PREAMBLE

April 1865: The civil war was coming to a close after 4 years of brotherly blood. After something as dividing and polarizing as internal rebirth, things don’t clean up all that quietly.  

The war was all but over after the surrender of General Lee. As one chapter of history was closing another was just beginning. John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln in what he considered to be South’s final act of heroic defiance.  Lincoln’s funeral train travels from DC through several states before coming to rest in Springfield. 

The nations largest manhunt ensues. The fractured nation’s eyes of disbelief stayed riveted on the written word and wire reports. 

Bitter sweet was the victory.  In 1865 word traveled slow. First by word of mouth but proof was held in the print.

Post-war prisoner exchange was now in full swing.  As a byproduct of the Union’s strategies, these young men were prematurely aged and many were maimed in the wake of the victory.  The boys in blue paid most dearly as the South could barely survive, they just struggled to exist, let alone fight or look after the tens of thousands of enemy prisoners.

Places with names like Andersonville and Cahaba would grow in infamy over the decades to follow.  Of all the prisoners to be returning home, a few thousand would become part of a conveniently overlooked atrocity – not as much bloody but surely a more gruesome end to a soldiers life that punctuates with a skeletal exclamation point to how little value the human life had become in this said “Civil” war.

This story is told over the backdrop of the muddy and God almighty Mississippi River, which by the way was pushing flood stages and running fierce and cold in the early spring that April.  As steamships carried the written word declaring war’s end, the news Lincoln’s assassination and the hunt for his murderer, each port of call was ordained with the written proof of the history in the making. 

So were the final weaning days where steamships were king, rail and roads were being rebuilt and rebound in (for) the coming years. 

As with all free enterprise, where there is money to be had, the greed of man is easy to be found. Improprieties ran rampant in both the common sector and industry that served the resource famished feud. The internal military hierarchy controlling the flow of this funding was of no exception.   
Be it within the high ranking, and all controlling quartermaster or the private industry, all were eager to grab the last crumbs of Federal funding before the close of this business called war.

In the process of prisoner exchange southern held Union captives would be sent north. Of those from the mid-west some would pass through a makeshift site known as Camp Fisk at Four Mile Bridge.  These unlucky souls were transported by what rail was left but most they were marched under confederate escort. Some traveled several hundred of miles in foul weather and in dismal physical condition (to say the least).  But through it all their spirits were kept alive with the thought of seeing their loved ones. 	They were going home.

It was through this camp at Four Mile Bridge that a few thousand prisoners would pass on their way to board an ill-fated steamship known as ……the Sultana.

With a legal carrying capacity of 356 they marched over 2200 prisoners aboard. There they would join the 100 civilians, 85 crewmen, 60 horses and mules, 100 hogs heads of sugar, 12 Sisters of Charity and one alligator for a mascot located in the bulkhead in a crate.

It might have been the repaired boilers or maybe a crazed southern operative with revenge on this mind, but either way that ship she went down.