This is probably more than you wanted to hear, but ---!

John wrote: >>> Found this the other day in the 29 September 1864 edition of The Daily [Lynchburg] Republican. The chaplain of the 42nd Va. paints a fairly rosy picture of the plight of the men of that regiment at Fort Delaware. <<<

Chaplain Thomas N. Williams was officially appointed chaplain of the 42nd Virginia Infantry on 16 MAY 1864 from Campbell County, Virginia. Federal POW records show that he was captured at Shepherdstown, Virginia on 25 AUG 1864, sent off to Fort Delaware via Harpers Ferry on 30 AUG 1864, and received at Fort Delaware on 1 SEP 1864. Chaplain Williams was paroled at Fort Delaware on 18 SEP 1864 and delivered to Confederate authorities at Varina (Aikens Landing), Virginia on 22 SEP 1864. He was one of 6 surgeons and 3 chaplains released unconditionally from Fort Delaware on orders from the Federal War Department dated 15 SEP 1864. Williams was examined at the Receiving and Wayside Hospital (General Hospital No. 9) in Richmond and forwarded to Chimborazo General Hospital on 22 SEP 1864.

John wrote: >>>I wonder how accurate it was?<<<

Chaplain Williams was held with the officers at Fort Delaware for approximately two weeks. Isolated from the enlisted prisoners, his observations seem consistent with other accounts. The Reverend Isaac W. K. Handy, a Presbyterian minister from Portsmouth, Virginia was held as a political prisoner at Fort Delaware from mid-July 1863 until early October 1864. Handy extensively documented the conditions he observed and experienced during his 18 months of confinement in a daily diary. He was able to smuggle his diary out to his wife a few pages at a time over that period. This diary was first published in 1874. Chaplain Williams was frequently mentioned by Reverend Handy in giving accounts of the preaching that took place within the barracks during the two weeks Williams staid at Fort Delaware. Dr. Handy’s diary is available as a reprint if anyone is interested.

See http://www.fortdelaware.org/Publications%20&%20Merchandise%20with%20PayPal.htm [be sure to copy this whole string]

Dr. Handy wrote on September 1, 1864: >>>Among those who were brought to the Fort, last night, was the Reverend T. N. Williams, a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, who has been serving as a Confederate Chaplain, and has seen hard times in the hands of the enemy. His home, I think, is in Missouri; but for some months past he has been an exile, at the North.<<<

John asked: >>>Why was clothing from Baltimore and other places cut off?<<<

Retribution for the alleged deliberate mistreatment of Union army prisoners held at Andersonville and other Confederate POW camps. Also, alleged mistreatment of northern POWs in Confederate prisons was a propaganda tool used to sustain public support for the Republican war effort and assure President Lincoln’s re-election in November 1864.

My perception is that the target was not clothing, but food.

Prisoners of war held in Federal POW camps in the north were allowed to receive “care packages” or “boxes” from citizens in the loyal states from the beginning of the war. These packages could contain food, clothing and other items. It saved the Federal government a great deal of money by shifting the cost burden to volunteer church groups and other charitable citizens of the Northern states. The foodstuffs received greatly supplemented the rations that the government was required to issue and went a long way to alleviate starvation.

Delivery of boxes was impeded for various reasons during the summer of 1864 and perishable food stuffs within were usually spoiled beyond use, if and when the boxes arrived. All of this appears to have been designed to force the prisoners to live on the standard prison ration promulgated in June and July 1864.

The boxes per se were not cut off during Chaplain Williams stay at Fort Delaware. Prior to Chaplain Williams arrival, General Schoepf sharply curtailed letter writing from the prisoners to contacts outside by limiting each letter to ten lines and requiring that the addressee be a close family member. Further, the ten lines were to be “legibly written and confined strictly to family matters”. This severely curtailed the requests for boxes being sent by the prisoners to charitable individuals plus church based and other philanthropic groups who were engaged in supplying these humanitarian needs.

A full time industry had developed within the prison pens, both officers and enlisted men were involved, writing to various persons within the loyal states asking for food, clothing and money. Defending his edict to the War Department in September 1864, Schoepf claimed that the letters amounted to 2,000 per day. The boxes (and letters) which came in response were inspected by prison staffers before being delivered. Foodstuffs were often removed and any money included taken out to be held in the name of the intended recipient. Sutler checks were issued instead which could be spent buying food and other goods from the sutler’s store at the post. A branch of this operation was conveniently located near the sally port of the prison compound.

The sutler store was the Civil War equivalent of the modern day post exchange. The sutler was under the control of the post commanding officer who was tasked with seeing that the sutler furnished proper articles at reasonable rates. For this privilege, the sutler was taxed a “small amount” by the commanding officer “according to the amount of his trade”. This tax was to be added to the General Prison Fund.

Dr. Handy wrote in his diary on September 1, 1864, the day that Chaplain Williams arrived: “Since the embargo on the boxes [he means the letter restrictions], we have had constant complaint of hunger. Some men require a great deal more food than others, and these are suffering more or less, all the time, as the Yankee allowance is barely enough, even for those whose appetites are not so keen. The Sutler introduced a barrel of crackers, this morning, on the sly, and in fifteen minutes, he sold out to the famishing men, at thirty cents per pound.”

General Schoepf was forced to partially relent on the letter writing restrictions in October 1864. However, boxes were thereafter restricted to clothing and non-food items and money was the preferred assistance requested.

John asked: >>>What did the prisoner fare consist of at this time?<<<

Confederate officers and enlisted men were separated for security reasons. Dr. Handy described an open space of fifteen or twenty feet with tall board fences along the edge of both compounds with guards patrolling the area via elevated walkways. In spite of this barrier, the prisoners communicated between the officers and the enlisted pens via notes tossed over the fence and intervening space. Handy cited the contents of one such note dated 28 APR 1864 and sent to the attention of General Vance, or any other Rebel officer:

“Prompted by the gnawing of hunger, I am emboldened to make this appeal to you; hoping that being informed of our sufferings, you can and will appeal to the Commanding General in our behalf, and if possible have our rations increased.

“For breakfast we get one-fifth of a loaf of bread, and from four to six ounces of meat – fresh or salt beef, or both – and a pint of very inferior coffee. For dinner we get the same amount of bread and meat – Sunday and Wednesday excepted – when, instead of meat, we get two or three potatoes, and a cup of bean or rice soup. As to supper, we have none.

“Whether the rations are allowed to us by the authorities and wasted by the cooks, I cannot say, as I do not know. But one thing is certain, we are suffering.

“Respectfully, A Hungry Rebel”

According to Dr. Handy, General Vance promptly took up the issue with General Schoepf who reportedly said: “Say to them, for their consolation – the rations are to be reduced.” Handy went on to note that “The authorities are shutting down upon the prisoners in every part of the island. Officers and privates are, alike, subject to the rigors of this change. Rations are to be reduced, paroles are to be restricted, and there are strong indications of an entirely new order of things.”

Dr. Handy didn’t know it then, but his own parole of the island was about to be revoked. Handy, along with other political prisoners who had been housed within the Fort, were sent out to the officers pen (wooden barracks) on Pea Patch Island in mid-May 1864. Thereafter, his observations were confined to what he experienced personally inside the officers pen.

The pre-war standard US Army ration was known to be a scurvy producing diet. At this point in history, no one knew what vitamin C was, but empirically, the medical community knew that certain foods (onions, apples, lemons and limes, etc.) added to a soldier’s diet prevented or significantly improved the conditions of chronic diarrhea and scurvy. Soldiers in barracks and the field were expected to use their monthly pay to supplement the issued ration by purchasing fruits and vegetables which would overcome the scorbutic tendency in the standard ration. In August 1861, the standard ration was increased to include potatoes and molasses which were believed to be anti-scorbutic foods. As a cost saving measure, the US Congress passed legislation in June 1864 to reduce the standard US Army ration back to the pre-August 1861 level accompanied by an increase in a private soldier’s pay from $13 to $16 per month.

Prior to June 1864, the prisoners were to receive only “what they required” of the standard US Army ration based solely on the judgment of each prison camp commander. Money to purchase a standard ration would be provided and the savings gained by providing less would go into a Prison Fund at each post. “With this fund will be purchased all such articles for policing purposes, bed ticks and straw, the means of improving or enlarging the barrack accommodations, extra pay for clerks who have charge of the camp post-office, and [the clerk] who keeps the accounts of moneys deposited with the commanding officer, &c, &c.” [OR, Series II, Volume 4, pp 152-153.] Nothing ever gets said about the wood and carpentry labor needed to make coffins for those who died!

Brigadier General William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners, developed a standard POW ration which was approved on 1 JUN 1864 by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Included was a special addition of 15 pounds of potatoes per 100 rations. When the new US Army revised standard ration was promulgated in General Orders No. 226 on 8 JUL 1864, potatoes were then eliminated from the prison diet. The standard ration for the general prison population appears to have been about 75% of the standard US Army ration. Prison issues of coffee, tea and sugar were to be restricted to hospital patients and provided only on the recommendation of the hospital surgeon with approval by the post commander.

On June 3, 1864, Dr. Handy wrote: “Some sickness in the barracks – chiefly colds and sore throats. A number of boxes are coming in filled with clothing.”

On June 11, 1864, Dr. Handy wrote: “General Hoffman visited the pen and ordered a new bill of fare. Hereafter sugar and coffee are to be issued only to the sick.”

On June 17, 1864, Dr. Handy wrote: “Considerable sickness in the pen – diarrhea and sore throats. Rations growing worse; coarse bread; mean gruel; and bad meat. Irregular and unseasonable hours for meals. Obliged to take the rations from the table where they are served to us without knife, fork, spoon, or plate, and by hashing the bread and meat together, and heating the mess over a few burning sticks, try to make it more palatable.”

On June 22, 1864, Dr. Handy wrote: “Received a box from my wife, containing clothing, books, and eatables – very acceptable in each of its departments, but especially in the last. Our rations now are a small piece of bread and meat, each, and a cup of water at breakfast; and at about four o’clock P. M. the same quantity of meat and bread, the bread being a mixture of corn and flour, with the addition of a cup of rice soup. The soup is so bad – being often filled with flies and dirt – that I have use it; and the meat is so course, I can only dispose of it when driven to the necessity of doing so by long fasting and a sharp appetite. The cooks generally reserve the best pieces for those who are able to pay for a fry or stew – while the rest of us must do the best we can with odds and ends, and always boiled and unseasoned. Without an occasional box from my wife or some other friend, I fear my sufferings would be more than I could bear.”

It never seems to have gotten any better until April 1865 when the end of the war was in sight. The food restrictions on boxes were then lifted.

John asked: >>>How much smallpox was there at this time?<<<

Chronic diarrhea was the big killer. The condition resulted from insufficient rations, both in quantity and anti-scorbutics (vitamin C containing foods), plus dirty water. The resulting dehydration (debilitation) weakened the body exposing it to further damage from viruses and bacteria.

The occurrence of smallpox seems to have been controlled and limited due to vaccinations given the prisoners. The vaccinations may have contributed to at least some of the small pox outbreaks. Dr. Handy wrote on August 8, 1864: “Many of the prisoners are suffering from malpractice, in the insertion of spurious virus, for vaccination. Gangrened arms are common, and many a poor fellow has been bereft of a valuable limb, professedly to avert the small pox.”

General Schoepf reported the number of deaths of prisoners at Fort Delaware between 1 JUN 1864 and 30 NOV 1864 to a new Commissary General of Prisoners in December 1864. He claimed that 286 died of malnutrition and disease while only 53 died of small pox.

John asked: >>>To what degree and with what success were prisoners being persuaded to take the oath of allegiance at this time?<<<

Recruiting for the Union army from the prison pen at Fort Delaware seems to have run its course from mid-July to early September 1863. Two companies of heavy artillery and five companies of cavalry were recruited from the Fort Delaware prison pen during this period. One man volunteered to join the cavalry but was rejected by a Union army surgeon in the recruit camp near Baltimore. Returned to Fort Delaware, he was housed in the citizens barracks until the war’s end.

Those who were willing to take the Oath but not willing or able to join the Union army, were not allowed to take the oath. The thinking seems to have been that to allow these men to go free and return home would simply put them within reach of the Confederate Conscription Officers again and result in their return to duty. They were housed separately from the other POWs for their own safety in what were called the “citizens barracks”. There were as many as 200 to 300 of these men there in November 1864. They were not allowed to take the oath and gain their personal release until early May 1865 when all Confederate territory and commands in the field east of the Mississippi River had been surrendered. An exception seems to have been the would be oath takers from Kentucky and Tennessee who were allowed to do so in the last few months of the war and were released on the justification that their homes were inside loyal states.