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| A.J. Klapp’s drawing of a deadline shooting at Andersonville (Brown University Library) |
Before the
word deadline became synonymous with getting something done by a specific time,
it was associated with a deadly feature of Civil War prisons. A captive crossing the deadline risked death, and there are instances of guards on both
sides shooting them.
The deadline
was intended to prevent the prison’s growing population from getting too close
to the stockade wall, making escape more difficult. It was also supposed to
reduce fraternization and trading between the prisoners and guards, according
to the National Park Service.
Andersonville National Historic Site on Sunday marked the 160th anniversary of the
completion of the deadline at the site (April 7, 1864). Stockade commander
Capt. Henry Wirz had made this a priority.
The light
railing was made from posts 3 to 4 feet long and driven into the ground.
Horizontal pieces of wood topped the design, which was roughly 18-19 feet inside
the stockade wall. Confederate guards in sentry boxes kept a sharp eye for POWs
who extended any part of their body past the deadline. (Not all camps had such
features).The first
Union POW to die at Andersonville for crossing the deadline was Caleb Coplan
(Copeland), a young Ohioan shot just two days after it was completed.
The prisoner
was wandering the northeast corner of the stockade, apparently in search of
material to patch his shelter or clothing, wrote William Marvel in
“Andersonville: The Last Depot.” (Photo at left courtesy of John Banks’ Civil War Blog)
“Something under the dead line caught his eye — a scrap of
flannel, some said — and he ducked under the line to retrieve it. The guard
brought his cumbersome old smoothbore to his shoulder and let fly with a charge
of buck-and-ball. The range was too short to miss, and the .75-caliber ball
bored through Coplan’s breast near the heart. Onlookers carried him to the
hospital tents a few yards away, where he died the next day — the first man
killed at the dead line.” (Photo below of his grave at Andersonville courtesy of Kevin Frye.)
There would be more to come, at Andersonville and other prisons. Archaeology at Camp
Lawton near Millen, Ga., has uncovered two Confederate bullets possibly fired
at captives.
Those who
have researched these prisons express caution about try to tabulate the
number of shootings at the deadline.
Prisoners often
exaggerated the number; at Andersonville this claim amounted to hundreds. “Sometimes this was done on purpose and sometimes they
were simply mistaken or remember incorrectly,” says Teri A. Surber, park guide
at Andersonville.
Regardless of where they occurred, shootings at the deadline had a profound psychological impact on POWs.
Surber and Michael Gray, a history professor and author of “Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered,” said Union prisoners might receive
more pension money by showing they suffered during confinement. There was an
incentive to lie about being a prisoner or witnessing horrific incidents, they
say.
Bob Crickenberg, president of the Friends of Point Lookout (a Union
prison in Maryland), said people should be leery of hearsay stories told years after the war,
particularly those that begin with, “I was told”, “I heard,” or “it’s been said.”
“Unless a
prisoner was there and was an eyewitness to the shooting, and there were many
witnesses, should (a story) be taken as truth. Kind of like all those folks
that said Sherman burned their farms when they were miles out of the way when
he came through.”
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| Was this .57-caliber bullet fired at a POW at Camp Lawton? (Georgia Southern U.) |
Gray notes that in the last two years of the war, prisoners were often
manned by older, extremely young or disabled soldiers and training was an
issue. “You are going to
send the best men to the front.”
Between the
skill of the guards and the desperation of prisoners, there are documented
cases of shootings at the deadline or elsewhere in a camp. Firm numbers are
impossible to ascertain, but here’s a look at several, including Elmira, Camp
Lawton and Point Lookout:
ANDERSONVILLE/CAMP SUMTER (Georgia –
Confederate camp)
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| A.J. Riddle photo of prisons in August 1864 (Library of Congress) |
At Andersonville alone, nearly 13,000 men died over 14 months – an
average of more than 30 a day in that span. (Overall, 30,000 Union and 26,000
Confederate soldiers died in captivity during the Civil War). A relative few
were shot by guards.
“Drawings
of men being shot at the deadline were widely reprinted in Northern newspapers,
and today, the term is almost synonymous with Andersonville prison,” according
to the NPS.
Surber said
there are eight documented cases of a guard shooting a prisoner.. A firm number will likely never be known.
“The
only time guards shot at prisoners was when they crossed the deadline or if
someone near them crossed it. There is an instance where a man reached over the
line to get something, and the guard accidentally shot the man sleeping next to
him,” the park guide says.
(If someone
had a gunshot wound from a battle, they were usually listed as having died of
“wounds.”)
“One
confirmed shooting that I would say was the (wounding) of a man the
prisoners called ‘Chickamauga.’ Robert Kellogg and several others wrote about
the incident in their diaries or memoirs and also testified about it during the
(Henry) Wirz trial. Another is Pvt. William
Stewart, 9th Minnesota Infantry, whose cause of death is
recorded as ‘gunshot.’”
During the
trial, prisoner George Gray testified that Wirz himself shot Stewart and took
some money from him. Wirz (left) denied anything to do with Stewart. “There were
rumors that guards were given a 30-day furlough for shooting a
prisoner, but there is no actual evidence of that,” Surber says, adding there is no evidence Wirz shot prisoners.
Albert Harry
Shatzel of the 1st Vermont Cavalry wrote that he saw a shooting at
the deadline.
“One of the
poor Boys shot dead by Guard while geting a cup of watter,” Shatzel wrote,
according to Civil War blogger John Banks. “The Ball passed through his head.
He stuck his head under the Dead Line to get some watter but he will never go
there again. Dam the laws of such men as those are hear for they consider it an
honor to murder a man …all in all they are not to blame for they a Furlough of
35 days for every man they kill.”
Surber
provided a list of the rare successful escapes at Andersonville.
None of the 33
dug out from the inside; they were already outside or on a work detail when
they made a break for freedom.
“The answer to how many were shot while trying to escape is fairly
easy,” Surber says. “None, as far as we know. All eight of these men were shot
for crossing the deadline and were inside the prison. Of course, it is possible
that someone could have been shot while trying to escape, as would be the
practice of the day, but there is no way to know for certain.”
(Photo above, re-creation of POWs arriving at Camp Sumter / NPS)
CAMP LAWTON (Georgia – Confederate
camp)
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| POW Robert Knox Sneden’s map shows deadline and sentry boxes (Library of Congress) |
Camp Lawton
operated for about six weeks in the fall of 1864. Prisoners were sent from
Andersonville amid worries Union raiders would try to liberate the camp. Of
10,000 troops held at Lawton, at least 750 Federal soldiers died.
Ryan McNutt,
director of the Camp Lawton archaeological project at Georgia Southern
University, said historical sources are not complete enough to come up with a
full count of POWs shot by guards.
“As ever, there are confused and
scattered references,” he tells the Picket. “(POW John) McElroy states that he
couldn’t recall anyone being shot at Lawton for crossing the deadline, and he
raised it as a curiosity since every other camp he was at had at least a few
instances of executions by guards. However, Cpl. Aldrich said, ‘Once in a while
the guards would shoot a poor fellow just to keep his hand in it, still, there
was not as much shooting as at Andersonville. One poor fellow was shot within
10 feet of my tent one night and he was not within 10 feet of the deadline.’”
John K.
Derden, author and professor emeritus of East Georgia College, said while there
are diary accounts mentioning shootings, he found only one incident that was
seemingly corroborated. Regardless, there were fewer shootings than at
Andersonville.
James Vance
wrote in his diary for Nov. 6, 1864). “2 men shot 1 killed. The first ones.”
Sgt. Amos Yeakle wrote in his diary the same day, “There was one shot dead by
the guard and one wounded for getting over the dead-line.”
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| Work more than a decade ago at Confederate barracks area (GSU) |
Derden,
author of “The World’s Largest Prison: The Story of Camp Lawton,” contends
prisoners might hear a guard firing to clear a musket and assume the round was
meant for a Federal soldier.
“As for the
climate in the prison, I believe that things were a bit less fractious because
of the lack of overcrowding, the water situation that allowed prisoners to
bathe and even swim, and (at least initially) the somewhat better food supply.
Also, Commandant Vowles was generally well liked by the prisoners as opposed to
their bitter attitudes toward Wirz at Camp Sumter.”
Regarding the deadline, archaeology seems to indicate about a
30-foot clear space between shebang remains and the wall, says Derden.
McNutt said
students have recovered at least two Confederate bullets that may have been
fired at the inside of the Lawton stockade. The team in early 2023 found a
poorly cast ball, likely fired from a
Springfield Model 1842 percussion cap musket (photo below, courtesy of Camp Lawton project).
“Produced in large numbers, and floating around most of the
arsenals in the South, these were still used despite the lack of accuracy and
range in both the front lines and on the home front by militia. With a maximum
range of 365 meters, and an average effective range from 90 to 275 meters, the
location of the ball is well within range of the guard towers. And while most
of the POWs at Camp Lawton recalled few instances of guards shooting POWs, our
fired musket ball, along with other fired rounds from previous work inside the
stockade, is a sobering reminder that Lawton still had many ways to die,” the
professor writes.
Students led by Lance Greene, his predecessor,
in 2010 found a spent .57-caliber bullet at the stockade. The round “has clear
signs of rifling from being fired: deformation on the tip seems to show it only
striking sand, though this doesn’t preclude it having impacted a human,” McNutt
says
Later analysis showed three groves and a
right-hand twist indicating it was probably fired from a Pattern 1853
Enfield rifled musket. “Deformation on the nose matches experimental
archaeology of impacts into soft surfaces, like sand or loamy soil,” according
to McNutt.
ELMIRA (New York – Union camp)
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| Confederate POWs at Elmira (Library of Congress) |
Elmira did not have a deadline, even though it was a stockade prison.
The camp was dubbed “Hellmira” by prisoners because of its 24 percent mortality
rate. Gray said there are records of a Union guard shooting a Confederate
prisoner.
According to the Star Gazette newspaper, Granville Garland
shot A.P. Potts of the 38th Georgia Infantry during a July 31, 1864,
disturbance. Potts survived.
Inmates at
Elmira weathered hunger, illness and melancholia and, even worse, exposure to
the cold weather, according to the National Park Service.
POINT
LOOKOUT (Maryland – union camp)
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| (Library of Congress) |
The overcrowded prison saw 4,000 Confederate prisoners
succumb to various causes, especially disease. Some were killed by guards,
according to experts and histories. About 52,000 Union soldiers went through
the prison.
The camp’s deadline was a ditch inside the prison approximately 15 feet
from the parapet wall. The ditch was a foot wide by a foot deep.
Official records show African-American guards, some formerly
enslaved, sometimes shot prisoners for crossing the deadline or trying to
escape, says Gray. The prison is known for its racial tension.
“One
commanding officer claimed that the black guards were more zealous than the
white when it came to enforcement of prison regulations and were apt to fire
first while calling for the corporal of the guard,” says Crickenberger.
He estimates 19 prisoners were shot and killed or wounded by
white and black guards between
November 1863 and August 1864 alone. Prisoners reported that there were
instances where guards fired at prisoners without inflicting casualties. (Photo, Friends of Point Lookout)
“They shot
frequently but missed more often than they hit,” Crickenberger says.
“Regardless of the accuracy of the guard, such incidents kept prisoners on
their toes making them wary and continually fearful of being shot either night
or day.”
A Confederate prisoner drew notable watercolors of life at the prison, including interactions with guards. It should be noted that black POWs held at Andersonville faced discrimination from friend and foe alike.
The friends
group has
helped restore the fort, the southwest corner of the stockade and assists with
living histories and demonstrations of camp life.
ROCK
ISLAND (Illinois-Iowa – Union camp)
The deadline at Rock Island consisted of
a series of white stakes (left, photo Rock Island Arsenal Museum) that were illuminated by lanterns at night, according
to the NPS.
long, 900 feet wide and 12 feet high. Sentry boxes were placed every 100 feet.
During the 20 months the prison was open, 1,960 prisoners
and 171 Union guards died.
The North had reduced rations in retaliation for the
treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville. Conditions at Federal prisons
often were deplorable.
