Historian Persists In Efforts To Correct Record, Honor Deceased
SALISBURY, S.C. — Many a Civil War enthusiast develops passion for his interests, but not many become a published authority, a crusader trying to do right by veterans and a sleuth involving a tale of intentionally inflated prison deaths. Mark Hughes, most recently author of The New Civil War Handbook (Savas Beatie 2009), has written five books about Union and Confederate cemeteries. The Kings Mountain, N.C., resident is not a historian by trade — he teaches electronics. After 24 years at it, he calls himself an independent researcher and authority on Confederate prisons. He’s trying to bring that authority to bear on the Department of Veterans Affairs. He wants it to list the names of soldiers buried in trenches as unknowns at Salisbury National Cemetery or allow the names to be listed at non-government expense. Hughes makes a convincing case for why the names of 3,501 “known but unknown” men were not recorded at the cemetery. Those “unknowns” include at least 47 members of the black 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Robert Livingstone (as Rupert Vincent), whose father was David Livingstone, the famous explorer. Hughes’ chronology begins on July 24, 1867, when Bvt. Brig. Gen. J.J. Dana of the Quartermaster Corps reported 3,501 known and three unknown soldiers from the Confederate prison camp were buried at Salisbury. Hughes says they comprise more than 90 percent of the prison’s dead. The government spent $4 million reinterring the bodies and creating the cemetery. Eighteen burial trenches for men who died at Salisbury were marked with head- and footstones. Dead from other sites were also buried at the site, which was established as a national cemetery in 1870. In 1868 the dead were recorded in Volume 14 of the Roll of Honor of Federal servicemen. Hughes has located the handwritten burial roster on which the roll was based at the National Archives. Someone in the Quartermaster Department altered the records in 1868 to inflate Union deaths at the prison. Hughes has seen the original report of Bvt. Col. C.W. Folsom, Inspector of National Cemeteries, that reported 5,000 deaths. That number was written over in something like crayon and changed to 12,000. Folsom’s account that the dead were buried in 13 trenches was changed to 18. Thus the printed report claimed 12,000 dead in 18 trenches. “I think the numbers were changed to make Salisbury look worse than it was,” Hughes says. “I think they were trying to prove conspiracy. They didn’t want to admit that more Confederates died in Union captivity, than Union died in Confederate captivity.” He notes that the last Salisbury prison commandant, Maj. John H. Gee, was acquitted of war crimes charges in 1866. In 1869 the Inspector General of National Cemeteries visited Salisbury, had two burial trenches opened to see if the bodies were in caskets, and from this said an estimated 11,700 men died. Congress in 1873 allocated $10,000 for a monument that was erected in 1875 and still stands honoring the 11,700 U.S. soldiers buried in the cemetery. In 1897 B.F. Booth, who had served in the 22nd Iowa Infantry, Co. I, wrote Dark Days of the Rebellion about his time at Salisbury Prison. Hughes says that Booth, who was released on Feb. 21, 1865, had copied the burial register and reported 3,800 deaths from Oct. 6, 1864, to Feb. 21, 1865. This period at the prison was hard because the small site held over 8,700 men, four times more prisoners than it could handle. There was a shortage of food and medical supplies and disease was rampant. According to the Salisbury Confederate Prison Association the death rate that had been at 2 percent rose to 28 percent and a mass burial system was initiated. Louis A. Brown, author of The Salisbury Confederate Prison, A Case Study of Confederate Military Prisons, 1861-1865 (Broadfoot 1980, 1992), also reported the lower number of deaths. “My goal is to try to get these soldiers, sailors and civilians’ graves marked,” says Hughes. While it’s possible some deaths in the barracks were not recorded in the hospital records, he knows 3,501 names were listed. The dead in the trenches included at least 53 political prisoners. Hughes says one of them was James Brown Hamilton, a Virginia Military Institute graduate who was a federal mapmaker. He died of heart disease on Sept. 23, 1864. Hughes says he asked the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2003, 2005 and 2010 to memorialize the dead. “Each time the VA gave a different excuse for not marking these graves,” he says. Most recently, this past spring, he was told “existing lists would need to be examined, other records located.” That won’t be difficult. Hughes recently found the Original Register of [the] Rebel Prison Hospital [at] Salisbury, NC, Kept by Rebel Authorities. He says it can be used to validate the names in the Roll of Honor. Hughes doesn’t think his request is unreasonable. He notes that Finn’s Point, New Jersey, and the Ashland Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot in Carlisle, Pa., have single markers with soldiers’ names. In addition, national cemeteries have group burials as recently as the Iraq War. “These are American soldiers, they need to be memorialized,” Hughes says. “Their relatives never knew what happened to them. The War Department and Inspector General’s office suppressed this hospital roster. It is time to correct this injustice.” For more information about Hughes’ efforts and his Salisbury information go to www.civilwarhandbook.com. The Salisbury Confederate Prison Association site at www.salisburyprison.org offers additional information.
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