He spent July 4, 1864, suffering in a Confederate prison camp
‘They were the victims of starvation, cruelty, and exposure to a degree unparalleled in the history of humanity.’
While Independence Day is typically celebrated with parades, fireworks, and cookouts, the holiday is more solemnly marked when remembering the farmers-turned-soldiers who fought to end British rule in 1776.
During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, yet another generation of Americans took up arms to preserve the new nation by defeating the Confederacy and abolishing slavery.
One of those Union soldiers, George Wallace Phillips of Malden, spent July 4, 1864, held captive at Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Ga., the largest and deadliest of 150 military prisons operated by the North and the South.
To pay tribute to his greatgrandfather, Ed Phillips of Upton traveled on June 5 to see the notorious facility for himself.
Constructed in February 1864 to house up to 10,000 Union soldiers captured in battles around Richmond, Va., the camp saw overcrowding that eventually peaked at more than 32,000 men. Some 12,000 prisoners would be buried in the adjacent cemetery, according to the National Park Service.
“I’m not an emotional kind of guy, but I did get a sense of the place — and it was an awesome and eerie feeling,” said Phillips, 72, a professional genealogist and chair of the Upton Historical Commission. “You can read about it. You can look at photographs. But when you’re there, you understand it really happened.
“There was no protection from hot summer days or the pouring rain. Just all those men sleeping on the field inside a stockade wall, with dozens dying every single day from typhoid, dysentery, smallpox, and starvation,” added Phillips, who has published four books about his ancestors.
“The fact my great-grandfather — or anyone — survived is amazing. And to think if he had died, I wouldn’t be here.”
Phillips, an editor of Je Me Souviens, the quarterly journal of the American-French Genealogical Society, traces his 25year dedication to genealogy to an unlikely place: Spag’s, the now-shuttered discount department store.
“I was following my wife around, bored as all hell, when I saw a genealogy software CD in a 50 percent off rack for $10,” Phillips recalled. “I took it home and put my name and my parents’ names into the database. One thing just led to another.”
In 2000, his mother revealed he had a paternal second cousin in Spruce Island, Maine, who had long been compiling Phillips family history. He immediately arranged to meet her, driving more than five hours each way.
“She gave me a family fan chart of 10 generations with names, but no dates or places. I was upset at the time, but it set me on the path to doing actual research,” said Phillips, who said he has identified 18 ancestors as Mayflower passengers, 21 Revolutionary War soldiers, two Civil War servicemen (including George Phillips), dozens who fought in the French and Indian War, and approximately 75 who served in King Philip’s War.
“I absolutely fell in love with genealogy as a way to journey through history,” he said.
Having earned a reputation as the family historian, Phillips was presented by another cousin five years ago with a treasure trove of George Phillips’s paraphernalia, including photos, war medallions, and the pocket diary he kept while imprisoned in Andersonville.
George Phillips was a 20year-old farmer and teamster when he enlisted for a threeyear term in Company F of the Massachusetts 25th Volunteers at Fitchburg in April 1861.
He was honorably discharged on Dec. 16, 1863, but reenlisted the following day in Company B of the same regiment.
On May 16, 1864, he was captured by the Confederate Army near Drewry’s Bluff, Va., and sent to Libby Prison in Richmond.
The following week, he was transferred to Andersonville, where he remained until Union General William T. Sherman occupied Atlanta in September 1864. George Phillips was among the majority of prisoners who were then moved to other Confederate prison camps, including ones in Charleston, S.C., and Florence, Ga.
While imprisoned in Andersonville, George Phillips wrote in his diary in pencil about the daily weather, his paltry rations, deaths of friends, and the reelection of President Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 8, 1864. Despite avoiding injury in 20 battles and skirmishes, he later cited one of his most significant experiences as “being captured and starved most to death at Andersonville and Florence, S.C., where I was prisoner for 9 months and 9 days.”
In fact, the unspeakable misery and shocking appearance of freed Union prisoners has been described in length by witnesses such as A.O. Abbott, a New York Dragoons first lieutenant whose recollections are compiled in the book “Prison Life in the South in the Civil War.”
In 1865, he wrote, “In short, no words can describe their appearance. The sunken eye, the gaping mouth, the filthy skin, the clothes and head alive with vermin, the repelling bony contour, all conspired to lead to the conclusion that they were the victims of starvation, cruelty, and exposure to a degree unparalleled in the history of humanity.”
After being released at Goldsboro, N.C., on Feb. 23, 1865, and discharged on June 29,1865,George Phillips worked as a clerk, traveling agent, and last-maker (creating shoe molds). He lived the rest of his life in Malden, a Boston suburb.
According to Phillips, witnessing the site of his greatgrandfather’s suffering and survival in Andersonville is even more poignant when considering his eventual fate.
In fact, a Boston Globe article published on Sept. 1, 1890, described George Phillips’s death the previous day while in the line of duty as a volunteer fireman, when his vehicle was struck by a train at Saugus Crossing in Malden en route to a fire. He was buried in the city’s Forest Dale Cemetery.
“It’s an incredible history made even more amazing by the way he died,” Phillips said. “Like a lot of people, I want a sense of who I am. Where do I come from? Who are the people who got me here? Now I understand it all a little better.”