot; and, Capt. W.S. Lineberry
** Zebulon
Vance, a Confederate colonel, was reelected as North Carolina’s 43rd
governor in 1864.
SOURCES: The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, Barnes and Noble,
New York. 1996. Jorgensen, Kathryn.
“Historian
Persists In Efforts To Correct Record, Honor Deceased”, Civil War News. December
2010. Online
at http://www.civilwarnews.com/archive/articles/2010/dec/correctrecord-121002.html;
Cadia Barbee Welborn Papers,
Southern Historical Collection, UNC at Chapel Hill; Bollinger, J. Mark, and Landrum,
Brneda G., “The Story of Andersonville Prison and American Prisoners of War,”
Andersonville National Historic Site. 1987. Marin, Rick, “The Infamous Stockade,”
Newsweek. March 4, 1996. North Carolina State Archives.
