Extra Credit Questions

[L Verge]

(05-17-2019 06:06 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  Sorry, but the Galvanized Yankees walked. A couple of Union volunteer cavalry regiments were sent West during the Civil War.

Thanks, Bill - I can see the logic in not giving ex-Confederates Union horses...

On June 8, Surratt House is presenting a talk on Point Lookout Prison Camp, a hell-hole about 60 miles south of D.C. in Southern Maryland. In the process of looking for tidbits for advertisement of the program, I found a connection between Point Lookout and this discussion:

" The practice of recruiting from prisoners of war began in 1862 at Camp Douglas at Chicago, Illinois, with attempts to enlist Confederate prisoners who expressed reluctance to exchange following their capture at Fort Donelson. Some 228 prisoners of mostly Irish extraction were enlisted by Col. James A. Mulligan before the War Department banned further recruitment March 15. The ban continued until 1863, except for a few enlistments of foreign-born Confederates into largely ethnic regiments.

"Three factors led to a resurrection of the concept: an outbreak of the American Indian Wars by tribes in Minnesota and on the Great Plains; the disinclination of paroled but not exchanged Federal troops to be used to fight them; and protests of the Confederate government that any use of paroled troops in Indian warfare was a violation of the Dix–Hill prisoner of war cartel. Gen. Gilman Marston, commandant of the huge prisoner of war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, recommended that Confederate prisoners be enlisted in the U.S. Navy, which Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved December 21. General Benjamin Butler's jurisdiction included Point Lookout, and he advised Stanton that more prisoners could be recruited for the Army than the Navy. The matter was then referred to President Lincoln, who gave verbal authorization on January 2, 1864, and formal authorization on March 5 to raise the 1st United States Volunteer Infantry for three years' service without restrictions as to use."