During the Army of the United States’ 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana and 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia, multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were declared as “Missing in Action” (MIA) — largely due to the confusion caused by engagements with the enemy in which Union regiments were repeatedly required to charge into, retreat, regroup and resume the fight as they faced down wave after wave of Confederate troops attempting to outflank and perform end runs around the outer edges of Union lines.

Each time the cannon smoke began to clear from those battles, and many of those MIA members of the their corps, divisions or brigades found their way back to their respective regiments, senior Union officers and their clerks revised their casualty lists.

Again and again — and again.

Even so, the status of hundreds of Union soldiers remained murky, stubbornly persisting as “MIA” for days, weeks and even months after those battles had ended — until word was received from one of their comrades that those men had definitely been killed or captured by Confederate troops.

When Union soldiers were captured, they were most often taken to one of the multiple prison camps operated by the Confederacy across the nation’s south, where they were held as prisoners of war (POWs). Some, however, ended up at Confederate military hospitals. Regardless of where they were held, though, the conditions in which they lived were often abysmal and the treatment that they received from their captors was so harsh in many cases that it would later be described as criminal.

Starved and severely abused, multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry remain interred beneath the southern soil of the unmarked trench graves of the former prison camps where they had been held. Those who managed to survive were eventually released via parole or through prisoner exchanges that were arranged in accordance with the Dix-Hill Cartel or the Lieber Code. More than a few were so damaged, however, that their hearts and minds would never be the same.

Note: Prior to the Red River and Shenandoah Valley campaigns of 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were identified as fatalities on Union Army casualty rosters were men who had died from disease-related complications or had been killed or wounded in combat. None were identified as having been captured by Confederate troops. For that reason, the content in this Prisoners of War section of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story website is largely focused on what happened to the 47th Pennsylvanians who became prisoners of war in 1864 and 1865 — years in which the harsh treatment of POWs resulted in shockingly high rates of death across the Confederacy’s system of POW camps. (For information regarding the treatment of POWs during the early part of the war, see: William Best Hesseltine’s book, Civil War Prisons: A Study in Prison Psychology, and James McPherson’s book, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.)

Red River Campaign (Louisiana, 1864)

During battles that were described by Major-General Nathaniel Banks as “desperate and sanguinary,” multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were killed, wounded in action or labeled as “MIA” (missing in action) while serving with the regiment in Louisiana during the spring of 1864. By mid-May of that year, it was known for certain that seventeen of the 47th Pennsylvanians who had been labeled as “MIA” had, in fact, been captured by the enemy and were being held in captivity as POWs by the Confederate States Army at one of five locations in America’s Deep South:

• Pleasant Hill (captured Union hospital, Pleasant Hill, Louisiana)
• Camp Ford (Tyler, Texas)
• Camp Groce (Waller County, Texas)
• Camp Sumter (Andersonville, Georgia)
• Confederate Hospital (Shreveport, Louisiana)

* Note: A roster identifying the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were captured during the 1864 Red River Campaign and held as POWs in Georgia, Louisiana and/or Texas will be posted as this section of the website for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is expanded.

Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign (Virginia, 1864)

During the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on 19 October 1864 — an intense, prolonged fight that ended in a major Union victory that was later described by President Abraham Lincoln as “splendid work,” the equivalent of roughly two full companies of men from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were killed, wounded in action or labeled as “MIA” (missing in action). As the casualty figures were tallied and updated, it became clear that twenty-five or more of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were still missing weeks after the battle were not, in fact, deceased or MIA. They had been captured by the enemy.

While a few were sent to Confederate prisons in Richmond or Danville, Virginia, more than one hundred miles away from the scene of that battle, the majority were taken more than three hundred miles south to the Carolinas or Georgia, where they were held as prisoners of war at the worst of the worst prison camps operated by the Confederacy. The prisons where 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were held during this phase of the regiment’s service to the nation were:

• Camp Sumter (Andersonville, Georgia)
• Danville Military Prison (Danville, Virginia)
• Florence Stockade (Florence, North Carolina)
• Libby and Belle Isle Prisons (Richmond, Virginia)
• Salisbury Prison (Salisbury, North Carolina)

The first of the ten 47th Pennsylvanians to die at Salisbury, Private Franklin P. Rhoads of Company B succumbed to disease-related complications on 15 November 1864. Slowly wasting away from starvation, Private Isaac Metcalf of Company F then died there on Christmas Day of that same year. Three days later, Private Henry Schlagle of Company I, who was sick with catarrh and also badly weakened by starvation, lost his own heroic struggle to survive.

One of the most poignant final outcomes of all, though, may be that of Sergeant William Fry of Company C. After managing to survive his imprisonment in Georgia, William made it home to the arms of his mother only to die at the age of twenty-eight, at her house in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, just weeks after his release by the Confederacy. His untimely death was a direct result of the terrible treatment that he had received at Andersonville.

The ordeal for Private Joseph C. Miller of Company A and other Union men continued, however, even after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate troops at Appomattox on 9 April 1865. Released three days after the Confederacy’s capitulation, Joseph Miller may very well have been the last of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers to have been freed from captivity.

* Note: A roster identifying the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were captured during the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign and held as POWs in Georgia, North Carolina and/or Virginia will be posted as this section of the website for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is expanded.

 

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