Fort Delaware, Delaware by Seth Eastman
Civil war fans often overlook Fort Delaware.
It rises out of the mist of the Delaware River dividing Delaware from New Jersey. The fort is a row of granite buildings on the very slight elevation of Pea Patch Island–so named because a ship ran aground there two centuries ago and dumped a cargo of peas.
The war of 1812 raised concern in Federal City (Washington D.C.) about the ability to guard Philadelphia from British warships sailing up the Delaware River.
They wanted to be prepared for the next.
As it happened, the next war was the Civil War and the Confederates didn’t have a Navy that could threaten Philadelphia.
Perfect for prisoners of war
But Fort Delaware was a sturdy facility, reachable only by boat. The perfect place for prisoners of war. It became known as “the Andersonville of the North.”
Or, as it also was called: “the Fort Delaware Death Pen.”
30,000 soldiers passed through in the five years the north and south battled. Many Confederates were housed there following the Battle of Gettysburg, fought 150 miles west.
Between July and December 1863, 1,222 prisoners died . Some perished from their wounds, many from disease and a handful drowned trying to escape.
It wasn’t easy.
Danger from the River
The Delaware River flows swift around the island prison. To the west, boggy patches make up an estuary down to the water. Most escapees headed east, usually floating–not 
really swimming– to safety. A ring of Confederate sympathizers waited across the river on the eastern shore and would spirit them into Maryland and thence south to Virginia.
If they survived.
Many did not.
The average death rate? 206 men a month; 6 per day over the course of the war.
An Inconvenient Gamble
I placed my An Inconvenient Gamble hero, Charles Moss, at Fort Delaware because he needed to meet up with prisoners from Anderson County, Texas. I learned about the prison fort from an insightful book: Unlikely Allies: Fort Delaware’s Prison Community in the Civil War by Dale Fetzer and Bruce Mowday.
Entertainment
A thorough account of the prison years, Unlikely Allies includes information about every day life for the prisoners. They had a prisoner band that drilled in the courtyard and even a small store. Among the items sold by the sutler: ginger snaps (25 cents a pound), hair dye ($1 a bottle), soused pig’s feet (15 cents each) and clothing items.
P
laying cards useful for gambling and passing time, by the way, cost seventy-five cents a pack (linen back) or thirty-five cents if they were Steamboats–cards for poker.
By 1864, prisoners organized themselves into behavior more in keeping with their Southern sensibilities, according to Fetzer and Mowday.
They had a chess club, debating society, theatrical club and a poetry society. Artists made art, jewelers made and sold jewelry, and barbers created up-to-date hairstyles.
The Army garrison stationed at Pea Patch Island began a fund raising campaign and in 1863, they broke ground to build a chapel. They formed a Christian Society and began prayer meetings.
Dedication
The local Episcopal bishop, the Right Reverend Alfred Lee spoke at the ceremony marking the start of construction.
“Lee alluded to the religious foundations that all Americans shared, even in the midst of civil strife, and he fervently prayed that the foundation they were setting would be a symbol of the foundations that war had ravished. The Trinity Chapel was to be a Union chapel in every sense of the word. Lee pointed out that people of all religious creeds were welcome in God’s chapel and the 800-seat edifice would serve as a symbol of peace and reunion for all who worshipped there. Despite the formality of the military program, the troops and other attendees took comfort in the thought that this symbolic act offered hope, forgiveness and peace.”
Fort Delaware still was a prison camp. Men still suffered and died. But I like to think that some found the forgiveness, peace and hope they needed to enter whichever world awaited them.
Just like my Charles Moss.
Tweetables:
Was any Union POW camp as bad as Andersonville? Click to Tweet
Why would a prisoner need hair dye and soused pig’s feet? Click to Tweet
Can’t click to tweet but my great grandfather, a Union sergeant, was in a POW camp in Clinton Mississippi. According to affidavits in his pension file, he was a strong scrappy sort of man. The prison camp broke him. He came out sallow and with lifelong bowel issues that eventually killed him at a young age. It was not until after he died that a pension was granted to his widow and the the children still in the home. They ended up losing the family farm and Thomas’ widow Hannah remarried a childless man to provide for the children.
Wow, tough.
The need for haircuts, playing cards, and such brings to mind a point about the reaction of individuals to capture and incarceration. There is a definite ‘speciation’ that occurs, and is very hard to predict in an individual.
First, there is the person who will accept the immediate situation, and try to make the best of it. He’ll help – to a very limited degree – in others’ escape attempts. Usually his help is limited to looking the other way.
Next is the person who will help others attempt escape, but who won’t actively attempt himself, unless the chances are very good. It’s a limited form of accommodation, with a degree of rebellion that’s largely aimed at preserving a self-image that can still include what the individual defines as valour. These individuals can be very important to organized mass escapes from POW camps – they assist in the digging of tunnels, the dispersion of sand, and the production of forged documents and civilian clothes, without the ‘need’ to break out.
Finally, there’s the serial escaper, who will make multiple attempts. William Ash, in his book “Under the Wire”, describes being released from solitary confinement at Stalag Luft III, in Sagan, Silesia. Passing a wagon being used to remove garbage, he jumped in and burrowed his way beneath the stinking offal. He was of course caught, and sent straight back to solitary.
Douglas Bader was another of these – shot down in 1941, he made so many escape attempts that he was eventually sent to Colditz, a medieval castle thought to be escape-proof (it wasn’t). What makes Bader’s story all the more remarkable is that he had two artificial legs.
This isn’t a value judgment on character. We all have our own level of tolerance for captivity and loss of freedom, and the ones who can accept, with quiet philosophy, a term in the bag are probably the mentally healthiest specimens of all.
These are interesting insights (as usual), Andrew. I think I’d probably be an enabler–helping others escape but not brave enough to try it myself. When I’ve read accounts of Anderson and Waite, along with the Vietnam POW accounts, I find myself wondering if I’d like to spend some years in solitude with books to read and time to think.
Then I remember freedom was gone, beatings were common, food was miserable and the threat of death was constant and I think, “I’ll keep the current chaotic life.”
But I often wonder if I would be able to mentally accommodate myself to accept the situation and make the best of it, which has been my way over the years. I hope I never have to find out!
Thanks for your comments.
I enjoyed, well, not enjoyed exactly, but appreciated, this information, from you, Michelle, and from Andrew as well. All the facts are fascinating. I have not run into anything about this prison fort yet, so I will look it up to add to my Civil War Info for our school.
It seems to be midway between DC and Philadelphia; I’ll need to look it up next time I’m on the east coast. I find it interesting we know all sorts of things about Andersonville–the prison run by the CSA–but nothing about the prisoner of war camps run by the Union Army. It was tough all around.
Curiously, I’m reading a history of World War I, now, and the Germans were hurrying to turn themselves into the Allies so they would survive the war!