The Immortal 600
These six hundred Confederate officers represented each of the eleven seceded states, plus Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. A large portion of these men had been captured at well-known battles like Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor. Others had been captured at lesser-known places like Lancaster, Kentucky, Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, and Trevillian Station, Virginia. By the time they were sent to Charleston in the summer of 1864, many of these men had been held as prisoners-of-war for over a year.
Conditions on Morris Island in Charleston were not good. The prison consisted of an open-air stockade and life was difficult with limited rations, poor shelters, and the constant exposure to artillery fire from their own side. For nearly three months, the stalemate continued. It wasn’t until yellow fever broke out in the city of Charleston that the Confederacy removed the Union prisoners to newly erected prison camps further inland. With the Union prisoners removed from Charleston and no longer under fire from Union artillery, there was no need to keep the Confederate prisoners on Morris Island. With this realization, the next phase of their journey began and the Immortal 600 began the journey south, to co*ckspur Island and Fort Pulaski.
Fort Pulaski
On October 23, 1864, approximately 540 of the Charleston prisoners were marched into Fort Pulaski. The fort was hardly ready. The southeastern section of the fort—the same corner that had been destroyed during the battle in 1862—was chosen to house the prisoners. Several stoves were placed in the casemates and materials were provided for the prisoners to build their own bunks. No bars separated the prison from the rest of the fort when the prisoners first arrived, so the doors were kept closed and guarded constantly. Eventually, iron bars were put in place to truly designate the prison.
At first, their situation seemed to have improved. The casemates were damp and cold but far better than the tents and stockade of Morris Island. They were given slightly better rations, though still not enough to fully satisfy them. On top of that, their new guards—the 157th New York Infantry—treated them “with curtesy and respect” which was more than they had expected. In November, nearly two hundred of the prisoners were transferred to a prison camp on Hilton Head to help with the overcrowding issue. For those who remained at Fort Pulaski, life was about to get a whole lot worse.
In December 1864, word reached the Union commanders in Charleston that the Union officer in charge of Fort Pulaski—Colonel Philip P. Brown—had disobeyed orders to place the Confederate prisoners on a starvation diet. When confronted, Brown claimed he had never received these orders and that he had simply done what he believed to be right. The orders were resent and Brown saw no other option but to enforce them.
For a little over a month, the Confederate prisoners at Fort Pulaski were placed on a starvation diet in retaliation for mistreatments of Union prisoners in Confederate camps. This diet lacked any meat, fruit, or vegetables, which led to an increase in diseases like scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery. The prisoners were given no blankets or additional clothing, and many had to huddle together for warmth in the cold Savannah winter. Though they had been provided with stoves for cooking and heating, they were only given enough fuel for one, maybe two, fires a day.
“Hunger drove our men to catching and eating dogs, cats, and rats,” wrote Captain J. Ogden Murray. “Our men became as expert as cats at catching rats.” Captain George W. Nelson also recalled eating cats during this time, but he also recalled an interaction with one of the Union guards: “The last was a kitten—was tender and nice. A compassionate Yankee soldier gave it to me. I was cooking at the stove by the grating which separated us from the guard. This soldier hailed me: ‘I say, are you one of them fellers that eats cats?’ I replied, ‘Yes!’ ‘Well, here is one I’ll shove thro’ if you want it.’ ‘Shove it thro’,’ I answered. In a very few minutes the kitten was in frying order.”
By January 1865, a surgeon was brought in who quickly ordered that the prisoners be given full rations and proper medicine, an order which probably saved many of their lives. For thirteen of the men, however, it was to late; disease had claimed them, and they were buried in a small cemetery just outside the fort. For the remaining prisoners, life at Fort Pulaski continued with no end in sight.
Escape was constantly on the prisoner’s minds. Two men successfully escaped from the hospital by slipping out, stealing a boat, and rowing to freedom. Escaping from inside the fort was far harder, but that didn’t stop soldiers from attempting it. On February 26, 1865, Colonel Edward L. Molineux of the 159th New York—who took over for Colonel Brown in February 1865—recorded in his diary that:
“Last night some of the Confederate officers attempted a skillful but unsuccessful escape -- By working an old vent hole into the subterranean chambers they dug through another vent into the Commissary’s casemate, then by a rope dropped into the ditch swam the moat & eluded the sentries under cover of a dense fog. – They found the boats all guarded & were all recaptured – eight attempted it. –thin men who could squeeze through the holes. In consequence of this I have taken additional precautions & keep guard among them constantly & their quarters are visited daily & nightly every fifteen minutes by an officer.”
