A Prison Of A Different Kind: Robert's Story Continued

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.

the doctor says he will send me  to camp holms (Holmes in Raleigh, N.C.) befor long  to be examined again      he says I am not any count in service and i think he is about haf right

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.” 

Desertion usually meant being absent without leave for more than 30 days. I don’t know if Robert actually deserted the Confederate ranks, as did thousands toward war’s end, when defeat seemed inevitable and families at home suffered enormously.  Deserters especially spiked among men from the area of North Carolina that Robert called home, the substantially pro-Union, anti-secession Randolph County, N.C. (See previous blogs.)

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 43^rd 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.

Unraveling The Story Of A Soldier With An Attitude, And Young

Following a convoluted paper trail, I’ve learned more about one ancestral Confederate cousin than I know about most of my living blood relatives. From various Civil War military documents I know, among other things, that Private Robert McFarland Welborn:

- Stood 5 feet 10 inches and had dark hair and blue eyes;

- Mustered into the 1st Regiment, Co. F, of the N.C. Junior Reserves on May 30, 1864;

One side of the original letter that my ancestor, Robert
McFarland Welborn, wrote to his father Joseph
in late summer 1864 from Halifax County, N.C. A
family member punched the holes in the letter, written
in pencil on a folded sheet of paper. For entire letter,
go to LETTERS page. 

- Had passed his 17th birthday by just 25 days when the Confederacy drafted him;  

- Left his father’s Randolph County farm in May 1864 for duty at Camp Holmes near Raleigh;

- Served in east-central N.C.’s Camp Weldon, home of Wayside Hospital #9 and a prison.

And from a letter home, I know Robert:

- Suffered an illness in the summer of 1864 that sidelined him from service;

- Had attitude.

Of course Robert had attitude. He was the youngest of widower Joseph Welborn’s 10 children and was only five months old when his mother Parthena died. I think it's possible, under the controversial "birth order" theory that youngest siblings learn exceptional competition skills to get attention and resources, Robert probably was a scrapper.

Here's what teenager Robert wrote to his father from Camp Weldon:

Aug the 5^th 1864

My Dear Father

. . . if the war lasts and they don’t get us kilt you may have my hat       if we ever go into battle with them it will not last long       i heard several of the boys say they would kill (them) as quick as they wuld a sheep-killing dog and I would not stand back much . . .

Robert’s bring-it-on attitude likely made up for many losses. In 1863, his older brother, Lyndon — the protagonist of my book-in-progress, Dear Father I Am Sorry To Tell You —  died in battle while defending Richmond, the Confederate capital. Then the Confederacy drafted two other reluctant brothers, even as father Joseph objected to secession and the war.

North Carolina map shows location
of the town of Weldon in Halifax County,
 home to a Confederate fort, a prison
 and a hospital during the Civil War.

Robert probably realized that by late 1864, the Confederacy was running out of steam and just about everything else it would take to win. Federal forces were scoring key victories in the Western Theater, things were souring in the Eastern Theater, and Sherman was about to tighten a noose around the South after taking Atlanta.

But just how much could Robert see of the war’s big picture from his outpost in a Halifax County, N.C., near the border with Virginia, where battles raged?  Was his youthful bravado an effort to survive by believing something was possible despite evidence to the contrary? Seems to me that sentiment fortified Confederate fighters right up to the end.

In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey asserts that to be successful, a person must begin something with the final outcome in mind. We must visualize what we can’t yet see, then follow our mental vision with physical creation. With an optimistic outlook, a person maximizes his ability to get through adversity.

So it was with Confederate warriors still hanging in the fight to the end, I imagine. So it was with Robert, despite illness, debt, hunger and homesickness. More from his letter, written in pencil on a folded sheet of paper, full misspellings and lacking punctuation:

 View today of the Civil War cemetery
near the site of Camp Weldon in
northeastern North Carolina. Photo,
N.C. Division United Daughters
of the Confederacy, Chapter 22.

. . . i have got my resicnation (resignation) and I do not hav any thing to do        our doctor relived (relieved) me from duty    i have not done any duty sinse I resinad (resigned)

the doctor says he will send me to camp holms (Camp Holmes in Raleigh, N.C.) befor long to be examined again      he says i am not any count in service and i think he is about haf right

we get one pint of corn meal and it is not sifted and hardly ground      the grains is cracked       we often find whole grains      we git some kind of a houn (hound*) meat a day     i am in debt $17 and know hopes of drawing any money to pay it  

             i would like to be at home to eat beans and rosten ears (roasted ears of corn)      i am going to try to get off every day but i think it will be a hard chore

                

                                                                                         your son R M Welborn

Despite personal hardship and the Confederacy's long-shot chance of victory, it seems Robert still imagined giving the Yanks a whoopen'.  Maybe a spoonful of optimism helped him survive the war.

Robert applied for a soldier's pension in July 1918 and died seven years later on Aug. 16, 1925, at age 76. He was buried in the family cemetery in Randolph County, N.C., near his father Joseph and his fallen older brother, Lyndon.

###

* NOTE: I take Robert's reference to "houn meat" to mean the meat of deer or other animals tracked down by bloodhounds as food for the soldiers. The Confederacy also used bloodhounds to help guard prisoners.  If you can enlighten me about Robert's reference to "houn meat," please go to the COMMENTS page and post a message.

SOURCES:  North Carolina State Archives; Weymouth T. Jordan, Jr. and Louis H. Manarin,"North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865, A Roster," 1985; U.S. Census;  Cadia Barbee Welborn Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC at Chapel Hill; Welborn family genealogical documents

COMING SOON:  Private Robert McFarland Welborn's account of an incident at Camp Weldon prison. See PREVIEWS page.

Courage, Claustrophobia And The Confederate Sub Hunley

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.                          — Edward V. Rickenbacker, American WWI Fighting Ace*

A cutaway of a life-size model
of the Confederate sub Hunley
at the  S.C. State Museum shows
the claustrophobic conditions
 under which the vessel's eight-man
crew worked in 1864. 

When I saw the sailor bent over the crankshaft in the CSS Hunley model, I thought drums were beating in some far reach of the museum. Then I realized my heart was pounding in my ears. A wave of claustrophobia crashed over me. 

I edged closer to a cutaway in the iron skin of a replica of the Confederate sub to inspect the life-size mannequin. He sat on a narrow bench inside the sub’s cramped belly, bent over a long crankshaft. When the sub's crewmen, elbow to elbow, turned the crankshaft on a winter's night in 1864, a single rear propeller pushed the lethal “torpedo fish” through the black waters of Charleston Harbor.

By candlelight they toiled, a crude arrangement of pipes and bellows periodically substituting fresh air for stale air when the sub neared the surface. A line of silver dollar-sized portholes marked the sub's stealthy progress toward the Federal blockader Housatonic. 

The famous oil painting of the
Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley
by Conrad Wise Chapman, 1863.
Photo, National Underwater
and Marine Agency.

The Hunley's crew, no doubt, fought fear. Already, 22 men had perished while testing the 40-foot-long, 4.5-foot-tall, arms-length-wide Confederate submarine, a fact that compelled the Confederacy to demand that only volunteers could board the Hunley for its deadly assignment nearly 150 years ago. Yet, eight men went down the hatch and entombed themselves in the iron fish’s bowels for something they believed in, right or wrong.

Stonewall Hilton of Friends of the
Hunley shows the size of portholes
on the Confederate submarine,
depicted in a recent drawing.
For more, see PHOTOS page.

I revisited the life-sized model of the Hunley recently at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, where Stonewall "Stoney" Hilton was lecturing to mark the Civil War sesquicentennial. Hilton, a former Navy petty officer, volunteers with the organization Friends of the Hunley.  The group supports scientists, archaeologists and historians who work to unravel the iron sub’s mystery at a laboratory and museum in Charleston.

Hilton told the group gathered one Saturday that the museum's Hunley model, a bit shorter and wider than the real artifact now being studied, reflected a famous oil painting by Conrad Wise Chapman rendered in 1863. The resurrection of the real thing in August 2000, five years after its discovery on the ocean floor in 1995, set a few things straight.  Hilton said that in addition to the model size being incorrect, the sub's "spar torpedo" actually was attached to the bottom of the vessel's nose (see drawing at left) instead of the top. 

    

Hilton said that when a team of marine archeologists raised the Hunley from the ocean floor and the crewmembers’ remains were discovered still at their posts, we learned that the men’s heights ranged from 5 feet 6 inches to 6 feet even. That means the tallest sailor probably had no choice but continually to hunch over the crankshaft when the sub departed the shores of the first state to secede from the Union.    

The resurrected H.L. Hunley
 gets kid-glove treatment at the
specially built Warren Lasch
Conservation Center in Charleston.

Hours later, the Hunley blasted 300 years of submarine history by becoming the first manned submersible combat vessel to sink an “enemy” ship. Never mind “the enemy” was the United States of America.  

***

It happened on the night of Feb. 17, 1864. The Hunley swam through moonlit waters off Sullivan’s Island to its target, 4 miles off shore. The crew rammed the sub's bow into the wooden hull of the Housatonic, depositing the spar torpedo loaded with 130 pounds of gunpowder.  The crew quickly reversed the crankshaft, unfurling 100 feet of cord attached to the bomb. As the cord stretched taut, the torpedo exploded, blowing away the Housatonic’s stern.

Within three minutes, the 16-gun sloop-of-war sank. No one, Union or Confederate, died in the explosion. The Hunley dove deep, awash in victory. Yet, the sub's crew never made it back to shore. The heroes’ welcome awaiting them never took place. For more than 140 years, the submarine rested on its starboard side at a 45-degree angle, beneath 30 feet of water. As years passed, three feet of silt and ever-growing myths engulfed the Civil War sub.

View of the propeller
on the Hunley model.

Since its 2000 resurrection, Hunley researchers ensured the sub remained at the same angle as it rested on the ocean floor in a specially designed tank of freshwater at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, built largely with public funds.  Last summer, scientists completed a slow rotation to expose the Hunley’s underbelly in their search to answer the question, “How did the crew die?”  

       

“We’d love to know that,” Hilton said.

Studies of crew members' remains have confirmed they did not perish in the torpedo explosion. At rescue, their bodies still sat at their posts, indicating they died without panic. Leading theories suggest suffocation.

What if the Hunley had returned to shore? I asked Hilton after his presentation.

“The Confederacy would have ordered 10 more subs,” Hilton said with a shrug and a smile. “And people in Boston might be whistling ‘Dixie’ today.”

In 2004, the Hunley crew finally received its heroes' welcome. Thousands of people attended a memorial service and burial for them in Charleston. In the last Confederate burial, horse-drawn caissons accompanied by a procession in period dress took the eight men to a final resting place in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery, next to the others who lost their lives testing the submarine.

Like many attending the Charleston ceremonies, I see the Hunley as an icon to the abundance of courage, inventiveness, and strength of Americans during the Civil War. But I wish Southerners would stop posing the question, “What if?" This prolongs the historical claustrophobia already surrounding The Lost Cause and keeps old wounds from healing. We should honor courage, but we need to take a hard look at the cultural claustrophobia worshiping fallen heroes can keep alive.

### 

REST IN PEACE: Lt. George E. Dixon, Hunley commander; Arnold Becker; Corp. J. F. Carlsen; Frank Collins; _ Lumpkin; _ Miller; James A. Wicks and Joseph Ridgaway. Hunley designer and namesake, Horace L. Hunley, died in a test run of the submarine.

* Edward Vernon Rickenbacker (Oct. 8, 1890 – July 27, 1973), an American fighter ace in World War I, was awarded the Medal of Honor and numerous other citations for courage. He also won fame as a race car driver, automotive designer, military consultant, pioneer in air transportation and as the longtime chief of Eastern Air Lines. 

COMING SOON: More on my Confederate ancestors. See PREVIEWS page.