Sultana Surviving the Civil War Prison and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History

The explosion and wreck of the Mississippi riverboat Sultana in 1865, which killed 1,700 passengers, mostly Union soldiers recently released from Confederate POW camps, is but the capstone of this engrossing survey of the many varieties of suffering in the Civil War. Journalist Huffman (Mississippi in Africa) doesn’t even get aboard the Sultana until the last third of the saga. Before that, he fills in the backstories of four Yankee survivors as they fight in the battle of Chickamauga, go raiding with Sherman’s cavalry and finally get captured and sent to the infamous Southern prison camps at Andersonville, Ga., and Cahaba, Ala. There they endure the torments of starvation, exposure, festering and maggoty wounds, predatory criminal gangs, lice and diarrhea—a scourge, Huffman notes, that was far deadlier to soldiers than bullets. Making skillful use of war diaries and memoirs, the author makes these quieter ordeals just as moving as the Sultana’s doomed voyage, with its hellish scene[s] of hundreds of screaming people being burned alive or drowning each other in panic. Huffman fits the climactic disaster into a meticulously researched, harrowing look at the sorrow and the pity that was the Civil War. (Apr.)
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User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars The Sultana, The War, And A Story Of Their Victims
Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and The Worst maritime Disaster in American History, Alan Huffman, Smithsonian Collins Press, 300 pp., bibliography, index, 2009, $26.99.

In the past 20 years there have been six books on the Sultana, several magazine articles and one History Channel program. Huffman’s effort, written in an engaging style, offers a somewhat unique point of view that both embraces and diverges from others’ work. In Sultana Huffman personalizes the story in an unique way. Never fully removing himself from the story, there are frequent references to what science tells us today about starvation, exhaustion, brain functions, infected wounds, and survival in water of soldiers, prisoners of war, and victims of mechanical catastrophes. He uses the words of Civil War soldiers to illustrate his discussion and move the narrative forward. Where the soldiers are silent, Huffman advances the story with today’s knowledge of the impact of personal catastrophes similar to those suffered by the soldiers.

So frequently does the author offer the soldiers’ words on events that CWL wishes that an annotated list of characters were in the book. Huffman’s brings the reader to the engaging characters and then moves on leaving the reader wondering id this particularly interestinf individual will be in the story again. Some are and some aren’t. Not all the soldiers Huffman introduces are on the Sultana but still leave their remarkable stories with the reader. Several Indiana soldiers often come to the fore, then step aside, intermittently return thereafter until the Sultana docks and begins to accept Federal former POWs as passengers.

There is just enough discussion of the Sultana as a vessel to move the narrative forward. CWL wishes that the ship itself would have been developed by Huffman as he had developed the soldiers. Also missing is any discussion of the possibility of Confederate sabotage of the vessel. North and South Magazine a few years ago published the story of the successful construction by Rebels of hollow coal filled with gunpowder. The North and South author, successfully in CWL’s mind, found the possibility of Confederate saboteurs at both the explosion of a ship at Grant’s Headquarters in City Point, Virginia and at the Memphis, Tennessee docks where the Federals embarked on the short fateful voyage. Also unfortunately the book has neither illustrations nor maps. It is certainly not the definitive (and CWL doesn’t like that word at any time) telling of the Sultana. Huffman’s accomplishment is that the soldiers are at the center of the story. Their experiences are those of brave men, who endured and who did not endure, who passed through the rapture of war.

5 Stars Exploring the mind of war
This story is so much more than an account of the worst martime disaster in American history. Anyone with an interest in Civil War history — or war in general, or in simply how to survive the worst that can befall a person — has asked this question: How can a mere boy march headlong into a withering enemy fire, knowing he is likely to die, yet keep going, on and on? This book by Alan Huffman finally helps answer that question by getting into the mind of soldiers who faced the absolute worst life could bring. And this story, though set 150 years ago, is applicable today as our soldiers plod through Iraq and Afghanistan, uncertain that they may ever see tomorrow. Huffman’s detail of the perils faced — from bullets to disease to shoddy equipment provided by unscrupulous war profitteers, has frightening similarities to current events. Yet it is his ability to allow the reader to “befriend”, in a sense, the characters he follows from one human disaster to another that makes this story one to read and to share with others. As Huffman writes: “Survival is not an achievement. It is a process, and it is impossible to know, at any given moment, where you are in that process.” As this book so perfectly understands, whether it be war or the devastating hardships of a distastrous economy, the human mind, body and soul are boundless in what they can withstand.

5 Stars comprehensive research and quality writing make this a good read…not just for history buffs
This is a fascinating tale, well-researched and presented in a style that keeps the reader engaged. I’m normally a fiction reader, and generally shy away from Civil War history, but this is a great story, well told. I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys a great story, fictional or otherwise…

5 Stars A true story of survival, American Civil War and the Sultana Disaster
This is a story about survival and the many things that that means.

It is all true, every moment , and it is mostly in the words of the people that lived it.

YOU can walk in their shoes for awhile, you can have the shoes blown right off your feet. And you can live to remember.

Imagine: You went to fight. You get injured in ways you can never recover from,

Your body does not heal. You go to prison. You finally get released and think you are going home to finally get back to the life you remember or what you can still live of it based on your new limitations. And then the worst happens: the ship you are on to take you home – the boiler blows in the middle of the night and the ship catches on fire. You have two choices: Jump into water you know you can’t live long in because it is so cold and because people are drowning each other OR

burn alive. It is April 27, 1865 around 2 am…

You will see varying accounts of the number of people on board but this is the worst maritime disaster in United States history, worse than the Titanic and yet you never heard of it. So consider these numbers:

2400 people on board a ship designed to hold 376. Only 700 survivors.

This book will take you there through several individual stories and many diaries and first hand recollections. This book made me empathize my way through the war, prison and the disaster. Many voices, one story: individual but universal.

Go there and see it, live it for a moment. Remember. Pass it on…

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