This needs to be reenacted.
This morning a supply ship arrived with a load of wood, but there was some trouble when another steamer in need of wood came along and its officers got into an altercation with the officers of the Confederate guard. After a good deal of yelling and some drawn pistols, a compromise was finally reached; the supply of wood was divided between the two ships. A third steamer in need of fuel arrived too late to get a share. Uncertain of the availability of fuel downriver, the officers of the CSS General Quitman decided to stay put and wait for additional wood before heading to Vicksburg.
It turns out that a river steamer requires a lot of wood.
The General Quitman uses about a hundred cords of wood in twenty-four hours. With a cord being 4 by 4 by 8 feet of stacked wood, the daily consumption is 12,800 cubic feet, equivalent to a standard tennis court filled to a depth of five feet. On the evening of February 22nd, a load of 60 cords was received, and the ship’s crew prepared to head downriver.
They set off at dawn on the 23rd, stopping on the way to pick up an additional 100 cords of wood. The Confederate guards decided to take the prisoners to Port Hudson, instead of Vicksburg, as originally planned. The ship reached the Mississippi River at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, and by sunset they had reached Port Hudson.
That just doesn’t seem plausible. Wood storage alone would take up most of the boat. Gotta source for that?
Not to derail Maldens thread but the tradition did carry on for a while of respecting your enemy. When the famous Red Baron was bought down in 1918 the funeral procession gave him a gun salute and a ceremonial burial. In later years this was compared to the funeral of James McCudden, the British fighter ace who was buried almost without trace after dying in an accident. (It was also suggested McCudden hadn’t come from the officers ranks and there was class distinction)
Resume normal transmissions.
A momentous day.
Early this morning, under a flag of truce, the prisoners were turned over to officers of the United States Navy. These officers sent the prisoners and the CSS General Quitman (presumably escorted by U.S. vessels-- my source is unclear) to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, the prisoners disembarked, but not before heaving overboard every bit of movable property they could lay their hands on. The men also heaped verbal abuse upon Lieutenant Howerton and the other senior Confederate guards as they made their final departure from captivity.
A group of African-American men on shore witnessed this scene, saw the Union soldiers, and cheered, thinking that their presence meant that U.S. forces had taken this stretch of the river. This upset Howerton, who sent his guards to capture these men and force them to tend to the boiler fires as the ship headed upriver again. (Apparently, the men later escaped at Port Hudson by commandeering a small rowboat attached to the General Quitman.)
The former prisoners, now parolees, spent a short time in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana-- a town of less than six thousand that had been in Union hands since the previous spring. In the afternoon they boarded the Iberville to New Orleans, leaving at around 9 p.m.
Oslo Ostragoth– My original source was a regimental history that just gave that number for daily fuel consumption for that particular vessel (actually it said 90 to 110 cords). This Wikipedia article gives a figure of 4 cords per hour, or 96 per day. It seems incredible to me as well-- a 4x4x8 foot woodpile every fifteen minutes. I’m not sure how much consumption varied if the ship was running or idle; I would think it would take a long time to start up the boiler from ambient temperature, so they might have just kept it at least partially burning at all times.
nm
I googled for number of pieces of wood in a cord, and, of course, it depends. A usuable range seems to be 400 to a thousand. 600 pieces in 15 minutes means one piece every 1.5 second.
That’s a fierce burn rate.
There was some frustration today as the military bureaucracy did what it does best. The Iberville arrived in New Orleans early this morning, but there is no one to tell the newly liberated prisoners where to go or whom to report to. Everyone stayed on board the ship all day while a messenger was sent to investigate.
At long last, someone at headquarters in New Orleans has taken notice of the newly arrived former prisoners and issued orders:
The three companies disembarked this morning, attended a brigade drill, and marched to Gentilly Crossing, several miles north of downtown New Orleans. My sources describe the location as being near the Pontchartrain railroad crossing. The railroad had been built about ten years earlier, and was burned during the war. I found an old map (zoomable) that indicates the railroad followed the route of present-day Elysian Fields Avenue, then crossed the lake (see very top center of map.) So the camp may have been somewhere near the present-day location of Lake Oaks Park or the adjacent University of New Orleans.
It was here that Private Davis and his comrades who saw action at Galveston were finally reunited with the rest of the regiment.
Terms of parole
The status of the paroled members of Cpmpanies D, G, and I were spelled out in this communication from General William Tecumseh Sherman:
[QUOTE=General Sherman]
The Forty-Second Regiment on the Iberville, with the
exception of the chaplain, are paroled but not exchanged;
the chaplain is unconditionally released. The conditions
of the parole are thus stated in the fourth article of the
cartel between the United States and the enemy, promul-
gated in General Orders No. 146 of 1862 from the War
Department, adjutant-general’s office: ’ The surplus pris-
oners not exchanged shall not be permitted to take up
arms again, nor to serve as military police or constabulary
force in any fort, garrison or field work held by either of
the respective parties, nor as guards of prisons, depots,
or stores, nor to discharge any duty usually performed by
soldiers, until exchanged under the provisions of this
cartel.’
[/QUOTE]
I find it interesting, and not surprising, that Sherman uses the terms “United States” and “the enemy,” rather than dignifying the rebels with the name “Confederate States.”
Interestingly, the fate of the men might have been different had the battle of Galveston occurred a day earlier. A general order issued in February declared that all prisoners captured in Louisiana and Texas through the end of 1862 were to return to active duty as exchanged prisoners of war (as opposed to paroled prisoners of war.) Under a separate agreement, the long-imprisoned troops from Texas who had joined the three companies on the riverboat ten days ago were exchanged and returned to duty. However, after just a couple of days they were relieved and sent north in recognition of their long imprisonment.
Unable to fight or otherwise contribute to the war effort, the three companies have little to do other than recover from their ordeal and share stories with the rest of the regiment. The other companies have taken to calling the parolees the “pet lambs,” much to the disgust of the parolees.
The Disunion blog posted another bit about this campaign from Private Alexander Hobbs journal.
The United States never recognized the secession of the “states now in rebellion” - it is hardly notable that USA troops would not use a term they did not consider meaningful.
Had the US recognized the CSA, there would probably not been a war.
“The month of March was dull enough to suit an epicure or sluggard.”
This is one reason why I haven’t posted in a while, the other being a mild case of pneumonia, for which I have the good fortune of having access to antibiotics. The “pet lambs” and the rest of the Forty-Second Regiment are not so lucky, and disease is a constant companion. More on that later.
Not much has been happening. There was a brigade drill held on March third, and a sergeant from Company G (one of the few from that company not involved at Galveston) made an attempt to conduct a marching band. He made something off a fool of himself, as the regiment’s Sergeant-major wrote later:
*Not like that. He’s flirting.
On March 6, Colonel Stedman replied to the recent letter from General Sherman:
On March 8, a letter came from Colonel Farr indicating that the camp at Gentilly Crossing will soon be broken up, with marching orders pending for those men not on parole. So for the last couple of days there has been some speculation about where the rest of the regiment might be sent. Yesterday, March 10, A group of officers and 48 privates from Company A were sent to Battery St. John, a position along Bayou St. John, which flows northward from New Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain.
I was just wondering if there are any more installments? This is a great thread, and I hope it continues.