I have a pretty vivid imagination, and sometimes when I am at Elkhorn Tavern or along the road between the tavern and the Pea Ridge Military Park center, I am struck by how rough and awful it must have been to be a soldier in those places during the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862. Sometimes I almost hear the roar of the cannons, see and smell the smoke from gunpowder, feel the fury of deadly shot and shrapnel and minie balls filling the air. Yet as fearsome as it must have been to face the fury of battle, I am also aware that many Civil War soldiers on both sides died not from wounds in battle, but from illnesses due to unsanitary conditions, poor nutrition and from the duress of camp life and treacherous circumstances in extended marches and campaigns.
My own great-grandfather on the Nichols side, a Union soldier, died during the Civil War, while in the hospital trying to recover from illness unrelated to battle.
One of the sites we visited in Georgia in late April this year was a Civil War site that maintains a memory of the 1860s Civil War soldiers who were prisoners of war. After spending some time in Plains, Ga., and nearby Americus, we drove northeast to Andersonville.
Camp Sumter Prison Camp, a Confederate Prisoner of War Prison at Andersonville, Ga., became one of the largest, most dreaded and notorious of all the Civil War prison camps. Duringits 14 months of existence, it housed more than 45,000 captured Union troops, some 13,000 of whom died there in the prison. Visiting the Andersonville Prison made us aware of a whole other side of the Civil War, and brought us a new sense of the sufferings endured by the soldiers during that war.
Today, the Andersonville Prison site is dedicated to an expanded mission.
It is now a National Historical Site, dedicated as a memorial to our nation’s soldiers who endured as the prisoners of war in all of our country’s wars.
As a Prisoners of War Memorial, the site hosts a Prisoners of War Museum, which includes displays and historical accounts from the prisoner of war experiences endured by our country’s soldiers in more recent wars, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts. At the Andersonville Prisoner of War Visitor’s Center, we met a few veterans who had at one time been prisoners of war. Among the visitors on hand that day were soldiers from a nearby National Guard unit. It was really interesting to listen in on the conversations between those soldiers and the prisoner of war veterans.
I was impressed with the respect the groups showed each other. The Andersonville Prison site also today hosts a national cemetery, which not only memorializes the Civil War soldiers who died there, but also is available to veterans of all generations. Andersonville is a very impressive and memorable place.
Apparently the enormous suffering at Andersonville Civil War Prison was largely due to conditions that today might be considered fairly easy to remedy: such as overcrowding, polluted water supplies, inadequate sanitary facilities, poor food and deficient medical care.
Through the years, people have harshly blamed the prison administrators, or their superior officers, for the awful situation. At the same time, one can see that the officers in charge of the prison were up against a huge challenge, faced with shortages of supplies, space and skilled help. Civil War days came before the medical discovery of the role of bacteria in causing infections and illnesses, before the invention of antibiotics and other effective germfighting medicines. So it seems right not to judge people too harshly when our perspective is from a different time when we can take for granted advanced medical resources that were not available at all back then.
From Andersonville we headed east to the Georgia coast and the Atlantic Ocean. Our destination there was St. Simons Island, a moderate-sized island off the coast from Brunswick, Ga., about 80 miles south of Savannah.
Unlike some places that overwhelmingly cater to the tourist trade, the island impressed me as an attractive residential area, with various attractive touristy things thrown in. The island played an important role in the establishment of the Georgia colony, back in the early days of our country, being the headquarters of General Oglethorpe, the colonial governor, and site of the early colonial town of Fredericksburg.
St. Simons Island also holds a significant period of our church’s history.
We are Methodists, part of the evangelical movement originated in the late 1700s under the leading of brothers John and Charles Wesley. Both were priests of the Church of England.
Before the beginnings of Methodism in England and the U.S., John Wesley was sent as a missionary from England to the new Georgia colony, to serve as a pastor in Savannah. His brother Charles Wesley, who would later become known for his hymn writing, also came to America to establish a church on St. Simons Island, and at the same time to serve as secretary to Gen. Oglethorpe. We spent several days on the island at Epworth By the Sea, a church retreat center.
◊◊◊
Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.
He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society He can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel.
net, or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 06/22/2011