I thought some of you might be interested in my slim connection to the topic of this book. My great grandfather was one of the prisoners. I shared this material with family and friends.
There is a short paragraph in the book about my mother’s grandfather, James McMichael, a Confederate prisoner. Below is a rough quote from the book:
This new ethos of retaliation came to the forefront during the summer of 1864 during the Union bombardment of Charleston. Starting on June 14, 1864, Confederate officials brought fifty high-ranking Union prisoners from Macon to Charleston to, as the ‘Mercury’ put it, “share in the pleasures of the bombardment. In that portion of the city most exposed the enemy’s fire.” Union officials quickly cried foul. “I must... protest against your action in thus placing defenseless prisoners of war in a position exposed to constant bombardment,” wrote Gen. John G. Foster to his Confederate opposite. “It is an indefensible act of cruelty.” In retaliation, Foster had requested that “an equal number of rebel officers of equal rank may be sent to me, in order that may place them under the enemy’s fire as long as our officers are exposed in Charleston.” The imprisoned Union soldiers were held inside the city, and Confederate prisoners were near the Union battery on Morris Island. Many of them believed that they have been brought there as part of a reopening of prisoner exchange, only to discover that they were being used as human shields.
Captured at Spotsylvania in 1864, Confederate James McMichael rejoiced at the news that he was being sent from Fort Delaware to Charleston, assuming that within days he could return to his home in central Georgia. “This is retaliation in the extreme,” McMichael recorded in his diary when he learned the real purpose behind the voyage. Miraculously, prisoner casualties on both sides proved remarkably low during this siege, despite heavy shelling, After six and half weeks, by mutual agreement the original fifty prisoners on each side were exchanged, while the remainder were relocated. Union prisoners went to Columbia and Florence, and Confederate prisoners went to Fort Pulaski, before returning to Fort Delaware. While the use of prisoners of war in Charleston Harbor proved exceptional, it revealed how the treatment of prisoners had changed in 1864.
