FORT DELAWARE

The "Andersonville" of the North

by Al Benson, Jr.

Ft Delware

Fort Delaware

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter, as it is properly named, was a horrible place to have to be.  This was not, however, because the Confederates planned it that way or made it that way on purpose.  The Confederacy, with its dwindling resources, just did not have the wherewithal to do any better at Andersonville.  The South did the best with what it had to work with.  There were no planned atrocities and hardships.  That having been said, let’s take a look at Fort Delaware, one of the most notorious Yankee prison camps ever to exist. 

Fort Delaware was on Pea Patch Island, in the Delaware River.  It has been called “the Andersonville of the North—the most dreaded Union prison.”  Fort Delaware, sitting south of Philadelphia, was never intended to be a prison.  According to an article by James A. Cox in the Civil War Times for July-August 1993, Fort Delaware “had the highest death rate of any Union prison, and through a combination of dreadful location, official mismanagement, and political malice and vengeance, it managed to develop its own style of shocking, inhuman treatment.”

            

The man whom Edwin Stanton finally put in charge of the prison was Albin F. Schoepf, a Hungarian socialist who had been active in the 1848 socialist revolution in Europe.  He was one of Abe Lincoln’s socialist generals, as Lincoln had quite a number of socialists as high-ranking officers in the Union army.  Schoepf was one of them.

                     

The sleeping quarters for Confederate prisoners were nothing more than wooden sheds that offered little protection from cold winter winds.  Most Southern prisoners had almost no clothing of real warmth and, according to Cox:  “War Department policy, as expressed by the Commissary General, was ‘to provide as little clothing for them as possible.’”

               

Not only did Fort Delaware hold Confederate prisoners, but it was also “home” to a collection of political prisoners—people in the North who were arrested and held without benefit of trial, or even having specific charges brought against them.  This was a result of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus.  Many of these political prisoners were judges, businessmen, clergymen, doctors and editors—and most were not even informed as to why they were being held.  It was simply “for the good of the country.”

           
Treatment of prisoners at Fort Delaware far surpassed that of Andersonville in personal vindictiveness.  One prisoner wrote:  “Yesterday we were shoved out, robbed of our clothes and blankets…some mornings we get only three crackers, no meat; and even when a few delicacies are sent to us from home, they pilfer and take them from us.”

Practically all the prisoners complained about how little they were fed.  According to Cox, one prisoner, Randolph Shotwell, wrote:  “The bacon was rusty and slimy, the soup was slop…filled with white worms a half inch long.”  One prisoner from Georgia wrote that the food was of such poor quality and so scarce that he shrank from 140 pounds to 80 pounds during his sojourn at Fort Delaware.  Yankee money was available to buy vegetables for the prisoners, but Commissary General Hoffman “had instructed prison commanders to withhold as much food from the prisoners as possible and to use the money saved to purchase other needed items.”  Randolph Shotwell wrote of “rotten rainwater with its solid inches of tadpoles and wigglers which was our morning draught in lieu of tea or coffee.”  Not surprisingly, the prisoners, in order to survive, developed to a fine art the catching and cooking of rats!

              

Prison Commander Schoepf was paranoid about possible mass escapes and prison uprisings, so he places spies throughout the prison.  He also periodically sent “flying goon squads” into the barracks to intimidate and harass prisoners, looking for hidden weapons or other items he felt prisoners could use to further escape attempts.

           
If one were honest, which is something we can hardly expect from most of our present day “historians” and media people, he would have to say that the brutality and privation deliberately fostered at Fort Delaware was, relatively speaking, worse than anything Andersonville had to offer.

The Union had the resources to adequately care for prisoners and, motivated by malice, they refused to do so.  The South, lacking such resources, honorably did the best she could, considering the circumstances. Which side acted honorably, and which did not?  If the tribunal of history cannot answer this question, surely the Final Judge will. 

Al Benson Jr. is Editor of the Copperhead Chronicles and is a well-known author and commentator on the Southern perspective.  Write to him at P.O. Box 55, Sterlington, Lousiana 71280, or email him at Cpprhd10@aol.com.  

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