Tuscaloosa’s Prisoner of War Camp

Henry Wirz, second commander of the
Tuscaloosa Prison Camp. 

   Early during the war, one local Alabama historian wrote, Tuscaloosa became a camp for Federal prisoners. Federal soldiers captured at the battle of First Manassas were sent to Tuscaloosa. The thinking is that Tuscaloosa was so far south, no prisoners would try to escape. At first, warehouses and hotels near the river were used to house the prisoners. Later, a larger camp was constructed elsewhere.[1] Maybe there is some truth in this assessment.

   On October 25, 1861, Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin wrote to Alabama governor A.B. Moore about a facility to house prisoners: “I am told,” Benjamin wrote, “you have at Tuscaloosa not only legislative buildings, but an insane asylum and a military institute, all unoccupied. We are greatly embarrassed by our prisoners as all our accommodations here are required for our sick and wounded. It would be a great public service if you can find a place for some, if not all, of our prisoners. We have over 2,000 here.”[2] Added to this, in November 1861, a group of Union operatives destroyed several bridges through East Tennessee. Those who were caught and “identified as having been engaged in bridge-burning” were tried by a “drum-head court-martial” and, if found guilty, were “executed on the spot by hanging.” Those without proof of involvement but suspected, were arrested and sent to Tuscaloosa, imprisoned “at the depot selected by the Government for prisoners of war.”[3] By November 28, some twenty-two prisoners from Carter County had been arrested, sent to Nashville, and were expected to be sent to Tuscaloosa (it is not clear if all twenty-two were to be sent, or just “5 or 6 known to have been in arms.”)[4]

      An abandoned paper mill that was totally unsuited for the job as a prison was selected. When the prisoners began to arrive, some locals were used as guards.[5] Prisoners, at least those captured in the east, were transported via rail from Petersburg, Wilmington, and Montgomery, then steamboat via the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Black Warrior rivers.[6]

   Were all 2,000 prisoners that Benjamin referenced, plus an untold number from the bridge burners, sent to Tuscaloosa? Probably not, but just how many were sent is unclear. There were enough for new Alabama governor John G. Shorter to write to Benjamin on December 19 that he had “Better send no more prisoners to Tuscaloosa . . . Accommodations exhausted.” Also, the state asylum was not available to be used as a prison.[7]

   In December 1861, Capt. E. A. Powell organized a company of prison guards. Powell stepped aside and the company became known after their new captain, C.D. Freeman (Freeman’s Company of the Alabama Prison Guards. They served at the prison in Tuscaloosa until the fall of 1862 when they were transferred to the prison in Salisbury.[8]

   On March 5, 1862, Braxton Bragg ordered that the Federal prisoners in Memphis were to be forwarded to Tuscaloosa.[9] After the skirmish on the Elk River near Bethel, Tennessee, on May 9, 1862, the prisoners were sent “over the mountain by the turnpike road to Tuscaloosa”[10] As early as December 1861, Capt. Elias Griswold was reported as in command of the prison at Tuscaloosa. Griswold apparently held this command through April 11, 1862, when he was promoted to major and ordered to Richmond, Virginia, to be provost marshal.[11] On learning that Griswold was heading to Richmond, local citizens asked that his assistant, Henry Wirz, be placed in command.[12]

   Some of the Federal prisoners from the battle of Shiloh in April 1862 were sent to the prison at Tuscaloosa.    

The Confederate prison in Tuscaloosa was closed by the fall of 1862 and the prisoners were paroled or sent elsewhere.[13] Tuscaloosa was later reopened in the spring of 1864, housing Federal soldiers captured during the Overland Campaign and Brice’s Cross Roads.[14] Just when the prison finally closed and if it was still using the old paper mill is unclear.

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[1] Hubbs, Tuscaloosa, 40.

[2] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 49.

[3] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 7, 701.

[4] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 7, 701.

[5] Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 64.

[6] Colton, Travels in the Confederate States, 60.

[7] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 49.

[8] CSR, Roll 0502, M331, RG109.

[9] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 10, part 2, 298.

[10] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 10, part 1, 887.

[11] CSR, M331, RG109.

[12] CSR, M331, RG109.

[13] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 122.

[14] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 219; Radley, Rebel Watch Dog, 170,

The Education of the Confederate Cabinet

   Sixteen men served in the Confederate cabinet, the closest advisors to President Jefferson Davis. Some, like Judah P. Benjamin, John H. Reagan, and Stephen Mallory, served for the duration of the war. Others, like John C. Breckinridge and William M. Browne, served for just a few weeks. What background and experience did these men bring to the job?

      There were four men who served as Secretary of State: Robert Toombs (February 25, 1861- July 25, 1861); Robert M. T. Hunter (July 25, 1861-February 18, 1862); William M. Browne (February 18, 1862-March 18, 1862); and Judah P. Benjamin (March 18, 1862-1865). Toombs was born in Georgia in 1810. He was a graduate of Franklin College in Georgia; Union College, New York; and University of Virginia (law). He served in the Georgia House of Representatives (1845-1853); U.S. House (1845-1853); and the U.S. Senate (1853-1861). Toombs resigned to accept a commission as a Confederate brigadier general. Robert M. T. Hunter followed Toombs as Secretary of State. Hunter was born in Virginia in 1809. He studied at the University of Virginia, then read law under Judge Henry St. George Tucker. Hunter served in the Virginia House of Representatives (1834-185=37); the U.S. House (1837-1843 and 1845 -1847), including as Speaker (1845-1847); and the U.S. Senate (1847-1861). When he was elected to the Confederate senate, he resigned from his cabinet position, serving in the Confederate senate until May 10, 1865. William M. Browne was born in 1823 in Ireland and served as acting Secretary of State upon the resignation of Hunter. His early education is unknown, but he was a newspaper publisher in Georgia prior to the war. Browne was appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and when Hunter resigned, served for about a month ad interim. Following his brief time as Secretary of State, Browne was appointed a cavalry colonel and aide-de-camp to Davis, and then in 1864 as Commandant of Conscription for the state of Georgia. Browne was replaced by Judah P. Benjamin. One biographer considered him a “Jack-of-all-Trades.” Benjamin held many jobs in the Confederate cabinet, including Attorney General and Secretary of War. He served longest as Secretary of State. He was born on Saint Croix  in 1811 to Jewish parents and grew up in Wilmington and Charleston. He studied at local schools, then spent three years at Yale University before heading to New Orleans, where he studied law. Benjamin served in the Louisiana House (1842-1852) and in the U.S. Senate (1853-1861). Benjamin escaped through Florida to the Bahamas and then to France. He never returned to the United States.[1]

   There was one man who served as Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Mallory. Born in 1812 or 1813 on the island of Trinidad at the Port of Spain, Mallory grew up in Key West and attended school in Mobile and Pennsylvania before returning to Key West to work in customs and to study law. Mallory served in the U.S. Senate (1851-1861) and for a time, was chairman of the committee on naval affairs.[2]

   There was also only one man who served as Postmaster-General: John H. Reagan, who was born in Tennessee in 1818. He attended local schools, then what is now Maryville College. By 1839, he was in Texas, where he studied law. Reagan served in the Texas House of Representatives (1847-1849), and the U.S. House (1857-1861). After the war, he served two additional terms in the US House.[3]

   Five different men served as Attorney-General: Judah P. Benjamin (1861); Wade Keyes (1861); Thomas Bragg (1861-1862); Thomas H. Watts (1862-1863); Wade Keys (1863-1864); and George Davis (1864-1865). Following Judah P. Benjamin’s five-month stent, Wade Keyes stepped into the position. Keyes was born in Alabama and attended LaGrange College and the University of Virginia. He studied law, moved to Florida, and wrote on legal topics, then moved to Montgomery. In Alabama, Keyes was elected Chancellor of the Southern Division of the Court of Chancery. He also taught law, eventually founding what became the law department at the University of Alabama. Benjamin was appointed assistant attorney general, the position he held for the duration of the war, serving as Attorney General ad interim on several occasions. He returned to Alabama and the practice of law after the war. Thomas Bragg replaced Keyes in November 1861. Bragg was born in North Carolina in 1810 and studied at the Norwich Military Academy before studying law under Judge John Hall. Bragg served one term in the North Carolina House of Commons (1842-1843); as Governor of North Carolina (1855-1859); and as a U.S. Senator (1859-1861). He returned to North Carolina following his resignation and worked to support the Confederacy. Following the war, Bragg was one of the lawyers who prosecuted Governor William W. Holden. Bragg was replaced by Thomas H. Watts. Born in Alabama in 1819, he attended Airy Mount Academy and then the University of Virginia, where he obtained a law degree. He apparently held no elected office until the secession convention in Alabama in 1861. Watts ran for governor, but was defeated and instead, organized and became colonel of the 17^th Alabama Infantry. He served as Attorney General from March 18, 1862, until October 1, 1863, when he was elected governor of Alabama. He returned to the practice of law after the war. Keyes again served for a brief time until George Davis was appointed to fill the position. Davis was born in North Carolina in 1820 and graduated from the University of North Carolina with “highest honors.” He then practiced law in North Carolina. His first political appointment came as a member of the Peace Convention in Washington, D.C., in February 1861. Davis then served in the Provisional Confederate Congress, then as a Confederate Senator. Jefferson Davis appointed him to the Attorney General position. George Davis held that position until he resigned on April 24, 1865, becoming the first cabinet member to leave the administration at the end of the war.[4]

   There were also five men who served as Secretary of War. LeRoy P. Walker was the first. Born in Alabama in 1817, Walker attended the University of Alabama and the University of Virginia. Walker then practiced law, and was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives (1843-1850?, 1853), serving a couple of terms as speaker of the house. He also was president of the Alabama Democratic Convention, and judge of the Fourth Judicial Circuit. His sojourn as Secretary of War only lasted about seven months. Following his resignation, he served a short time as a brigadier general, then resigned, and in 1864, was commissioned a colonel and placed on military court duty. After the war, he served as president of the Alabama Constitutional Convention. Judah P. Benjamin followed Walker, serving from September 1861 to March 1862, when he was replaced by George W. Randolph. Born at Monticello in Virginia in 1818, Randolph was the grandson of Thomas Jefferson. He attended a private school in Massachusetts, then served in the US Navy, then attended the University of Virginia, obtaining a law degree. He set up practice in Richmond. His political experience was in the Virginia Secession convention in 1861. He was then appointed a major and commanded the Richmond Howitzers, and was later colonel of the 2^nd Virginia Artillery. He was promoted to brigadier general in February 1862, and then appointed Secretary of War in March 1862, serving until November 1862 when he resigned. Randolph later served as a Confederate Senator. James Seddon, also from Virginia, served next. He was born in Virginia and attended law school at the University of Virginia. He represented his district in the US House (1845-1847, 1849-1851). Seddon also served in the Washington Peace Conference, in the Virginia Secession Convention, and in the Provisional Confederate Congress. Following the war, he was arrested and imprisoned. He returned to Virginia and practiced law. The last Secretary of War was John C. Breckinridge. Born in Kentucky, Breckinridge was a graduate of Centre College, a lawyer, and a Mexican War veteran. He served in the Kentucky House (1849-1850), the US House (1851-1855), as Vice President of the United States (1857-1861), and as US Senator (1861). Breckinridge was commissioned a brigadier general in 1861, and April 1862, as a major general. He commanded troops through numerous battles and campaigns. He served as the last Secretary of War. He escaped to Canada, but later returned to the United States.[5]

   There were three men who served as Secretary of the Treasury. First was Christopher Memminger.  Born in 1803, in the Dutchy of Wurttemberg, he studied law at South Carolina College. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives (1836-1852, 1855-1860?), and was a member of the South Carolina secession convention, then a delegate to the convention in Montgomery where he helped draft the Provisional Confederate Constitution. He was then appointed Secretary of the Treasury. Following his resignation, he lived in North Carolina, then returned to Charleston, serving again in the South Carolina House. George Trenholm followed Memminger. Trenholm was born in South Carolina in 1807, and by the age of fifteen, was working as a clerk in a cotton brokerage. By 1853, he was head of the company, then director of the bank of South Carolina. He served in the South Carolina House (1852-1856). During the first part of the war, he became a major blockade-running entrepreneur. Trenholm served as Confederate Secretary of War July 18, 1864, to April 27, 1865, and was the second cabinet member to resign. Following the war, he was again in the South Carolina house (1874-1876). For a brief amount of the time, Postmaster-General John H. Reagan served as Secretary of Treasury as the Davis party fled south.[6]  

   As a whole, the men who served in the Confederate cabinet were highly educated with considerable political experience. All but three – Browne, Trenholm, and Mallory – were college graduates. Several had more than one degree. Watts, Keys, Seddon, Davis, and Browne had no prior political experience before the war. However, Seddon and Davis served in the Confederate House or Senate prior to their service in the cabinet. Breckinridge was the most politically experienced member of the cabinet secretaries, serving in the Kentucky House, US House, as Vice President, and as a US Senator. Bragg had served in the North Carolina General Assembly, as Governor of North Carolina, and as a US Senator. (Maybe at some point, we’ll compare Lincoln’s cabinet.) 

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[1] Patrick, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, 78-9; 90-91; 101-2; 155-56.

[2] Patrick, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, 247.

[3] Patrick, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, 276-78.

[4] Patrick, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, 299-302; 303; 311-312, 314; Peterson, Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries, 49, 52.

[5] Peterson, Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries, 131-38; Patrick, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, 20-127, 135-148,149-55.

[6] Peterson, Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries, 76, 79-83.

Did Judah P. Benjamin draft North Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession?

   Joseph C. Sitterson, in his 1939 book, The Secession Movement in North Carolina, makes an interesting claim, that Judah P. Benjamin reportedly wrote North Carolina’s ordinance of secession.[1] Sitterson writes that Convention delegate Burton Craige introduced a the resolution at the request of Governor John W. Ellis. The simple ordinance “repealed and abrogated the ordinance of 1789 by which North Carolina had ratified the Constitution of the United States and declared the union between the state of North Carolina and the other states, under the title of ‘The United States of America’ dissolved.” Is there any truth to this?

Judah P. Benjamin

   Judah P. Benjamin is one of those interesting people in history. Born in 1811 in St. Croix, in what is now the United States Virgin Islands, his parents were Sephardic Jews. In 1813, the family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and then to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1821. Benjamin enrolled in Yale College in 1825, but did not graduate, and moved on to New Orleans where he eventually worked in a mercantile business, clerked in a law firm, tutored French Creoles in English, and eventually earned a law degree, being admitted to the bar in 1832 at the age of 21. Benjamin specialized in commercial law. In 1842 Benjamin won election to the Louisiana House of Representatives, then served in a Louisiana Constitutional Convention, was appointed a United States Attorney in New Orleans, served in the Louisiana State Senate, and in 1853, was elected a United States Senator. He was twice offered a place on the United States Supreme Court but declined both times. Benjamin remained a United States Senator until February 1861. When the Senate was not in session, he tried cases before the Supreme Court. Benjamin served as a Confederate Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State, and was with Jefferson Davis as the president moved through North Carolina and South Carolina at the close of the war. Benjamin escaped, fleeing to Great Britain, and becoming one of the leading barristers in the country before retiring to Paris where he died in 1884.

   At time the delegates were meeting in Raleigh to considered secession, Benjamin was serving as the first Confederate attorney general in Montgomery, Alabama.

   J.G. de R. Hamilton, in his book Reconstruction in North Carolina, tells us that North Carolina’s ordinance “was prepared by Judah P. Benjamin” and “brought to Raleigh from Montgomery by James Hines, a North Carolinian, and delivered to Gov. Ellis, who asked Burton Craige, the member from his county, to introduce it.”[2] Hamilton does not give a source for this information. Barrett, in his history of North Carolina and the War, leaves out this little piece of information. Just how Benjamin came to draft North Carolina’s ordinance of secession seems to be somewhat of a mystery.  

John W. Ellis

Turning to Governor Ellis’s papers, we find an interesting letter from former United States Senator Thomas L. Clingman. Writing from Montgomery on May 14, 1861, Clingman tells Ellis: “I enclose you drafts of Ordinances which I think ought to be adopted at once by our convention. I got Mr. Benjamin the Attorney General to draw them up and hope they will be put through on the 20^th.”[3] In Jeffrey’s biography of Clingman, we read that Ellis sent Clingman to Montgomery after the capture of Fort Sumter. Clingman’s job? To “negotiate North Carolina’s entrance into the Confederacy.” There is no mention of the Ordinances.[4] It is possible that Ellis and Clingman discussed the matter of the Ordinance prior to Clingman’s departure from Raleigh to Montgomery. At the same time, Clingman might have taken it upon himself to visit Benjamin and ask for some guidance regarding the Ordinances, and Benjamin wrote the Ordinances and gave them Clingman who gave them to Hines who caught a train to Raleigh. This begs another question: who was James Hines? Was he just a messenger? A quick search has not produced an identity. And yet another question: did Judah P. Benjamin play a role in any other Ordinances of Secession passed by the other Southern States?

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[1] Sitterson, The Secession Movement in North Carolina, 246-47, n.103.

[2] Hamilton, Reconstruction in North Carolina, 29.

[3] Tolbert, The Papers of John W. Ellis, 2:50.

[4] Jeffrey, Thomas Lanier Clingman: Fire Eater from the Carolina Mountains, 162.  

The Unsuccessful International Escape of Jefferson Davis.

Johnston and Sherman at the Bennett Place

   On March 26, 1865, Federal general William T. Sherman met with US President Abraham Lincoln, General US Grant, and Admiral David Porter on the steamer River Queen near Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia. When Sherman asked Lincoln about what to do with Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Lincoln responded with a story: "A man once had taken the total-abstinence pledge. When visiting with a friend, he was invited to take a drink, but declined, on the score of his pledge; when his friend suggested lemonade, which was accepted. In preparing the lemonade, the friend pointed to the branch-bottle, and said the lemonade would be more palatable if he were to pour in a little brandy; when his guest said, if he could do so 'unbeknown' to him, he would not object." Sherman added "From which illustration I inferred that Mr. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, 'unbeknown' to him." (Sherman, Memoirs, 2:324-328.)

   So Lincoln wanted Davis, and probably the Confederate cabinet, to simply disappear. To catch Davis and his cabinet would present unique problems for the Lincoln administration. If the leader of the "rebellious" Southern states was captured, indicted for treason, tried, found guilty, and executed, would this not be a driving factor for the resumption of the war? Or, if Davis was tried and found not guilty, well, that would lead to all kinds of other problems.

   Three weeks later, Sherman, back in North Carolina, had just met with his Confederate counterpart, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. They had discussed the surrender of not only the Army of Tennessee, but the civil officers as well. Sherman was in Raleigh, meeting with his top lieutenants. "We discussed all the probabilities, among which was, whether, if Johnston made a point of it, I should assent to the escape from the country of Jeff. Davis and his fugitive cabinet; and some one of my general officers, either Logan or Blair, insisted that, if asked for, we should even provide a vessel to carry them to Nassau from Charleston." (Sherman, Memoirs, 351-352).

Jefferson Davis

   Johnston does not come out and say that Sherman ever offered a ship to Davis and the cabinet to expedite their escape. Or does he? Meeting at the Bennett Farm outside Durham on April 18, Johnston writes that everything was agreed to "except that General Sherman did not consent to include Mr. Davis and the officers of his cabinet in an otherwise general amnesty. Much of the afternoon was consumed in endeavors to dispose of this part of the question in a manner that would be satisfactory both to the Government of the United States and the Southern people, as well as to the Confederate president; but at sunset no conclusion had been reached, and the conference was suspended..." (Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, 403-404.) So what was satisfactory to the "Government of the United States"? The escape of Jefferson Davis? Neither Johnston or Sherman make mention of such an offer, and nothing appears in Davis's papers or in the Official Records that states such an offer was ever made. Yet, Sherman provides such a warning to John C. Breckinridge. Once the first set of terms were worked out, and sent to Andrew Johnson and Jefferson Davis, Sherman recalled telling Breckinridge "that he had better get away, as the feeling of our people was utterly hostile to the political element of the South, and to him especially, because he was the Vice-President of the United States, who had as such announced Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, duly and properly elected the President of the United States, and yet that he had afterward openly rebelled and taken up arms against the Government. . . I may have also advised him that Mr. Davis too should get abroad as soon as possible." (Sherman, Memoirs, 353.)

   We know that Davis did not "get abroad" and was captured on May 10, 1865, near Irwinville, Georgia. Breckinridge did escape, making his way through Florida to Cuba, then Great Britain, and finally Cuba. Other Confederate cabinet members who fled the county include Robert Toombs, Judah P. Benjamin, and George W. Randolph (he fled in 1864). George Davis was attempting to flee when he was captured in Key West on October 18, 1865.

   Did Davis ever know that he might have escaped on a boat out of Charleston? Unlikely. Davis really didn't really seem to want to escape in the first place, holding on to the ideal of a Southern Confederacy when everyone else had already abandoned the attempt. He could have left Charlotte on April 24, when he learned of the rejection of the first set of terms between Johnston and Sherman. He could have pressed on harder when in the state of Georgia. Others, like Breckinridge and Benjamin, were able to escape successfully. But not Davis. It almost seems that Davis wanted to be captured.