Go to the Fort Delaware Society Website Directory page, scroll down to near the bottom and click on the "going home" time line link. Once on the "going home" page, scroll down to the sections on General Orders No. 85, 104 and 109. The requirement that transportation be provided is set forth in all of these as a directive from the War Department to all Federal commands including quartermasters and provost marshals in the field.

The Oath of Allegiance card in your uncle's Compiled Military Service Records will state his place of residence thereby indicating where he was to be transported to, or as near as could be reached by rail or water. Everybody had to walk the last few miles home, even those who lived in a town served by an active railroad or river port.

If your family member really took three years to walk home, it was by his own choice. It would be my guess that the story of his coming home has been embellished through the years as a legitimate expression of outrage over the war and the years of Radical Reconstruction which followed.

My intent is not to disparge our Confederate ancestors, or the family stories handed down from generation to generation, but rather to make sure that we, their descendants, understand what actually happened. A prisoner of war had no choices to make except to try to escape, or to live each day as best he could under the circumstances, or simply to give up the ghost and die. All other choices were set forth for him - in the end he could take the Oath of Allegiance or remain in prison. The story of those who survived and came home after taking the Oath is a story of personal triumph, not one of shame.

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society
Website: www.fortdelaware.org
E-mail: society@fortdelaware.org