Wexford native Peter Whelan saw some of the worst of human nature during the first three years of America's Civil War, but perhaps nothing prepared him for what he would see when he set himself to minister to the thousands of famished, verminous prisoners in infamous Andersonville prison in Georgia. "My motive was not money; it was to allay misery and gain souls for God," Whelan was to write later.
Furl that Banner! True, ’tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,
And 'twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust.
--"The Conquered Banner" by Father Abram J. Ryan
On June 20 Olmstead and his officers were taken to Cincinnati to be exchanged, but again Whelan chose to stay with the enlisted
men, who were soon sent first to Fort Delaware, then on to Fort
Monroe (on July 31) for exchange. Three days later, when they
were taken up the James River on a flag of truce boat, Whelan
A turn of the century postcard view of Fort Monroe, where Whelan and his comrades were exchanged.
received permission to travel to Baltimore before returning to
Savannah, to personally thank the Sisters of Charity there for
their kindness to his fellow POW's. Given a room next to the ward
for "the hopelessly insane" (in the hospital run by the nuns), he
teased the Mother Superior the next morning, when she asked how
he'd slept. "Well enough", he answered with a grin, "but why did
you put me up in the crazy house?"
Resuming his duties at the Cathedral and Orphanage in Savanah,
Whelan was soon named chaplain for all Confederate forces in
Georgia. In May of 1864, Father William J. Hamilton, a priest
whose mission included all of southwest Georgia, happened to be
passing through Americus, when he was told that there were a
large number of Catholic prisoners at nearby "Camp Sumter" (at
Anderson's Station on the Southwestern RR). Visiting the prison,
he found the place so appauling that he appealed to his Bishop,
Augustin Verot, to assign a priest to work there on a full-time
basis.
Library of Congress
The living hell known as Andersonville Prison.
The Bishop tapped the ever-ready Father Whelan for that
assignment also. Arriving at Andersonville on June 16, 1864, he
was shocked to find about 25,000 men (including my
great-grandfather, Sgt. Henry Murray) penned up in a stockade
designed for 10,000. As Father Hamilton would later testify, the
place was extremely filthy and "the men all huddled together and
covered with vermin. ... There was no shelter at all, so far as [he]
could see, except ... that some of the men who had their blankets
there had put them up on little bits of roots that they had
abstracted from the ground." Hamilton noted that "the heat was
intolerable; there was no air at all in the stockade"; and that
he saw "a great many men perfectly naked, walking about through
the stockade ... [seemingly having] lost all regard for delicacy,
shame, morality or anything else." In order to minister to them a
priest would have to "creep on [his] hands and knees into the
holes that the men had burrowed into the ground and stretch
[himself] out alongside of them to hear their confessions."
"I shall not attempt a description of the sufferings which we witnessed ..."
Hamilton was perhaps too refined to mention that many of the
sick and dying lay sprawled out in their own vomit and
excrement- a thick layer of which oozed out a great distance
beyond the putrid stream which ran through the middle of the
camp. The sickening stench of the place, coupled with the flies,
mosquitoes and body lice, created an environment so appauling
that, while other priests came for short periods of time to
assist Father Whelan, he was the only one who was able to remain
there for any length of time.
One of the priests who was forced to leave on account of
illness summed up his experience thusly: "I shall not attempt a
description of the sufferings which we witnessed; whatever may be
said or written about it will remain always below the stern
reality."
Yet the saintly Whelan remained at Andersonville from June 16
to October 1, spending the entire day (from 5 AM till dusk) in
the stockade; hearing confessions, comforting the sick, and
administering the last rites of the Church. Given the rate at
which the POW's were dying, he said later that he had to "shorten
what is called the sacramentalia, and also the ceremonies of
Baptism and Extreme Unction".
Sharing the same coarse corn bread, cow peas and parched corn
coffee as the prisoners and guards, he slept in a broken-down,
leaky 12 x 8 foot cattle shed about a mile from the stockade.
Library of Congress
A huddled mass of Andersonville prisoners waiting for their daily rations.
Such exemplary conduct won him many converts and many of the
prisoners who survived paid tribute to him. "All creeds, colors,
nations and cities were alike to him", one POW noted. "He was
indeed the Good Sumaritan."
On July 11 Captain Henry Wirz allowed the prisoners to hang
six "raiders," the ring-leaders of a gang of thugs and
cut-throats who'd been preying on their fellow inmates. "The men
were placed on a platform of gallows", Whelan would later tell
the judges at Wirz's trial. "They begged me to make an appeal to
their comrades- an appeal to spare them from execution. I made
it ... but they were hanged anyway."
When Sherman captured Atlanta September 1, the Confederate
authorities thought it best to remove as many POW's as possible
from "Camp Sumter", fearing that Sherman's cavalry would overrun
it, free and arm the prisoners, then turn them loose on the
countryside. Close to 30,000 were transferred to Savannah,
Charleston or Florence, South Carolina the first half of
September. Those who stayed were too sick or too far gone to be
moved.
Whelan was finally forced to leave October 1, suffering from
"a lung ailment" which was probably tuberculosis contracted from
the inmates. But before leaving he emptied his pockets, giving
the POW's all the money he had in the world. And then, instead of
going straight back to Savannah, he went to Macon and borrowed
$16,000 (Confederate) from Henry Horne to buy bread for the
remaining Andersonville unfortunates. "Mr. Wynne", a Macon
baker, arranged to have it delivered to Anderson Station.
Library of Congress
One of the "Andersonville wrecks"
Back in Savannah, the old priest undoubtedly visited the 7,000
"Andersonville wrecks" incarcerated there also. Early in
November, when about 3,000 Confederate POW's were exchanged at
Fort Pulaski and brought into Savannah, he ministered to them as
well.
When Sherman's army marched into Savannah on December 21, one of
the first things his men did was begin work strengthening the
fortifications previously constructed there by the Confederates.
One of the rebel forts was located in close proximity to the
Catholic Cemetery, on the road to Bonaventure. In extending their
trenches, the Yankees dug up the graves of two bishops and
several other priests and nuns. Incensed by such apparently
deliberate desecration, Whelan fired off a blistering letter to
Union General Quincy Gilmore: "It must be an extreme military
necessity", he wrote, "when the ashes of the dead are disturbed
and breastworks erected on their place of repose. Might can
effect it, but does right sanction it?"
On the 10th of March 1865, stricken with severe lung
congestion, he was advised to seek a change of climate to regain
his health and strength. Having no money to go anywhere, his by
then equally destitute friends in Savannah passed the hat to
cover his travel expenses. But instead of using the money to
travel, he "bought gold and thus was enabled ... to repay Mr.
Horne."
He'd been seeking reimbursement from the Federal government
for the money he'd borrowed from Horne for some time, but when
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton informed him that no payment
would be forthcoming without "proper receipts for his
expenditures", he exploded: "I seek no remuneration", he wrote.
"Let Mr. Stanton keep it. I have not the health, nor strength,
nor money to run all over Georgia hunting up vouchers and bills
of purchase. ... I am but the Catholic priest who gave his time,
labor, money and health for the good of the Federal prisoners at
Andersonville -- without hope of earthly remuneration. ... Did I
solicit the President, or General Grant, I have no doubt but that
either of them would have refunded me. Fool-like, I knocked on
the wrong door."
"My motive was not money; it was to allay
misery and gain souls for God."
Continuing his remarkable ministry, Whelan visited Varina
Howell Davis while she was staying at the Pulaski House in
Savannah during the late Spring and early Summer of 1865
(following her capture with her husband and his party at
Irwinsville, Georgia, on May 10). Since "Winnie" Davis was forbidden
to communicate with her husband (who was being held in chains in
the dungeon at Fortress Monroe), Whelan went to see him on her
behalf, to assure him that his family was alright, and also to
appeal for his release.
Called also to testify at Henry Wirz's trial, Whelan assured
the court: "My duties [at Andersonville] were those of a Catholic
priest- nothing more. I had no commission from the [Confederate]
government. I went there voluntarily, without pay or remuneration
further than to receive rations."
Money was obviously unimportant to him. "No amount of salary
could induce me to stay at Andersonville for [even] one week", he
would write. "No Sir, not all the gold and paper money in the
treasury of Washington. My motive was not money; it was to allay
misery and gain souls for God."
Attempting to gain every possible soul he could, he visited
the condemned Wirz in his cell, counseled him and accompanied him
to the scaffold, just as he had "the raiders."
Two weeks after presiding over a baptism in January of 1871,
Whelan -- whose health had been gradually deteriorating -- became
gravely ill. "The good old man is passing from earth to that
heaven reserved for such as he," the Savannah Morning News wrote
January 28th, "where he will receive the reward due to his
Godly life. The good and true, especially those who have known
him at the bivouac, in the battle's front, at the couch of the
sick, wounded and dying, and at the altar, will mourn his loss."
"Faith in the Fight": For both the Union and Confederate soldiers, religion was the greatest sustainer of morale in the Civil War, and faith was a refuge in times of need. The clerics' duties did not end after Sunday prayers; rather, many ministers could be found performing daily regimental duties, and some even found their way onto fields of battle. Identifies for the first time 3,694 ministers who were commissioned as chaplains in the Union and Confederate armies and serves as a starting point for any research into the neglected area of Civil War chaplains.
Though he could hardly have wished for anything so elaborate,
his remains were clad in purple vestments- the color usually
reserved for prelates- and laid in state in an expensive casket
decorated with silver roses. A laurel wreath- the emblem of the
south- was placed at his head. Thousands of Savannahians,
including many war veterans, filed past the bier to pay their
respects. The funeral procession included eight-six carriages
carrying the Bishop of Georgia, the Sisters of Mercy and St.
Joseph- together with the orphans they had charge of- the
children of both Catholic parishes, members of the Hibernian
Society, the Irish Union Society, the Workman's Benevolent
Society, and even the Central Railroad Benevolent Society. The
funeral was said to have been the largest Savannah had ever seen.
Father Whelan reportedly "never wore on his person an ornament
or a superfluous article of clothing." He never drank, nor
"partook of a second dish at a meal." And though he reportedly
"never uttered an untruth or did a foolish act", he was an
extremely human person, as evidenced by his anger over the
desecration of the cemetery, and his rightious indignation over
Secretary Stanton's refusal to reimburse him for the money spent
feeding the Union soldiers- whose sorry lot he attributed to the
Federals refusal to exchange them. "Many thousands who fell
victims of the prison life would be living and enjoying their
family and friends" if they'd been paroled or exchanged, he wrote
Stanton. And his final question: "Upon whom is their blood?",
echoes down through the ages- even to this day.
Civil War tour guide Ed Churchill's interest in Father Peter Whelan was undoubtedly whetted when as a child he heard his mother discuss Sgt. Henry Murray, her grandfather, who was wounded in battle fighting with the Union Army, then imprisoned at Andersonville until nearly the end of America's Civil War.
The Irish in America did not fight only for the Union. Thousands of Irishmen fought for the Confederacy, many in the Army of Northern Virginia. Read the stories of the Irish in that army in "Clear the Confederate Way" by Kelly J. O'Grady
"Faith in the Fight": For both the Union and Confederate soldiers, religion was the greatest sustainer of morale in the Civil War, and faith was a refuge in times of need. The clerics' duties did not end after Sunday prayers; rather, many ministers could be found performing daily regimental duties, and some even found their way onto fields of battle. Identifies for the first time 3,694 ministers who were commissioned as chaplains in the Union and Confederate armies and serves as a starting point for any research into the neglected area of Civil War chaplains. 
