Sunday, May 24, 2009
Salem NJ
The Union Monument at Finn's Point National Cemetery,
dedicated in 1879 to 135 Union soldiers who died while on duty at Fort Delaware.
I want to visit Finn's Point & then take the ferry to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware River.
During the Civil War, the North had no military prison as horrific as Andersonville, Georgia. If one is comparing different circles of hell. 22,000 Confederate prisoners were incarcerated at Fort Delaware, 12,000 at one time after the Battle of Gettysburg. 2,436 of them were buried in trench graves at Finn's Point. The cemetery also has a monument to the Confederate dead.
"The prisoners were afflicted with smallpox, measles, diarrhea, dysentery and scurvy as well as the ever-present louse. A thousand ill; twelve thousand on an island which should hold four; astronomical numbers of deaths a day of dysentery and the living having more life on them than in them. Lack of food and water and thus a Christian nation treats the captives of its sword!"Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, 1863
photo from NJ State Archives, Dept. of State
Labels: holidays, New Jersey, postcard
