Thomas M. Coombs Diary

Mar - Sep 1864

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[March 1864]

	25	Morgan's officers and 278 officers from Camp Chase left Columbus for Ft. Delaware per Cresline R. R., through Cresline, Lucasville, Masillon, etc., to Pittsburg.
	26	Changed cars and left Pittsburg at 10 A.M. Officers in Comd. of the guards (Col. Webber, Maj. Johnson, Capt. Norton, Capt. Henly, Lt. Parks) clever gents and very kind to self, Cunningham, Taylor & Croxton. We were separated from the prisoners on leaving Columbus and traveled all the way in the Carriage with the U.S. officers. Passed over the Allegheny Mts., through the wildest and most picturesque scenery, through a tunnel at the summit of the mountains 1� miles long. Altoona at the Eastern base of the mountains, thence to Columbia, on the Susquehanna, traveled all night, telegraph being down, and
	27	Large crowd collected at the wharf in Philadelphia to witness our transfer from the train to the steamer in the Delaware River, upon which we embarked for Ft. Delaware, 45 mi. down the river, where we arrived at 8 P.M. Maj. Johnson sent us four to Gen'l. A. Schoepf's office, and the Gen'l. gave us a sleeping apartment for the night at his office.
	28	Gen. Schoepf gave us a Parole of Honor and the liberties of the island, a good comfortable room and all the necessaries.
	29	Col's Coleman, Morgan, Ward & Tucker paroled to the Island. Col. Duke and Gen'l Jeff Thompson same.
	30	Renewed our petition to Washington, warmly endorsed by Gen'l Schoepf.
	31	Maj. MacCreary's father came here with permission for him to take the oath, which he refused. Cunningham took the Oath of Allegiance. Henry Caxton arrived and went to Washington to get release for his son Jo, & Taylor and Self.
Apr.	1st	Beautiful Spring Morning.
	2	Release came from Washington yesterday for Cunningham, and he took the Oath of Allegiance, but remains with us for the present, voluntarily. Gen'l. Schoepf & Capt. Ahl very kind and accommodating to us.
	5	Cunningham left us this morning for Zanesville, Ohio, via Phila.

		Until about the 10th of May we were comfortably fixed. Taylor, Croxton & Self had a nice room inside the Fort, second floor, South side. Take long walks all around the Island. Mess with Lt. Walter, Sarg. W. Cunningham, Sarg. A. Portser, Racy, Vanfield & Roast Beef, Coffee & Tea, Vegetables, Steak, Bakers & Corn Bread, Butter & Milk.
May	10	About this time, Gen'l. Schoepf commenced making room for the officers captured at the Wilderness, & moved into rooms adjoining ours, Duke, Vance, Thompson, Dick & Charlton Morgan, Gibson, Ward, Tucker &c.
	17	Gen'l. Johnson & Steward arrived and we gave our room up to them and took another adjoining.
	23	Applied for a transfer to Camp Chase. Gen'l. Schoepf offered to give us a nice room outside the Fort on the extreme North end of the Island in the same building with the hospital officers and surgeons. Accepted the change. Withdrew the application for transfer and moved to the cottage. Got along fine.
	31	Lt. Howard, 2nd North Carolina, came to room with us.
June	2	Col. Wm. Hoffman, Comy. Gen. Prison arrived.
	3	Our paroles recalled by order of Col. Hoffman, and we were again moved inside the Fort and into the same building we formerly occupied. In rooms all around us are Gen's. Johnston, Vance, etc.
	4	Howard had a difficulty with C. H. Morgan.
	6	Moved out of the Fort into a Sibley tent, where we were doing excellently.
	13	Croxton received a release and left for home.
	22	Frank Arthur came into the mess.
	24	Moved out of the Sibley tent into wall tent under the shed.
	27	Lt. Alexander came into the mess. Sleeps in Spears tent.
July	4	Salute of 35 guns from the Fort. Ice cream, Cakes & Whisky � all in a good way. Taylor intoxicated by 11 P.M.
	5	Howard, after proving himself a dishonest and dishonorable man, acknowledged his fraud in claiming to be an officer, and we made him leave the mess. He is now in another tent with Bush & Squires among the galvanized privates.
Sept.	2	Arthur received his release. Taylor and I loaned him $10 to go home on, and he solemnly promised to go to Washington and personally apply for our release.

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Notes:

The transfer was authorized 18 March. Official Records, Series 2, 6: 1076. Perhaps still smarting from Morgan's escape, the authorities sent the prisoners due north from Columbus, then east, well away from friendly territory below the Ohio River. The towns of Crestline and Massillon endure, but Lucasville has become simply Lucas, probably to avoid confusion with another town south of Columbus. Return.

None of the Union officers identified. However, Basil Duke mentions in his memoirs a Major Johnson on General Heintzelman's staff who escorted him to Fort Delaware from Camp Chase. Johnson showed the Rebel Colonel much hospitality, sharing brandy, sandwiches and cigars en route, and taking him out for dinner at the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia. Such courtesy to a Confederate officer was deemed by some excessive. The native of Boston, not otherwise identified, was, he confessed later, "under a hotter fire on your account than I ever saw in the field." Duke says that Major Johnson returned to Fort Delaware two or three weeks later with more prisoners, so he may be the same officer to whom Tom refers. Duke, Reminiscences of General Basil W. Duke, C.S.A. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1911), 366-370.

Col Webber, Capt Norton, Capt Henly, and Lt Parks remain phantoms. Return.

Hockersmith places Capt W. R. Cunningham in Cell 21 of the second range at the Columbus penitentiary. Return.

Captain Taylor was most likely Samuel Burks Taylor (see above), who does appear in Fort Delaware records, but among the prisoners in Columbus was also a J. N. Taylor of Cos G & H, 10th Cavalry. Return.

Joseph Henry Croxton (1841-1916), a Lieutenant in Co E, 8th Cavalry. His brother John T., then a colonel in the Union army, had visited him in the penitentiary the previous August. Official Records, Series 2, 6: 668. Joe was active in the United Confederate Veterans after 1900. Return.

From the exterior Fort Delaware's gray, granite walls look much as they did when Tom was there. The five-sided masonry structure, built between 1848 and 1859, replaced an earlier fortification on Pea Patch Island. Advances in artillery led the army to upgrade the batteries in the 1890s, filling the southern half of the building with concrete emplacements which obliterated the rooms where Tom and the other Kentucky officers were quartered. The first prisoners of war had arrived in July 1861. Before the last was released in January 1866, more than 33,000 Southern soldiers (and not a few civilians) were confined on the island. Following Gettysburg the total reached 13 thousand inmates, but by the time the Kentuckians arrived transfers, exchanges, releases and deaths had reduced the population to around 9 thousand. Abandoned by the military after World War II, the fort was taken over by the Delaware State Park system. A dedicated staff, assisted by enthusiastic volunteers and members of the Fort Delaware Society, works to preserve the fort and presents polished living history during the summer months.

See W. Emerson Wilson, Fort Delaware in the Civil War (Delaware City?: Fort Delaware Society, n.d.) Nancy Travis Keene, "Confederate Prisoners of War at Fort Delaware," Delaware History, 13: 1-27, reprinted in pamphlet form by Fort Delaware Society. Return.

The commandant, Albin Francisco Schoepf (1822-1886, Brig Gen, USV), who trained as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, had joined Kossuth in the unsuccessful Hungarian revolution of 1848. After serving for a time with the Ottoman army, he came to the United States. His field duty had included Perryville, but he was not successful in combat. Duke characterizes him as "a fine, stalwart, kindly old Hungarian." Reminiscences, 371.

Return.

Among the Kentuckians' neighbors was the Rev. Dr. Isasc W. F. Handy, a political prisoner, who mentioned a brief meeting with Tom and his companions, Cunningham, Croxton, and Taylor, but he found them uncongenial and standoffish. He was under the mistaken impression that Tom was a nephew of Gen. Leslie Coombs. Handy kept a journal, which he published after the war with the formidable title: United States Bonds; or Duress by Federal Authority: A Journal of Current Events during an Imprisonment of Fifteen Months at Fort Delaware (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), 345-346, 356. Return.

Col William Walker Ward had commanded the 9th Tennessee Cavalry in Morgan's division. Return.

Gen Meriwether Jefferson Thompson (1826-1876), a former mayor of Saint Joseph, Missouri, had led a band of partisans known as "the swamp rats" in the Trans-Mississippi. He had been captured 22 Aug 1863 in Arkansas. Some of Thompson's poems and prison observations have been published in pamphlet form by the Fort Delaware Society.

Fifteen of Tom's fellow POWs posed for a group portrait in May, 1864. Included were several officers from the raid: Dick and Charlton Morgan, Basil Duke, Cicero Coleman, Hart Gibson, Joseph Tucker, and W. W. Ward, as well as Robert B. Vance and Jeff Thompson, and the Rev. Dr. Handy. Unfortunately, Tom was not present for the photo session. See Holland Thompson, PhD, ed., The Photographic History of The Civil War, Volume 7, Prisons and Hospitals (New York: Review of Reviews, 1911), 20-21. A copy of the picture, complete with names of the sitters, recently came up for sale on e-bay. Thanks to Rob Morgan for passing along the image, which can be seen here.

Return.

E. R. McCreary, a physician of Madison County, Kentucky. DAB Return.

Sic. Croxton. Return.

Capt George W. Ahl not identified. Some of his weekly reports to Gen. Schoepf on conditions at Fort Delaware made it into the Official Records. Tom's favorable impression was at odds with that of many of Captain Ahl's charges, who regarded him as a martinet. See Speer, 163. Return.

None of Tom's messmates identified. They seemed to have fared better than some other prisoners, according to the following account by a Virginia artillery officer, who spent some weeks confined at Fort Delaware in 1862.

For breakfast we had a cup of poor coffee without milk or sugar, and two small pieces of bread. For dinner we had a cup of greasy water misnamed soup, a piece of beef two inches square and half an inch thick, and two slices of bread. At supper the fare was the same as at breakfast. This was exceedingly light diet. Some of the officers behaved disagreeably; and eight or ten of us, principally Virginians, associated ourselves together for mutual protection, and formed a mess of our own. We contrived to make some additions to our diet at the Sutler's store. When we had no money the Sutler would take watches or other valuables in pledge, and let us have the provisions.
� Francis W. Dawson, Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 73.

Return.

Robert B. Vance (1828-1899, Brig Gen CSA) had been captured in January at Cosby Creek in North Carolina. He was paroled in March 1865. Confederate Military History, 351. Return.

Charlton and Dick Morgan made a favorable impression on the Rev. Handy, who wrote, "The two Morgans are sprightly, dashing young men, soldierly in their bearing, of easy manners, and quite sensible and communicative." "Had a pleasant conversation with Charlton Morgan, whom I find to be a very gentlemanly and affable person." Handy, 361, 375.

Though Charlton led a modest life in Lexington after the war, his eldest son, Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945), who was named for the brother killed at Lebanon in 1863, was the 1933 Nobel laureate for research in genetics. Hodges, 158-160. Return.

Capt Hart Gibson was an Assistant Adjutant General on John Hunt Morgan's staff.

Return.

Edward "Allegheny" Johnson (1816-1873, USMA '38, Maj Gen CSA), a Kentucky veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, was a division commander who had been captured at Spotsylvania's "bloody angle" 12 May. Confederate Military History, 4: 611-612.

Return.

George Hume Steuart (1828-1903, USMA '48, Brig Gen CSA), a Marylander, was also captured at Spotsylvania, where he led a brigade under Johnson. Official Records, Series 1, 36: 1030. They were soon exchanged. Confederate Military History, 2: 167-169. Return.

Fort Delaware records list a 1st Lt William Howard of the 2nd South Carolina in the hospital Nov 1864. However, State records show William and William L (either the same person or maybe cousins) enlisting as a private 18 Apr 1861 in Co F, 4th SC Infantry, a regiment which was disbanded after a year. Return.

William Hoffman (1808?-1884, USMA '29, later brevet Brig Gen, USA) was Commissary General of Prisons, having overall responsibility for the care of Confederate prisoners. Return.

Named for its inventor, Henry Hopkins Sibley (1816-1886, later an unsuccessful Confederate general), the Sibley tent was a tall, conical construction which could house a dozen soldiers with their equipment, bearing a remarkable resemblence to the tipi developed by the Native Americans of the Great Plains. It would have been no hardship to live under canvas during the summer. Image from The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War, Plate 174 No. 7. Return.

Possibly the Frank Arthur (1843- �) from Nansemond County, Virginia, who had been captured at Gettysburg as a private. He was confined for 14 months at Point Lookout and Fort Delaware. While in prison, he was elected a second lieutenant, so he would have been transferred to officer's quarters. Confederate Military History, 4: 705. But see below, 11 Feb 1865. Return.

Four lieutenants named Alexander appear in Fort Delaware records. Return.

Solomon Spears (or Speers) was recorded as a 1st Lt of Co A, 4th (or 8th) Kentucky Cavalry. Return.

Handy noted, "About 600 bluecoats have been constantly parading, both inside and outside of the Fort, with banners and music; and 35 guns were fired." Handy, 469. The custom of celebrating the nation's birthday with an artillery salute is still observed on U.S. military posts, but now with 50 guns, the number of States in the Union having grown some since 1864. Return.

Bush not identified. Return.

Fort Delaware records list a Henry Squires from Virginia, whom officials thought an unsavory character, noting that his "desire to take the oath a mere ruse to get off" and that he "belongs to a band of villainous rascals and guerrillas across the river." Return.

Although many Confederates held to their cause even after Appomatox, a number of Rebel prisoners were persuaded to see the error of their ways and renounced the Confederacy and were enlisted in the Union Army. The change of allegiance was called "galvanizing" in reference to the newly developed process in which metal was given a protective coating. They were not popular among their former comrades. Return.