TTHN Ep 10 - Horror on the Mississippi: The Forgotten Inferno

For a few terrible hours in April of 1865, the Mississippi River became the setting for one of the greatest disasters in American history.

The Civil War was ending. Thousands of Union soldiers, recently freed from Confederate prison camps, were finally headed home.

Many never made it.

Packed far beyond capacity, the steamboat Sultana pushed north against the current carrying exhausted passengers who had already survived war, imprisonment, starvation, and disease. Near Memphis, disaster struck.

In the darkness before dawn, the boilers exploded.

What followed was chaos on the river: fire, freezing water, collapsing decks, and desperate survivors fighting to stay alive in the current of the Mississippi.

In this episode, we tell the story of the Sultana: how it happened, why so many were aboard, the corruption and negligence surrounding the voyage, the human cost of the disaster, and why one of the deadliest maritime tragedies in American history has so often been forgotten.

Because sometimes history is not lost because it was small.

Sometimes it is lost because the nation was already trying to move on.

Special Note:

If you are interested in the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends organization, you can reach out directly to Norman Shaw at shawclan4@bellsouth.net

📚 Sources

Potter, J. O. (2012). The Sultana Tragedy: America’s Greatest Maritime Disaster. Pelican Publishing.

Salecker, G. E. (2022). Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana: The Worst Maritime Disaster in American History. Naval Institute Press.

Shaw, N. (2026). Personal interview conducted by author.

The Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends. (n.d.). “The Disaster.”

Tennessee Encyclopedia. (n.d.). “Sultana Disaster of 1865.”

American Battlefield Trust. (2023). “The Sultana Disaster.”

The Civil War Monitor. (2021). “Facts and Figures: The Sultana Disaster.”

Library of Congress. (n.d.). “Sinking of the SS Sultana: Topics in Chronicling America.”

Encyclopedia of Arkansas. (n.d.). “Sultana.”

Lincoln Shrine. (n.d.). “The Sultana Disaster.”

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture. (n.d.). “Understanding the Sultana Tragedy: The Long Way Home.”

Sultana Disaster Museum. (n.d.). Museum exhibits and interpretive materials reviewed by author.

🎙️ Credits

Hosted by Big John Summers
Produced by Summers Media Enterprises

Music by Big John Summers

📣 Follow & Support

Follow The Tennessee History Nerd on Facebook, Instagram, and X for additional content, including on-location videos and historical insights from around Tennessee and other places connected to its story.

Support the show on Patreon for:

• Early access to episodes
• Ad-free listening
• Exclusive bonus content, including full-length interviews

🔗 Links

🎧 Support the show on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/summersmediaenterprises

🧢 Merch & Apparel:
https://www.summersmediaenterprises.com/merch

🎤 Book John for Speaking Engagements:
https://www.summersmediaenterprises.com/speaking-engagements

📘 Follow on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/TheTennesseeHistoryNerd/

Thanks for listening!  Please check out our other episodes!

Advertise with us!  John.summers@summersmediaenterprises.com

Check out our sister podcast Dauphin Island Diaries

Check out merchandise from The Tennessee History Nerd.   www.summersmediaenterprises.com/merch

If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show, share it with someone who loves history, and leave a review—it helps more folks discover the stories of the Volunteer State.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Tennessee History Nerd. This is a podcast dedicated to Tennessee's past. Every week we bring you a new story about the people, places, and events that have shaped Tennessee and made it and us who and what we are. So grab your favorite beverage, find a comfortable place, and sit back and enjoy. Private John Simpson was abruptly awakened from his slumber to the bizarre sensation of flying, only to discover that he wasn't dreaming and it wasn't his imagination. Moments later, he was shocked fully awake as he plunged into the frigid Mississippi River. All around him, debris was splashing into the icy river. Behind him, the vessel he'd just been aboard, the steamboat Sultana, was suddenly dead in the water, and the area behind her twin stacks where the pilot house used to be was now a cratered wreck. Coals and embers were raining down, including onto the highly flammable wooden structure of the steamboat, and fires were already starting to catch all about the boat. Although it may not have seemed so at that particular moment, Simpson was one of the lucky ones. He was relatively unhurt, and he'd been blown clear of the immediate vicinity of the Hulk of the boat, which in a very short time would be a raging inferno. And there was enough floating debris nearby for him to secure as a makeshift flotation device. Far too many others were not so lucky this night. Roughly 2,000 Union soldiers were aboard the Sultana that night. They were former POWs who'd recently been freed from both the infamous Andersonville prison camp as well as the lesser known Cahaba prison camp. They were emaciated, suffering from malnutrition and a host of maladies, and in the coolness of the spring night on the river, many of them had sought the warmth offered by the areas above the boilers. This was a tragic choice because at about 2 a.m. on April 27, 1865, three of the four boilers on the Sultana exploded. Of the roughly 2,100 passengers and crew aboard her, only about 900 would survive the ordeal. It would become the greatest maritime disaster in American history, and most of the country wouldn't even know about it. By the spring of 1865, the Civil War was finally mercifully coming to an end. It had been four long, bloody years of war, with over 600,000 dead and the cream of an entire generation destroyed. So by late April 1865, the nation was weary of all the news of death and destruction. On April 9th, Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to Grant. On the Gulf Coast, the Union Army had overwhelmed and overrun the Confederates at Fort Blakely the same day, and the port of Mobile would fall three days later. Then on April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth as he and Mrs. Lincoln were attending a play at Ford's Theater. He died the next day. Booth himself would be cornered in a barn at Port Royal, Virginia on April 26th and would be shot trying to escape after the Union soldiers set that structure on fire to drive him out. That same day, General Joseph Johnston would surrender his forces to General William Tecumseh Sherman in North Carolina. And President Lincoln's funeral procession would take 19 days to cover the 1,700 miles between Washington, D.C. and Springfield, Illinois, where he would be laid to rest on May 4, 1865. So on April 27th, when the Sultana disaster transpired, not only was the nation reeling from a month of major news stories, it was in the midst of what was also a very busy news day as well. But before we talk at length about the tragedy itself, let's look at how things came to be as they were at that moment. The sidewheel steamboat Sultana had been built in Cincinnati in 1863. She was considered a modern riverboat for her day, roughly 260 feet long, powered by four tubular boilers. The Sultana normally traveled between St. Louis and New Orleans, carrying freight and passengers along the Mississippi River. Legally, she was rated to carry 376 passengers and crew, but throughout the war, steamboats had carried soldiers well above their documented capacity, essentially carrying them more as cargo than as passengers. The captain of the Sultana was James Cass Mason. His route was from St. Louis to New Orleans and back. On the way downriver, he met with the quartermaster in charge of getting the former POW's home, Reuben Hatch, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The temporary camp for those former POWs was Camp Fisk, right outside Vicksburg. There had already been several trips made by other boats carrying men back upriver to Cairo en route to being discharged. The federal government was paying a set rate per head, one rate for enlisted men and another for officers. Hatch was willing to make deals, especially when it meant he could make a profit himself. He'd already been in trouble previously for his dishonesty, but he'd managed not only to wriggle free, but to advance in position because he had what we'll call friends in high places. His brother was the Secretary of State for the state of Illinois and had been a major contributor in helping to get Abraham Lincoln elected president. And Lincoln had intervened on Hatch's behalf. It seemed Hatch likely was up to his old tricks, and Mason was likely doing what he had to do to ensure that he was able to get some of that government money. When Mason came back upriver from New Orleans, he wanted as many of those soldiers going north as he could get. But when Mason got back to Vicksburg, he had serious problems. One of his boilers was leaking. They'd had to reduce pressure due to the leak, and their speed had been significantly impacted coming back up the river. When they arrived in Vicksburg, Chief Engineer Nathan Wentringer had to find an appropriate boiler repairman to try to get it inspected and repaired.

unknown 7:30

R.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

G. Taylor was located, an experienced boiler maker, and he inspected the boilers and found not only the leak, but also that there was a bulge in the defective boiler. He refused at first to work on the boiler at all unless he could perform a full repair. He didn't feel like a patch job would be sufficient. Meanwhile, as those events were transpiring, Mason was proceeding with his business to get as many soldiers as he could for the trip upriver. The agreement had been for at least a thousand. At Camp Fisk, former POWs were preparing for embarkation. They were finally going home. Many of those men had endured horrors difficult for modern Americans to fully understand. They had survived prison camps like Andersonville in Georgia and Cahaba in Alabama. They'd survived disease, starvation, exposure, contaminated water, and overcrowding. Some men who entered prison healthy and strong emerged skeletal and barely able to walk. And so many of them believed that the worst was finally behind them. The Confederate government had been moving prisoners toward Vicksburg where they would be exchanged and paroled. Thousands of exhausted Union soldiers had slowly made their way toward the Mississippi River. For many of them, simply seeing the river felt almost unreal. One survivor remembered men shouting and crying when they first saw the stars and stripes again near the Big Black River outside Vicksburg. Others rode home for the first time in months, sometimes years, telling wives and parents that they would soon finally be home. To their credit, the U.S. Army was doing everything they could to get these men home as quickly as possible. Hatch was certainly taking advantage of this to line his own pockets, and evidence seems to suggest that he was taking kickbacks. And according to multiple sources and later investigations, Mason badly needed the money. The more men aboard, the more money a captain could collect. So Mason was trying to get as many as he could. He couldn't permit the boiler problem to delay him any longer than absolutely necessary. If the Sultana remained tied up for several days, other boats would carry those prisoners instead. Mason would lose that windfall. After first refusing to do anything other than a complete repair, boilermaker RG Taylor reluctantly agreed to the patch job that Mason and Wentringer wanted, against his better judgment. The repair continued for hours and hours as the prisoners were loaded aboard the boat. But then the number of prisoners boarding began to become a problem. The soldiers began to notice that while the Sultana was becoming very, very crowded, other boats tied alongside had lots of room and no soldiers. And then the Sultana's hurricane deck began to sag under the weight of the extreme weight. Even in their emaciated condition, that many extra passengers was taxing the ability of the boat to handle the weight. Mason quickly had the sagging deck reinforced, but even he began to be concerned with the ability of the boat to handle the load. When he raised his concerns, he was told by the officer overseeing the loading that the decision was no longer his to make. All the soldiers would be loaded as intended. One of the issues was that there were more soldiers than Mason had planned on, even with wanting extra soldiers. It seems that when all the soldiers were directed to the Sultana, those making that decision didn't realize that there were now about 2,000 of them, probably several hundred more than had been understood to be in the group. So the Sultana was loaded far beyond anything remotely safe. And her boiler's patch job was not sufficient. And the Sultana's heavier load meant more strain on the engines trying to push the boat upstream. And the Mississippi River was in flood stage. At this point of April, in some places the levees had failed. They were far more primitive than the levee system today. In places, the river was miles wide due to the flooding. And the flooding was largely due to melting snow in the north. So the water was cold and it was running fast. Even lightly loaded, an engine would have to strain harder against that current. Much as the engine of an automobile going uphill must work harder to carry the vehicle against gravity. A boat going upstream has to work harder to make headway against a current. And the Sultana's ailing boilers were going to be taxed even more against the flood current and under that heavy payload. It was not a good combination, especially under the circumstances. Men crowded every available inch of deck space. Survivors later described conditions where it was difficult even to walk without stepping over bodies lying shoulder to shoulder on the decks. And these weren't healthy men. Most, if not all, were already weakened from months of imprisonment. Some could barely stand. Many were still visibly ill. Among those roughly 2,000 Union soldiers were about 400 East Tennesseans. Union soldiers from places like Knoxville, Blunt County, Severe County, Claiborne County, Hancock County, and elsewhere in East Tennessee had survived Confederate prisons only now to find themselves packed aboard the overloaded steamer. Nevertheless, they were in good spirits. They'd been overcrowded for months. Now they were being fed, and they knew that they were finally headed home. They could handle the overcrowding for a few more days if it meant that they were going to their loved ones. By the time the Sultana finally backed away from Vicksburg on April 24, 1865, there were more than 2,000 people aboard. Most modern estimates now place the number around 2,137.

unknown 14:20

R.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

G. Taylor had patched the boiler as best as he could in the short time available. He later told an investigating committee that he had said that the boiler was unsafe when the boat departed Vicksburg. He'd not been able to hammer out the bulge in the side of the boiler before applying the patch. He felt very uneasy about the ability of the boiler to hold until the Satanna made it back to St. Louis, where he'd been assured that the boiler would receive a full comprehensive repair. As the overloaded steamer fought its way upstream, survivors later recalled men crowding from side to side of the boat whenever they passed towns and farms or other ships. The shifting weight caused the vessel to tilt alarmingly. That mattered for two reasons. First, the vessel was so dangerously overloaded and top heavy that the boat capsizing was not out of the question. The second reason was even more ominous than that. It mattered because of the boiler design. The Sultana used interconnected tubular boilers. When the vessel tilted sharply, water levels inside the boilers shifted as well. Areas of overheated metal could suddenly become exposed, then abruptly flooded again when the boat rided itself.

unknown 15:48

R.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

G. Taylor had noted burn spots on the boilers, such as would happen when a boiler was run with too little water in the boilers. Such a deficit made the boilers more susceptible to the vessel tilting, either from the load shifting, or even if the boat had to turn a beam in the current to any degree, especially in the faster current of the Mississippi at flood stage. This was such a problem that these types of boilers would be outlawed on the lower Mississippi the next year. On April 26th, the Sultana reached Helena, Arkansas. There, photographer Thomas W. Banks took what would become the final known photograph of the vessel. This is one of those situations that was noted when men began to migrate to one side of the boat. In this case, they were all rushing to the left side to get into the picture being taken. That happens today. Photobombing is a real thing. And every person has a camera on their phone nowadays. Photography is as normal as blowing one's nose. In 1865, photography was still a novelty. Thanks to Matthew Brady and others like him, the Civil War was the first war that was extensively photographed. But even then, photography was an arduous process, and photographs were relatively rare by modern standards. So Mason and the crew had to very strongly urge the men not to unbalance the boat. So this photograph is perhaps one of the eeriest photographs in American history. The decks are completely packed with men. Every inch of visible space is crowded with Union soldiers trying to get home. And most of them would be dead within 24 hours. The Sultana continued north toward Memphis and arrived there on the evening of April 26th. Some cargo was unloaded. Some men briefly went ashore searching for food. A handful missed the boat when they failed to return in time for its departure. Near midnight, the steamer took on coal and continued northward in the darkness. No one knew that before it was daylight again, most would be dead. Around two o'clock in the morning on April 27th, 1865, disaster struck. Near a spot roughly seven miles north of Memphis, three of the Sultana's four boilers exploded. The blast ripped upward at about a forty five degree angle through the center of the vessel. The pilot house was immediately crushed upward. Men sleeping on the upper decks were instantly hurled into the air. Scalding steam tore through crowded sections of the boat. What water was left in the boilers when they ruptured would have been converted immediately to steam and blown outward in all directions. Anyone within the blast radius and without adequate shielding would have been instantly scalded. No doubt many lost their lives in these first moments. Many were scalded and survived and were subjected to agonizing burns. The smokestacks collapsed, wood splintered apart, fire erupted almost immediately. One survivor later described the sound as louder than battlefield artillery. Some were violently awakened by being thrown off the ship by the explosion. Others never woke up at all. The combination of the hot coals from the boiler fires blown everywhere and the wood treated with turpentine based paint and varnish was a recipe designed to create an uncontrollable conflagration. Within moments the Sultana had become a floating inferno. Panic spread instantly. Men trapped beneath collapsed sections of deck screamed for help as flames spread around them. Hundreds of exhausted former prisoners scrambled desperately for any floating object they could find. Many tore planks from the boat itself before jumping into the river. Many of those who jumped couldn't swim and had jumped off the boat in panic before securing adequate flotation. Even those who could swim were being drowned by those who couldn't, dragging them down in desperation. And of course, many were so weakened by their ordeals in the prison camps that whether they could swim or not really didn't matter. The water around the boat, now dead in the water and adrift, was filled with thrashing, screaming humanity. The night resonated with the crackling and roar of the fires consuming the boat and the sounds of curses and prayers and cries for help. Others floated downstream on doors, planks, pieces of wreckage, anything that would float. Captain Mason was throwing chairs, ripping shutters from windows, planks from walls, anything he could get into the water that would float, he was throwing to those who were already in the water. Some clung to livestock that were in the water. Many of these were dead already, but others weren't, and were as panic stricken as the people who were fighting for their own lives. Those who hadn't panicked and had stayed on the boat were okay at first. There was a breeze that was blowing across the boat and blowing the flames away from those who had remained on board. But when the paddle wheelhouse broke partially free and collapsed into the water, Still connected some at first, but no longer upright, it began to act like an outrigger and catch the current and turn the boat. Then the flames began to be blown over the decks where the people were huddled, and at that point they were left with two choices only stay where they were and be burned alive, or take their chances in the water. More people began to jump into the water, and all around them the burning Sultana illuminated darkness as the flames shot high into the sky above the doomed vessel. Some of the passengers drifted for miles. In fact, it was those who floated the seven miles all the way back to Memphis whose calls for help alerted some of those on the waterfront that there was a catastrophe upstream. First, one bell was rung, and then as others became aware, the general alarm was sounded. But with steam engines, one doesn't just simply turn a key and fire up the engine and take off. Aside from skiffs and rowboats and from a few folks from along the river who heard the explosion and saw the flames shooting into the air from the Sultana, the first rescue vessel to arrive was the steamer Bostona No. She didn't come from Memphis. She was coming downstream from St. Louis when she overtook the flaming hulk of the Sultana and her beleaguered passengers strewn about the river. But other boats from downstream soon joined the rescue effort. Meanwhile, people in Memphis awakened to horrifying scenes along the riverfront. Bodies floated past the city in the current. Men clung to debris begging for help. Hospitals quickly filled with burned victims, drowning victims, and men suffering from exposure and shock. Some survivors were so badly scalded that flesh literally peeled from their bodies. This is the point when we can say that fortune finally smiled a little on the survivors after so many things had gone wrong, each aggravating things further. First, the explosion happened within relatively close proximity to Memphis. Memphis was a town with several military hospitals. These had been started when the city was still in Confederate hands and they were expanded under Union control. So this meant that if a victim survived until he got to Memphis, he at least had a fighting chance. There was medical care available in Memphis that would not have been available in most other towns within several miles. Secondly, the explosion happened upstream from Memphis. That meant that the survivors were floating downstream on the current to where they could get help rather than away from it, as would have been the case if the explosion had happened downstream from Memphis. Even so, many bodies were never recovered. Even Captain Mason was never seen again. Some were probably immolated in the initial explosion and subsequent inferno. Some were likely carried unseen downstream and deposited who knows where. Today, modern scholarship, particularly the work of Gene Eric Salaker, places the death toll at 1,169 people. Older estimates often ranged much higher, sometimes reaching 1,700 or even 1800. But regardless of the exact final figure, the scale of the disaster remains staggering. Regardless of what number you use, the Sultana catastrophe remains the deadliest maritime disaster in American history. And as already noted earlier, almost immediately it began fading from public memory. It never made it truly to the forefront of the national consciousness. So much was happening at that point. In fact, Lincoln's burial wouldn't take place until May 4th. Some Confederate units were still in the field. Nathan Bedford Forest wouldn't surrender until May 9th, almost another fortnight after the Sultana disaster. And in the midst of all that chaos, the destruction of the Sultana became almost an afterthought. There were investigations. There were accusations. Reuben Hatch resigned his commission immediately. Under the system at that time, this kept him from being court-martialed. Questions about corruption, overcrowding, negligence, and responsibility circulated almost immediately. But ultimately, nobody was ever truly held accountable. And over time, the story slowly drifted into obscurity, but not completely, because the survivors remembered. Those in the Midwest began several years later to hold annual reunions every year on the anniversary of the disaster. And because there was a large number of survivors in East Tennessee, and because travel was slow and often expensive in those days, they started their own reunion in Knoxville each year. And the Sultan of Survivors petitioned the federal government to raise a monument to commemorate the disaster and those who died in it. The federal government never came through on that. So in Knoxville, survivors and descendants eventually erected a monument at Mount Olive Cemetery, honoring the Tennessee men who died aboard the Sultana. That was the first such monument. The federal government, to my knowledge, still has never erected a monument, though others have been placed through survivor and heritage groups. That monument matters because for decades the survivors themselves carried the burden of preserving the memory of the disaster when much of the country had largely forgotten it. And honestly, that may be one of the most haunting parts of that entire story. These men survived the Civil War. They survived Andersonville, they survived Cahaba, they survived battlefields, prisons, disease, starvation, and years of suffering. And then within days of finally going home, hundreds of them died in darkness on the Mississippi River. Today, the Sultana itself has not completely disappeared. The shifting Mississippi River eventually changed course, and historians believe the remains of the vessel now lie buried beneath farmland in Arkansas near the river. In 1988, Memphis attorney and author Jerry O'Potter and his family, with some assistance from author Clive Cusler, were able to locate the wreck in the edge of a soybean field, hidden by earth and silt and time, almost like the story itself. But every year, historians, descendants, and preservation groups continue working to ensure the disaster is remembered. A museum now exists in Marion, Arkansas, the nearest town today to where the Sultana came to rest when the fire finally burned through her hull and she sank with only her jack staff still above the water. They're due to open a new facility late in 2026. The hope is that they can do so around Veterans Day. And in Knoxville, attorney and history enthusiast Norman Shaw was led to the story by a real daughter, Mrs. Malcolm Bloom. She was the daughter of none other than John Simpson, the man at the beginning of our story whose slumber was interrupted when the explosion blew him completely off the top deck of the Sultana and plunged him into the river several yards away from the vessel. In the mid-1980s, when she approached Norman Shaw and the members of the Knoxville Roundtable Group, she was in her 90s, and she'd had it drilled into her consciousness by her father to make sure that the story didn't die. She found the right man in Norman Shaw to carry that mission forward. In 1988, he founded the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends. They have carried on the survivor's tradition of meeting every year and of carrying forward the memory of those who died in this tragedy. Sometimes history is about the stories that nearly vanished. And the story of the Sultana is one of those. A story of survival, a story of corruption, a story of homecoming, and of one of the greatest tragedies American history almost forgot. And of those who are now ensuring that it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

So that was this all happened in 1987. So when 1988 rose around, April, I start, which is the anniversary of the disaster, of course, on April 27th, and I contacted people and invited them, and we had more of a formal meeting. That's why I say we really started an organization in 1988. Although we had that informal one in 1987. And so we've been meeting ever since. And uh we've had about 38 uh reunions. We meet once a year, and this is how our association got started. Now, the first 14 years were here in Knoxville because people are surprised we have this strong connection. These two individuals that I just mentioned, their dad was the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry from the Knoxville area. And from the Knox County and the surrounding counties, Union men joined up with the Union Army and formed the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry. Now there were other units that fought for the North, but uh this is the one that uh I'm interested in because they ended up on the Sultana. There was about they were captured en masse by a raid by Forrest, General Nathan Bedford Forest, that most people know about, or the Confederacy, the Wizard of the Saddle, I think his uh title was, his nickname, and he captured them on what's called a railroad raid in September of 1864, and captured an entire regiment. I mean, a few might have got away. And what happened is there was a fort in Athens, Alabama, where he started this railroad raid. And what he was trying to do, he was trying to cut off supplies to keep Sherman from capturing Atlanta, but Atlanta had already fallen, so it really made no sense, but that was his orders. Uh as I recall, Atlanta fell September 2nd, 1864. And he starts this uh, or that's about when he started his raid. But anyway, he's going up through there, tearing up tracks and and uh, you know, causing havoc, which he's pretty good at. So he had a fort in Athens, Alabama, and it's in northern Alabama, called Fort Henderson, and he uh Forrest uh had a lot of tricks up his sleeves, and he convinced the the colonel in charge of that fort that he had like three times as many men as he actually had. And he said, You have no chance, you need to surrender. And he actually took that officer out and showed him his his men, the Confederate men marching by, but what the officer didn't know that these men would go behind somewhere they couldn't see him, and they would change like cavalry to infantry, infantry to cavalry. So he convinced the it was Colonel Campbell that he had three times as many men that he had. So Colonel surrendered, upsetting a lot, most of his officers, of course. Uh part of the 13th Cavalry was there. About two miles up the railroad track, there was another small fort guarding the railroad, Sulphur Creek Trestle. And uh this one, the the uh commander was not so gullible and would not surrender, so uh Forrest had to just, you know, set up his cannon and just bombard him into submission. And that's where the rest of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry was, because they had been out hunting for Forrest, and when the Athens fell, that's their only area of protection. Let's come back to that fort. So that's what this is what happened to the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry. And they uh ended up Cahaba prison, uh, which is near Selma. Pretty bad prison that a lot of people don't know about. It was not as infamous as Andersonville, which is in Georgia, but this is in Alabama, and they they they was packed in this uh former tobacco warehouse and had about 3,000 men. It was not pleasant. They were crowded. They had probably like, I think somebody figured up, they had maybe like, you know, 12 square feet per person of space, and that's like two feet by six feet. That's not a lot of space to move around in. And so they, of course, they lost some men there, and then they eventually were exchanged. What was in the left of the men from Andersonville and Cahaba were exchanged by going to an exchange camp, a parole camp outside Vicksburg. And in case people don't know what that means, exchange, uh, in the Civil War, it the northern prisoners would be traded with the southern prisoners uh one-on-one, private for private, captain for captain, colonel for colonel. So so that brings us up to the story of how they got on the Sultana.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

And they this was they ended up at um it was Camp Fisk.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Camp Fisk, yes. It was uh it was a it was a really intelligent compromise. You know, the Confederacy was starving, they couldn't feed their own people, let alone prisoners, and you know, it took them off their hands. They sent these prisoners to Camp Fisk, which was four miles east of Vicksburg. They were still technically under the control of the Confederacy, but they were within reach of easy supplies and uniforms and those things they needed to recover because they were in pretty bad shape after four or five months in a Confederate uh prisoner war camp. So they were there a few weeks, maybe six weeks, they got there early March, and then plans were, you know, the war was ending. Why were they there? Lincoln was assassinated. Talk about probably here a little bit later, but you know, Lincoln keep pops up two or three times in the story of the Sultana, but he was assassinated, and then it was the Confederates thought, well, this time do we need to leave? And they left their left the guys there, and so they they were not technically exchanged, but all practical purposes they were. And then later the idea was to send these guys home, because now we're into April, and Lee has surrendered April the ninth, and the war is coming to a conclusion. We need to get these guys home. And they did that by uh contracting uh private steamboats and putting them on the steamboats and paying a certain amount to the the captains, which was a really kind of a windfall. Uh something they did all through the war when the transporting troops are, but now we're trying to send them home. So this was the plan, and you know, it wasn't a bad plan.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

If you look on a map, you'll see that Andersonville is pretty much a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit Norman Shaw. Using the term enjoyed with this particular topic doesn't feel exactly appropriate. But I hope this episode was engaging for you at the very least. I'll be announcing our next topic online in a few days, so keep watch on social media. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Just look for the Tennessee History Nerd. Until then, I'm Big John Summers, the Tennessee History Nerd, and I am history. Before we close things out completely, I wanted to share with you this episode was researched using online materials available from the Tennessee Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the Library of Congress Chronicling America Archives, the website for the Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas, the website for the Sultana Association, the University of Arkansas Little Rock's Center for Arkansas History and Culture. Multiple survivor accounts and historical newspaper records from the period were reviewed and are available through these sites, especially the Library of Congress and the website for the Sultana Disaster Museum. Special attention was given to the work of Jerry O. Potter in The Sultana Tragedy, America's Greatest Maritime Disaster, and Gene Eric Salaker in Destruction of the Steamboat Sultana, the worst maritime disaster in American history, including Salaker's updated casualty research and extensive primary source analysis. Additional contextual and interpretive insight was also drawn from conversations and interview material connected to Knoxville attorney and Sultana historian Norman Shaw, whose work has helped preserve the memory of the disaster and its East Tennessee connection for decades. As always, I'm thankful for the tremendous amount of research and work documenting that all those behind these sources have done, and I encourage you to drill deeper into them yourself. And thanks so much for listening.