Statement of Patrick McShay (McShea) on Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Confederate Authorities - American Civil War

Report on the treatment of prisoners of war by the rebel authorities during the War of the Rebellion:by United States, Congress, House, Special Committee on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and Union Citizens, 1869

Statement of Patrick McShay (McShea), Hazelton, Pennsylvania

Was a sergeant in Company A, Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania volunteers. I was taken prisoner on the 4th of December, 1864, near Millen, Georgia. Marched on foot to Augusta, Georgia, about fifty miles, in nearly two days. Had one meal of boiled sweet potatoes on the march. No other food. Next day, at 8 a.m., we had a quart of corn meal, unbolted. and a piece of fresh beef, a pound. This lasted me sixty hours. Went by rail, in box car, to Florence, and was put in stockade prison pen. About twenty acres contained, I think, in it. This was occupied by about seven thousand prisoners. I had no shelter for seven days. Then they let us build shelter of pine tree tops covered with dirt. The prisoners burrowed caves in the ground, and we lived in them like rabbits. They gave us neither blanket nor clothing. On my way to prison, when near Millen, an Alabama or Mississippi rebel robbed me of my blanket, watch, and $185 in money. Our food in the prison pen was one pint of unbolted corn meal a day, no meat while I was there, and two tablespoons full of Carolina stock peas, raw, were given us about three times a week.  We cooked the meal and beans in half a canteen, over a fire. They gave us no cooking utensils. We broke the canteen so as to make a kind of cup of it. We had no other rations in that prison.  I was there about eleven weeks. I forgot the names of the rebel officers in charge of us. Part of the ground in Florence was wet and part dry. Some had to lie in the wet. I was taken from Florence to Wilmington, North Carolina, and thence to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where our squad of prisoners was turned loose in the woods and swamp, and a guard was placed around us. We had no shelter. Our food was about two pounds of salt meet cooked and about three days' allowance of hard tack. (I mean about three days' United States army allowance.) On this we we lived for seven days. I do not think I could have lived one week longer if I had been left in Florence. I was so weak that couldn't go to the water, about twenty yards. My parents did not know me when I got home. I was so thin. 

Florence Stockade

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FYI: unbolted corn meal is course ground or old fashioned corn meal. Carolina stock peas are Carolina red peas or the fancy modern expensive gentrified name of "Sea Island Red Peas" - all varieties of black-eyed peas except for colors i believe.


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