Confederate’s kin: Elmira prison camp ‘hallowed ground’

[struggle4progress]

Ray Finger
5:03 p.m. EDT August 28, 2015

... Elmira’s Civil War prison camp operated from July 6, 1864, until July 11, 1865, incarcerating a total of 12,121 Confederates. Insufficient food, extreme bouts of dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, smallpox, inadequate medical care and flooding of the Chemung River resulted in the deaths of 2,963 prisoners, a mortality rate of about 25 percent. Prisoners dubbed the camp “Hellmira” ...

Cauble’s gravestone was initially inscribed with the wrong name — that of his friend Pvt. Franklin Cooper, who survived. Cauble died of dysentery on Oct. 28, 1864, while Cooper was released July 3, 1865.

Only days after a story about the error was published in the Star-Gazette in late September 2013, the National Cemetery Administration, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, informed Tom Fagart and the Star-Gazette that the issue was going to be looked into.

In October 2014, a spokeswoman for the cemetery administration said in an email that a replacement headstone had been ordered. It was installed about a month later ...

http://www.stargazette.com/story/news/local/2015/08/28/confederate-headstone-franklin-cauble-elmira/71329476/

[Jerry442]

1. Fort Pillow. nt

[struggle4progress]

2. The civil war prison camps could be horrific

A great-great-uncle of mine, from Pennsylvania, landed in one of the confederacy's prisoner camps after being captured at Petersburg

He barely survived survived his internment and started to walk hundreds of miles home when released: he made it into the general area, and had several conversations on the way with some folk who knew him, but died before he got all the way back

[Ghost in the Machine]

3. One thing that a LOT of people don't know, even on this board, is that when they trash talk and

disrespect Confederate Soldiers, from the Grunts up to the Generals who have statues, have schools, buildings, etc., named after them... they are actually disrespecting AMERICAN SOLDIERS.

From the early 1900's through the 1940's, per Presidential Decrees, Acts from The War Department ( or Department of War ) gave Confederate Soldiers EQUAL STANDING as US Veterans. Part of these Acts are also what made Confederate Burial Grounds into National Cemeteries.

The Civil War is a dark blot on our history, but it IS part of our history and we can't change that. It *did* do some good by ending slavery in the US, but why people want to keep re-enacting it and trying to keep it alive today is beyond me.

Peace,

Ghost

[struggle4progress]

4. Not all confederate burial grounds are in national cemeteries

For example, the Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville AR seems to be maintained by the Southern Memorial Association of Washington County, whereas the nearby Fayetteville National Cemetery is a National Park Service site. Similarly, neither the confederate plot in the old Aberdeen Cemetery in MS nor the Resaca Confederate Cemetery in GA seems to be a national cemetery. I lack the time to go through the entire list of cemeteries, checking your claim, but I suspect it is simply false

The National Archives states: The federal government did not grant pensions to Confederate veterans or their dependents

A Veterans Administration history provides a slightly different take: Confederate soldiers received no federal veterans benefits until 1958, when Congress pardoned Confederate servicemembers and extended benefits to the single remaining survivor

I'm under the impression, from other sources, that both the Archives and VA are in part correct and in part incorrect. I do not think any federal pensions were ever paid to any confederate veteran: there are only about a dozen cases known of persons who claimed to be confederate veterans and survived into the 1950s; all but two died before 1958; and the actual service of those two (both of whom died in 1959) has been doubted. However, I think that about a thousand dependents of confederate veterans may have received federal pensions under the 1958 act: mostly these were widows of May-December marriages, who had as young girls wed much older men, perhaps in hopes of the security of a confederate pension from one of the states

I'm not certain what the politics behind the 1958 act were, but it is natural to suspect that it represented an attempt to soothe neo-confederate feeling as the late confederate veterans died and the civil rights movement gained strength: in 1956, for example, Georgia suddenly put the old confederate battle flag onto its state flag