By John Tiffany. After suffering months—even years—in confederate PoW camps, these union soldiers were ecstatic to be finally going home.
So optimistic were they, these emaciated former POWs didn’t even complain when they were packed like sardines on the steamship Sultana—the boat that was to take them back to their families. But though they had survived the horrors of war and starvation, these hardened men in blue could hardly have imagined the fate that awaited them and many of their comrades just 12 days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee…[Read the entire article as PDF…]
The Barnes Review, January/February 2015: The Sultana Disaster: Blame Abraham Lincoln