Camp Lawton

Camp Lawton - "The World's Largest Prison" by former Georgia D.N.R. Historian Billy Townsend

Camp Lawton, a prison stockade built to relieve the crowded conditions of other Confederate prisons, was constructed late in the Civil War. It covered 42 acres and was built to contain up to 40,000 Federal Prisoners. It was probably named for A. R. Lawton who was Quartermaster General of the Confederate Army. It should not be confused with Camp Lawton which was part of the defenses of Savannah, Georgia. The camp was located on the Augusta-Savannah Railroad (Central of Georgia) five miles north of Millen in what is now known as Magnolia Springs State Park. The stockade gate was just a fey yards from the entrance to the state park office.

To place Camp Lawton in historical perspective the reader must recall that the Confederacy-had been fighting for three long years. The largely agrarian South's transportation system was in shambles. The economy had largely collapsed because of the blockade and the rapid inflation of Confederate currency. Northern Georgia was in immediate danger of being captured and an invasion of Georgia had actually begun. In late 1863, when Virginia was in serious danger of being overrun, prisoners were moved to Georgia in large numbers. The largest stockade was Andersonville and by the summer of 1864, Andersonville was vastly overcrowded 2 with 32,235 prisoners in twenty-six acres. The overcrowding of Andersonville with the additional problems of supply and disease made the name infamous and it is still held in revulsion by Civil War historians. When over 30,000 prisoners were crowded into a space originally designed to hold 10,000 with short and poor rations, no shelter and poor sanitary facilities, death was the result. As the number of prisoners increased the problems were compounded and the prisoners already weakened by long imprisonment died by the thousand. The poor water and food with the resulting disease soon weakened the newly captured prisoners and thev died also.

In that anguished August of 1864, when thousands were dying, Brigadier General John H. Winder, who was commissary general of all prisoners east of the Mississippi, sought to relieve the crowded conditions at Andersonville by directing Captains D. W. Vowles and W. S. Winder to "...proceed, as directed, to select a site for a new prison .... after selecting the site you will secure by rent the land, water privileges, timber, and such houses adjacent as may be thought advisable. You will use a sound discretion in your selection, conferring with reliable men in the vicinity as to the health of the location, & C.”

In a 1981, study of Camp Lawton, Dr. Rogers and Dr. Saunders of Georgia Southern College stated that the Confederacy operated 68 facilities for Federal prisoners of two types; facilities that utilized existing buildings and specially constructed stockades. Camp Lawton was one of the later types.

Evidently the choice of the site did not agree with all the, "reliable men". Mr. C. R. Johnson, M. D. of Waynesborough (Waynesboro) wrote to Secretary of War Seddon, "... There are many objections, in my judgment, why it would be an objectionable location." Dr. Johnson listed his objections as the, "...health of the prisoners and guards... The water to be inclosed in the stockade is the most unhealthy, rotten limestone, and no one in our country ever thought of drinking it ..." and made the point that the prison should be in a remote area away from the productive plantations. ' Howell Cobb protested that no more prisons be established in Georgia because of the danger of raiding parties and the lack of guards since the practice was to use state reserves.

Nevertheless, Captains Vowles and Winder had settled on a spot. On August 5, 1864 they sent the following telegram to Adjutant and Inspector General Cooper, "We have made a selection for a new prison, five miles from this place, (Millen) on the Augusta railroad."' The main reason for selecting this site was the free flowing spring and the slopes that would allow defensive fortifications to overlook the stockade. In addition the site was near the railroad for ease of transportation. Magnolia Spring with its flow of 6 000 gallons per minute provided the drinking water that was so scarce at Andersonville and the flow provided a cleansing force for the sanitary facilities called "sinks".

With the area selected, Captains Vowles and Winder were empowered to begin acquisition and construction. General Winder had sought this authority on July 30, and again on August 7. He wrote General Cooper to "... send authority to impress negroes, teams and wagons, lumber and saw-mills." The reply was endorsed by General Cooper and on August 8, 1864, by Secretary of War Seddon."

The authority was finally granted on August 14, 1864. The authority included going into counties in Florida and Georgia with plantation slaves and hiring them if possible and impressing them if not. The work began and, according to a letter dated September 15, 1922 by W. R. Crites of Millen to Miss Ruth Blair of the Archives Department, William Warnock and Washington Daniel acted as overseers of the work. The land stayed in the name of Mrs. C. M. Jones and was returned to her in January of the next year.

On September 5, General Cooper urged that General Winder, "...Push forward to completion the prison at Millen, that some of the prisoners at Andersonville may be sent there.as soon as possible." He went on to ask if part of the camp could be completed so as to receive prisoners.

On September 21, 1864 General Winder telegraphed General Cooper that work was delayed for want of labor. He stated that there were no funds and asked for $250,000. September 24, he wrote that he was personally pressing the work on the stockade forward and that it would be finished by the next Wednesday (September 28, 1864) and ready to receive prisoners. He had already made this statement on the 18th and this advanced the date another week.

Due to several factors, including Sherman's raiders and the outbreak of yellow fever at Charleston," General Cooper was very anxious to move the prisoners to Millen. Hesseltine states that the Andersonville prisoners were moved to Millen by October 10, 1864. One account states that a prisoner testified that he entered Camp Lawton on November 1, 1864. " Most of the prisoners had arrived well before then. To a veteran of Andersonville the scene looked very familiar. John McElroy described the prison pen this way; "We were ordered out of the cars, and marching a few rods, came in sight of another of those hateful stockades, which seemed to be as natural products of the sterile sand of that dreary land as its desolate woods and its breed of boy murderers and gray-headed assassins." His friend B. B. Andrews stated, "My God, Mc, this looks like Andersonville all over again."" McElroy went on to say that the "...principal difference was that the upright logs were in their rough state, whereas they were hewed at Andersonville... "

The plan of the stockade in the Official Records says that the stockade was 1,398 feet on the north and south sides and 1,329 feet on the east and west sides. The "deadline" was 30 feet inside the stockade walls. The gate was a box 30 feet square situated midway in the eastern expanse of stockade. The area had streets 15' wide inside the deadline and central streets 20' wide. There were two additional streets running north-south and six running east- west that were 16' wide. These streets divided the area into 32 rectangles 140 by 315 feet. Each rectangle was divided into ten areas that were supposed to hold 100 men. This would give each man a little over 44 square feet. No distinction seems to have been made in the carrying capacity .of the areas that the stream passed through. The stream entered the stockade near the center of the north wall and meandered through the camp and exited through the south wall cast of the center. Approximately midway through the camp the stream was dammed and forced through hewed timber troughs that were called " sinks." Above this point the stream was for drinking and bathing. Below the mid-point it was for sanitary purposes. " This stockade enclosed 42 acres and General Winder said, "I presume it is the largest prison in the world.”

G. S. Bradly of the 22^nd Wisconsin said there were 40 sentry boxes guarding the prison. 21 General Geary describes them as being about 80 yards apart, but he also stated that the prison was about 800 feet square. Mathematically this would have provided posts about 130 to 140 feet apart on the stockade wall. The engraving on page 454 of McElroy's Andersonville shows a small platform with a shed roof and steps leading to it.

The engraving in Harper's Weekly January 7, 1865 shows sentry posts with walls and a ladder leading to each separate post. The ladder is by far the most credible of the two because of the relative ease of construction compared with a stairway. The most detailed engraving of the camp which is in the January 8, 1865 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper shows planked sentry posts, called "Pigeon Roost" in an historic resource study of Andersonville. The ones in the Leslie's drawing are a great deal different from the form of those pictured at Andersonville.

The gate was probably very much like the gates at Andersonville since Captain Winder was very familiar with that type. The doors were double hung in pairs and large enough to accommodate loaded wagons inside the gate enclosure so that both were not opened at once to prevent easy mass escape. It should be noted that the gate faced the artillery positions.

The various engravings of Andersonville show that the stockade passed over the stream and it is very probable that at Camp Lawton it was the same. It must have been a very close fit to the water since at one point part of the stockade wall at Andersonville washed away. The deadline which was 30 feet inside the stockade wall is a bit vague also. The Harper's engraving shows it as a scantling set on post while the Leslie's drawing shows it as a ditch with guard post (with guns!) inside the stockade. While the ditch method was sometimes used such as at Thomasville where there was a scarcity of timber the scantling method was probably the one used at Camp Lawton. General Geary described it as such in his report on the Savannah Campaign in the Official Records. One has to remember how the engravings were made to get an idea of why errors crept in. An artist drew a sketch in the field. In the case of Camp Lawton, the artist saw an empty prison. When the prisoners left, they took all of their portable shelters like blankets and-canvas awnings so the image was incomplete to begin with. The artist then used his imagination and filled the prison with prisoners, guards and activities such as shooting someone on the deadline. This sketch was then mailed to the home paper. There, the sketch was divided into sections and each section was engraved into the end grain of a block of wood which was usually of English boxwood. The blocks were assembled and the edges blended by a master engraver and the image was then printed. This process only took two to three weeks so errors were common. Exaggeration for dramatic effect and propaganda also played a role. One should view engravings from the War of the Rebellion with caution.

Overlooking the Camp Lawton stockade were three earthworks constructed to guard the prison and its approaches. The earthworks still exist and two are in relatively good condition. Two are to the southeast and a third incomplete one lies to the southwest which is now across U.S. 25 from the park. Eleven of Andersonville's guns were brought to Camp Lawton and the other eight were to be moved later. No documentation has turned up to indicate that the other guns were ever moved. The guards from Andersonville and the artillery company were also moved to Camp Lawton. The location of the hospital is still in doubt. An article in Frank Leslies's Illustrated Newspaper of January 14, 1865 states that there was small stockade 200 yards away. This was probably the hospital.

Brigadier General Winder was far from pleased with the First and Second Georgia Reserves. In his letter to General Cooper of October 15, 1864, he states, "They are the most unreliable and disorganized set I have ever seen."" He asked that the Reserves be replaced by the Second Regiment Georgia State Troops which were stationed in Augusta at the time." Nothing was found to indicate that the requested change was made. The First Regiment Georgia Reserves with an aggregate strength of 736 was commanded by Colonel C. M. Jones as of August 5, 1864 at Andersonville. The Florida Light Artillery under Captain C. E. Dyke had an aggregate of 162 manning the guns at Andersonville and the basic assumption is that some of these forces went with their guns to Camp Lawton. Colonel Henry Forno, Provisional Army, Confederate States was in command of the guard at Camp Lawton. He was a good officer and had received several commendations from Brigadier General Winder at Andersonville. He later commanded the guard at Columbia and he took over when Winder died at Florence, South Carolina.

At Andersonville Colonel Forno commanded the guard while Captain Wirz commanded the prison. At Camp Lawton, Forno commanded the guard and Captain D. W. Vowles commanded the prison. Captain Vowles' service record shows that he reported to General Winder in March, 1864, was ordered to help select a prison site on July 28, 1864 and by September 23, was in command at Camp Lawton. The microfilm of the service record at the Georgia Archives also contains correspondence signed by Vowles as commander on October 26, and November 8, 1864 which would indicate that he was the sole commander of the prison in its brief existence. He was the only one ordered by the union to be arrested for commanding the prison. He was also the only commander mentioned in the prisoner's writings that the author has read.

The prisoners kept arriving at Camp Lawton and in many memories it became "Millen" the same way that Camp Sumter became Andersonville to the prisoners so the names are interchangeable in the literature. General Cooper ordered that no more prisoners be sent to Charleston and Savannah and that they be stopped at Millen and all of the Savannah prisoners be sent to Millen. By November 8, 1864 the returns stated that there were 10,299 received at the prison.

During this period the prisoners had been hearing constant rumors of exchange. Coupled with the rumors were the shifts from place to place and with the beginning of each journey the prisoners thought they were headed home. The Federal prisoners knew that Sherman was deep into Georgia and were hoping for a raid to release them from captivity. It was with little favor that they viewed their new "home". It was a deep psychological letdown for the prisoners to face another log prison.

Some had been prisoners for months. They were weakened by poor food, lack of shelter and medicines. Many had been left behind in the burial trenches at Andersonville. The prisoners who came first were lucky in some ways. When the stockade was being built the tops and limbs of trees had been left inside. In addition some logs were left inside. McElroy states: "As soon as we were assigned to our ground, we began constructing shelter. For the first and only time in my prison experience, we found a full supply of material for this purpose, and the use we made of it showed how infinitely better we would have fared if in each prison the Rebels had done even so slight a thing as to bring in a few logs from the surrounding woods and distribute them to us.”

A member of McElroy's Second Hundred of the First Division had smuggled an axe into the prison. With the dull axe they cut a portion off a log then split boards off with wedges made with a dull knife. Soon they found four forked sticks for uprights then arranged the strips like clapboards on the sides and roofed their, "house builded with our own hands" with strips held down with sod. With a floor of pine needles and ditched to keep out the rain it became... "the most comfortable abode we had during our prison career.”

The early arrivals built their meager shelters. Some were on top of the ground, some partially buried and some of the later arrivals simply holes in the ground with a brush, canvas or blanket roof. As at Andersonville, some had no shelters at all. After the diversion of building their shelters the prisoners settled down to their dreary existence. The prisoners got up in the morning; a squad usually policed the area; then they received their rations. At Camp Lawton rations at first consisted of one pint of meal, six ounces of uncooked beef, six spoonsful of rice and one teaspoon of salt a day. McElroy remembered the rations differently. He stated that they received no salt and that the beef ration was only occasionally given. He makes no mention of rice, and one beef ration consisted of the heads of cattle that were slaughtered for the guards. After cooking their rations the men breakfasted and saved enough for another meal. The rest of the day was spent in the few pastimes available. McElroy and his friend Anderson had a chess board for a distraction from the monotony.

Some gambled for food, clothing and blankets. If their clothing would hold up to it they might wrap themselves in a blanket and wash their one suit. Others did nothing but sit and stare thinking of home and their loved ones. The more active of spirit sat and plotted escape or even carried out active tunneling attempts. Many of the unbroken ones who had stood at Seven Days or Gettysburg spent their days bedeviling the guards and officers to amuse themselves. Another pastime involved trying to rid themselves of vermin. It was an almost daily affair to go over their hair and the scans in the clothing for lice.

Both Kellogg and McElroy mentioned one event during their brief stay at Camp Lawton, a mock election. In the presidential election of 1864 the prisoners viewed McClellan as a peace and compromise candidate and they thought Lincoln would fight to the bitter end. The Confederates supplied ballot boxes and an election was held. The results certainly did not provide the hoped for propaganda for the Confederacy. McElroy, writing in 1879, gave the election to Lincoln by "...seven thousand for Lincoln and half that many hundred for McClellan." Kellogg stated the count as 3,014 Lincoln and 1,050 for McClellan in his book published in 1865. In any case as McElroy understates it, "I never heard that the Rebels sent the results North."

There was an attempt by the Confederacy to utilize some of the prisoner's time. Harness and shoe shops were set up at Andersonville and Millen. Evidently the prisoners did some work because in a message dated November 22, 1864, General Winder wrote that all the prisoners had been removed except, “.... a few shoemakers and butchers.”

The confederacy tried to make other use of the prisoners. An attempt to get a mass enrollment in the Rebel army was made and nearly brought disaster. The prisoners were marched outside to hear the proposal but refused to listen and marched back inside. The Confederates in retaliation started searching the camp for spades and axes and some of the guards stole blankets and other goods and destroyed some of the shelters. The prisoners formed battle lines of unarmed sullen, angry men and there were shouts to seize the guards weapons. Captain Vowles overlooking the camp from outside, ordered out all the guard and the artillerymen were standing by their pieces. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the guards marched out. The consolidated returns for November 8, 1864 list 349 prisoners as enlisted in the Confederate service. McElroy stated that most of the ones who enlisted were the infamous "Raiders." The Raiders had terrorized, robbed and murdered at Andersonville until their fellow prisoners had risen up, captured, tried and hanged six of the ringleaders, other Raiders were forced to run a gauntlet of belt and club wielding men. These Raiders were of the lowest sort. They were bounty jumpers and thugs released from jail to join the army. They had sought to live at the expense of their fellow prisoners. The Union prisoners had eventually gained control of the Raiders with their band of Regulators. The Raiders evidently thought they could get back in control at Millen. McElroy tells of attacks on Corporal "Wat" Payne who had helped trigger the scaffold and on Sergeant Goody who had put meal sacks and the rope on the condemned Raiders.

Neither attack was successful but it did arouse the camp and some prisoners went to see Captain Vowles. Captain Vowles sent guards in and they arrested the Raider ringleaders and placed them in stocks just outside the gate where they had to lie on their stomachs. These were some of the Raiders who later joined the Confederates and even manned the guns overlooking the stockade. One could easily imagine why the prisoners were not anxious to face the guns loaded with grape and canister.

Captain Vowles' help in solving the Raider problem at Camp Lawton is one of several indications that he was considered by the prisoners as one of the best prison commandants. McElroy put it this way, "The commandant of the prison - one Captain Bowes (Vowles) - was the best of his class it was my fortune to meet. Compared with the senseless brutality of Wirz, the reckless deviltry of Davis, or the stupid malignance of Barrett, at Florence, his administration was mildness and wisdom itself."

McElroy also points out that Vowles' son of fifteen or sixteen was introduced to them and thereafter called their division roll. He spoke as a gentleman to them and, they treated him civilly throughout the internment. Captain Vowles was not all goodness and light. McElroy charged him with taking bribes to place names of well men on a list of the sick that were to be exchanged. Philip Cashmyer in the Official Records wrote that there was bribery involved in the sick exchange and that General Winder eventually investigated the events and recovered part of the money. In a later letter Cashmyer wrote that General Winder was so suspicious of Vowles that he declared that he never again would have such a command.

While the prison and commander were given "good marks" in some instances it was still a pesthole with a full measure of death and suffering. The returns for November 8, 1864 list 486 prisoners as having died. Since most of the prisoners had arrived by the first week in October, 14 this return is for about one month. The prisoners were moved out of Camp Lawton between November 19, and November 22. This leaves up to two weeks in which no returns for deaths are recorded. Since the days were getting colder and the cold winter rains had begun one can safely assume that the death rate did not drop. With an average up to then of a little over sixteen a day an additional 180 to 230 could have died. This would have brought the number close to McElroy's figures of, "...unnoted graves of seven hundred boys..." These deaths can be attributed to diarrhea, dysentery and scurvy. The poor food contributed to scurvy while poor sanitary facilities contributed to the former disorders. When the weather turned cold exposure and pneumonia took their toll. Some of the Andersonville and Savannah prisoners were already ill when they arrived and the hospitals were not completed until mid-October.

The Chief Surgeon Isaiah H. White had sought to improve the plight of the prisoners. He wrote requesting funds for supplies for, "...thousands of sick, both at this post and Andersonville, are in a state of suffering that would touch the heart even of the most callous." Surgeon General of the C. S. Army. S. P. Moore added that the employees and detailed men had not been paid since February. L. B. Northrop, Commissary-General of Subsistence, noted that all the money they could get from the Treasury had been furnished.

These appear to be honest tries to alleviate suffering but in the impoverished and blockaded South they were in vain. Although brick for the ovens had been halted at Macon on October 8, for lack of transport, the ovens were later built." They show in two of the engravings of the stockade. This centralized the baking facilities and cut down the need for wood for individual fires for cooking, but also cut out the individual warming fires. McElroy states that, "For a while wood was plentiful, and we had the luxury daily of warm fires, which the increasing coolness of the weather made important accessories to our comfort." In another passage he describes the prison as time passed by and the wood grew scarcer:

"As November wore away long-continued, chill, searching rains desolated our days and nights. The great, cold drops pelted down slowly, dismally, and incessantly. Each seemed to beat through our emaciated frames against the very marrow of our bones, and to be battering its way remorselessly into the citadel of life, like the cruel drops that fell from the basin of the inquisitors upon the firmly-fastened head of their victim, until his reason fled, and the death-agony cramped his heart to stillness.”

“The lagging, leaden hours were inexpressibly dreary. Compared with many others, we were quite comfortable, as our hut protected us from the actual beating of the rain upon our bodies; but we were much more miserable than under the sweltering heat of Andersonville, as we lay almost naked upon our bed of pine leaves, shivering in the raw, rasping air, and looked out over acres of wretches lying dumbly on the sodden sand receiving the benumbing drench of the sullen skies without a groan or a motion.”

“It was enough to kill healthy, vigorous men, active and resolute, with bodies well- nourished and well clothed, and with minds vivacious and hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long cold drenchings. No one can imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by long months in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by groveling on the bare earth and by hopelessness as to any improvement of condition. Fever, rheumatism, throat and lung diseases and despair now came to complete the work begun by scurvy, dysentery and gangrene, in Andersonville. Hundreds, weary of the long struggle and of hoping against hope, laid themselves down and yielded to their fate. In the six weeks that we were at Millen, one man in every ten died. The ghostly pines there sigh over the unnoted graves of seven hundred boys, for whom life's morning closed in the gloomiest shadows. As many as would form a splendid regiment - as many as constitute the first born of a populous City - more than three times as many as were slain outright on our side in the bloody battle of Franklin, succumbed to this new hardship. The country for which they died does not even have a record of their names. They were simply blotted out of existence; they became as though they had never been."

Added to the miseries of nature there were the man-made ones. The forced idleness, the stocks and the ball and chain. These were reserved for the rule breakers and the escapees but do not show up in the literature like they do at Andersonville and Florence. The author has also not found any reference to hanging by the thumbs while they do show up at Andersonville and Florence. The prisoners lived in the stockade as best they could. They were surrounded by the forty sentry posts and the eleven guns looked down on them. They were always aware of the deadline. At Camp Lawton the deadline does not appear in the literature as much as it did at Andersonville. At Andersonville it must have not always meant instant death to touch the scantling. The National Archives photograph labeled, "Huts Built on the Deadline, Andersonville Prison" made in August 1864, shows the scantling being used as a shelf to hold pots and pans. There were documented killings at the deadline at Andersonville but McElroy states, "I do not remember that anyone was shot during our six weeks stay at Millen - a circumstance simply remarkable, since I do not recall a single week passed anywhere else without at least one murder by the guards."

This was the situation in mid-November. The prisoners struggled for existence in a dangerous place, cold, hungry and disease ridden. Death had lost its emotional context because it was so common. The men had lost much of the commonly accepted standards of living. They had gotten used to open sanitary facilities. It was a common practice to hide their belongings when they slept because of thievery. It was pretty common to take good clothing and shoes from the dead. The survivors felt that life must go on even if it did mean doing these things. They lived with the rumor of exchange or with the hope that some of Sherman's men would free them.

Atlanta had fallen on September 2, 1864. Sherman had occupied it since then. He had utilized the railroads to re-supply and send his wounded and prisoners back north. Finally on November 15, 1864, he destroyed the railroad behind him, burned Atlanta and struck out south in a strong column. The lines of communication were disrupted and the officials at the Camp did not know where Sherman was headed. They were sure that a Federal prison would be a prime target. A flurry of messages flashed across Georgia concerning the movement. Major General Howell Cobb wrote, "We are falling back rapidly to this place (Macon). The enemy will be here by Monday (message sent Thursday, November 17.). We are too weak to resist them unless reinforced promptly. The prisoners should be removed from this State.” Secretary of War Seddon wired General Winder requesting what steps should be taken for the prisoners disposition. He telegraphed Winder again the next day, "You must use your best efforts for the removal and security of the prisoners as the enemy shall advance or threaten in any direction. What number remains at Andersonville? It seems more immediately in danger."

General Winder answered the same day, "Fifteen hundred prisoners at Andersonville and 10,000 here. Am ordered by General Hardee to remove the prisoners to Savannah for the present, and establish prison on the Gulf Railroad at Waresborough, Ware County, Georgia.” On November 20, 1864 General Winder telegraphed that in obedience to orders that the prisoners would be removed. On November 22, Winder wired that most of the prisoners were on their way but protested that Savannah and Waresborough were both vulnerable to having transportation lines cut by the enemy. Winder then moved the prisoners away from Sherman's men. They were moved to Blackshear and Thomasville, then some were returned to Andersonville.

General Winder finally decided that there was no safe place for the prisoners. He wrote in the form of a "semiofficial" suggestion to Adjutant-General Cooper, "...that there is no place that can be considered as safe from the operations of the enemy. This being the case, the question arises whether it would not be better to parole at least the officers and such enlisted men whose term of service has expired.” This message had it ever reached the prisoners would have gladdened their hearts. It probably never did. All they knew was that Sherman was in Georgia and they hoped he would come for them.

McElroy's narrative helps the reader to visualize the times:

"One night, toward the last of November, there was a general alarm around the prison. A gun was fired from the Fort, the long-roll was beaten in the various camps of the guards, and the regiments answered by getting under arms in haste and forming near the prison gates. The reason for this, which we did not learn until weeks later was that Sherman, who had cut loose from Atlanta, and started on his famous March to the Sea, had taken such a course as rendered it probable that Millen was one of his objective points. It was, therefore, necessary that we should be hurried away with all possible speed. As we had no news from Sherman since the end of the Atlanta campaign, and were ignorant of his having begun his great raid, we were at an utter loss to account for the commotion among our keepers.”

“About 3 o'clock in the morning the Rebel Sergeants, who called the roll, came in and ordered us to turn out immediately and get ready to move. The morning was one of the most cheerless I ever knew, a cold rain poured relentlessly down upon us half-naked, shivering wretches, as we groped around in the darkness for our pitiful little belongings of rags and cooking utensils, and bundled together in groups, urged on continually by the curses and abuse of the Rebel officers sent in to get us ready to move.”

“Though aroused at 3 o'clock, the cars were not ready to receive us till noon. In the meantime we stood in ranks - numb, trembling, and heart-sick. The guards around us crouched over fires, and shielded themselves as best they could with blankets and bits of tent cloth. We had nothing to build fires with, and were not allowed to approach those of the guards.”

“Around us everywhere was the dull, cold, gray, hopeless desolation of the approach of Winter. The hard, wiry grass that thinly covered the once and sand, the occasional stunted weeds, and the sparse foliage of the gnarled and dwarfish undergrowth, all were parched brown and seared by the fiery heat of the long Summer, and now rattled drearily under the pitiless, cold rain, streaming from lowering clouds that seemed to have floated down to us from the cheerless summit of some great iceberg; the tall, naked pines moaned and shivered; dead, sapless leaves fell wearily to the sodden earth, like withered hopes drifting down to deepen some Slough of Despond.”

“Scores of our crowd found this the culmination of their misery. They laid down upon the ground and yielded to death as a welcome relief, and we left them lying there unburied when we moved to the cars .... The cars were open flats. The rain still beat down unrelentingly. Andrews and I huddled ourselves together so as to make our bodies afford as much heat as possible, pulled our faithful old overcoat around us as far as it would go, and endured the inclemency as best we could.”

“Our train headed back to Savannah, and again our hearts warmed up with hopes of exchange. It seemed as if there could be no purpose of taking us out of a prison so 16 recently established and at such cost as Millen."

The exchange, so hoped for, was not to be though. Camp Lawton was left behind to await the arrival of the Federal forces. The first Federal troops in the area were Brigadier General Judson (nicknamed "Kill-cavalry") Kilpatrick's Cavalry. On November 23, Sherman ordered Kilpatrick at Milledgeville to ..."move rapidly in direction of Millen, and if possible rescue our prisoners reported to be at or near that point .....” Kilpatrick on the extreme left flank of Sherman's route of March went through Waynesboro on November 27. "...Here, to my great regret, I learned that our prisoners had been removed two days previously."

Wheelers Confederate Cavalry forced Kilpatrick to withdraw but when Sherman’s infantry got closer he got an infantry division (Baird's) and moved back to Waynesboro. Elements of both the XVII and XX Corps reached Millen on December 2 and were in force in the area by December 3. In his Memoirs Sherman wrote, "On the 3d of December I entered Millen with the Seventeenth Corps (General Frank P. Blair), and there paused one day... General Howard was south of the Ogeechee River, with the Fifteenth Corps, opposite Scarboro. General Slocum was at Buckhead Church four miles north of Millen, with the Twentieth Corps. The Fourteenth (General Davis) was at Lumpkin's Station, on the Augusta road about ten miles north of Millen, and the cavalry division was within easy support of this wing."

Several of Sherman's men described what they saw at Camp Lawton. Brigadier General John W. Geary described the camp:

"The stockade was about 800 feet square, and inclosed nearly fifteen acres. It was made of heavy pine logs, rising from twelve to fifteen feet above the ground; on the top of these logs, at intervals of some eighty yards were placed sentry boxes. Inside of the stockade, running parallel to it at a distance from it of thirty feet, was a fence of light scantling, supported on short posts. This was the "dead line." About one-third of the area, on the western side, was occupied with a crowd of irregular earthen huts, evidently made by the prisoners. In these were lying unburied three of our dead soldiers, who were buried by us. Through the eastern part of the pen ran a ravine with a stream of good water. The atmosphere in the enclosure was foul and fetid. A short distance outside the stockade was a long trench, at the head of which was a board, bearing the inscription, "650 buried here." On rising ground a short distance southeast of the prison were two forts not yet completed; southwest of this stockade was a smaller one in process of construction. This prison, if indeed it can be designated as such, afforded convincing proofs that the worst accounts of the sufferings of our prisoners at Andersonville, at Americus, and Millen were by no means exaggerated."

Major George Ward Nichols of the Union Forces described Camp Lawton as a place that:

"…fevered the blood of our brave boys. It was the hole where thousands of our brave soldiers have been confined for months past, exposed to heavy dews, biting frosts, and pelting rains, without so much as a board or tent to protect them after the Rebels had stolen their clothing. Some of them had adopted the wretched alternative of digging holes in the ground, in which they crept at times. What wonder that we found evidence that seven hundred and fifty men had died there! From what misery did death release them? I could realize it all when I saw this den, as I never could before even when listening to the stories of prisoners who had fled, escaping the villains who rushed after them in hot pursuit, and foiling the blood-hounds which had been put on their track."

Major Nichols went on to describe the stocks where the prisoners including the Raiders had been placed:

"... Near the entrance way was a small building, or rather the roof to one, set on posts, under which our soldiers were punished, I conclude, as stocks for the feet were lying near. I counted holes enough for seven persons, and they appeared to be well worn. Also noticed a lot for the neck. I never knew before that our soldiers had to undergo this barbarous method of torture, but there was no mistaking the fact now."

These descriptions are useful in some ways and not in others. Nichols describes the stockade as being 300 feet square, Geary as 800. Nichols says that 750 died there while Geary reports 650. The reader can judge the reports for what they are. They are estimated distances and estimates of burials with no headstones. One can probably believe the height of the stockade, the description of the three forts and the stockades and certainly see the horror of the site reflected in the observers. While Sherman's men were in the area they destroyed three miles of railroad track, eight railroad cars and one engine, a wagon shop and, 25 barrels of salt at Waynesboro. At Millen the Union forces burned the railroad depot. Major Nichols described the fire. The depot ..."a wooden structure of exceedingly graceful proportions" was burned and the spectacle was so brilliant with ..."the exquisite architecture traced to lines of fire," that even "the rank and file observed and made comments... a circumstance that may be counted unusual for the taste of conflagrations has been so cultivated of late in the army that any small affair of that kind attracts very little attention.”

Sherman's march through the area met with little resistance with skirmishes being the exception rather than the rule. There were several in the area with the largest being at Waynesboro. Rufus Mead, Jr. of the Fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers described Sherman's raid this way:

"We had a glorious old tramp right through the heart of the state, rioted and feasted on the country, destroyed all the R.R., in short found a rich and overflowing country filled with cattle, hogs, sheep and fowls, com, sweet potatoes & syrup, but left a barren waste for miles on either side of the road, burnt millions of dollars worth of property, wasted and destroyed all the eatibles we could carry off and brought the war to the doors of Central Georgians so effectually, I guess they will long remember the yankees raid. I enjoyed it all the time; we had pleasant weather and good roads and easy times generally."

The Federal forces left their mark on the local area in direct relation to the prison camp. Colonel James Robinson of the Eighty Second Ohio Infantry reported that shortly after passing through nearby Birdsville, "...having received reliable information that a planter named Bullard, living in that neighborhood, had made himself conspicuous for his zeal in recapturing and securing prisoners from our army escaped from the rebel authorities, I dispatched an officer with authority to destroy his outbuildings and cotton. He accordingly set fire to the com cribs, cotton gin, cotton presses and warehouse containing $50,000 worth of cotton.”

Another item that received attention was the dogs of Georgians on the route of march. Major Nichols stated that wherever the Union Army passed, "...everything in the shape of a dog has been killed... no more flying fugitives, white men or negroes, shall be followed by hounds that come within reach of their powder and ball." Several of Sherman's men record this killing of dogs, most of them calling them bloodhounds.

As Sherman's forces moved on the war left Millen behind except for the shortages of food that long winter of 1864-65. The blockade was still in effect. Many slaves that followed Sherman never returned to the area and most of the gristmills and cotton gins were destroyed. The economy was almost totally destroyed. Friends and relatives from outside the route of Sherman's march shared their food with local people to help them through the winter. Years passed before the area fully recovered from Sherman’s "glorious old tramp".

Camp Lawton because of its nearness to the Federal held coast was never again used to house prisoners. General Winder wrote to Mrs. C. M. Jones, the owner of the land, on January 21, 1865, "Madam: The occupation of Savannah by the enemy renders it inexpedient for the Confederate States to continue to occupy the stockade at Camp Lawton. It is therefore given up to you, and I will take the earliest opportunity to send an agent to arrange and settle the account between yourself and the Confederate States."

There remained only a few loose ends to tie the story of Camp Lawton into a finished bundle. The Union dead were removed to their final resting places five years after the war was over. In 1866, the Federal government opened the burial trenches and discovered that the Confederates had buried the dead prisoners in the trench side by side with split logs separating the bodies and laid over the dead and a low mound of earth topping the trenches. Many of the prison records were lost when they were burned at the Millen Depot, but the death register turned up in Savannah. This enabled the Quartermaster General's department to move the dead to the Lawton National Cemetery in late 1866 and early 1867. The 391 known dead and 97 men that were designated "unknown', along with the 63 dead from military actions at Waynesboro, Buckhead Church, and other skirmishes in the area were eventually buried at Lawtonville near the railroad. There was a dispute about the land for the National Cemetery and the dead were moved to the Beaufort National Cemetery in February, 1868.

Immediately following the war the Union started investigating charges of what are now called "war crimes". Judge Advocate General Holt sent a letter to Secretary of War Stanton calling for the trial of "...sundry rebel officials concerned in alleged cruel treatment of Federal prisoners in the South". This letter mentioned Captain Vowles and said that although the cases against him and a few others were not ready for trial according to the testimony they were, "...guilty of acts more or less cruel and criminal in their treatment of prisoners of war". The trials of the "war criminals" were prosecuted in the cases of Captain Wirz and James W. Duncan of Andersonville, Dick Turner of Libby and Major John H. Gee of Salisbury. Wirz was convicted and hanged and Gee, Turner and Duncan served terms in prison. Captain Vowles was never tried for his part in commanding the prison at Millen.


Click picture to left for mp3 of historian Ed Bearss speaking on Camp Lawton.
About 9 minutes.