The Public Domain Review

This is just an automatic copy of Public Domain Review blog.

Prison diary of Michael Dougherty (1908)

Thursday 6 December 2012 at 18:28

Prison diary of Michael Dougherty, late Co. B, 13th., Pa., cavalry. While confined in Pemberton, Barrett’s, Libby, Andersonville and other southern prisons. Sole survivor of 127 of his regiment captured the same time, 122 dying in Andersonville, by C. A. Dougherty; 1908; Bristol, Pennsylvania. The diary of Michael Dougherty, a young Irish soldier in the American Civil War, kept while imprisoned in various Confederate prison camps. As Dougherty notes, in 1863 “At 5 p.m. we were overpowered, cut off from the division and 127 of our regiment, among whom was your humble servant, were compelled to surrender.” For the next 23 months moving from camp to camp Dougherty kept his secret diary noting down his experiences of daily life. Of the 127 Union soldiers taken prisoner with him, he was the sole survivor, with nearly all of them perishing at the hands of commander Captain Wirz in the notorious Andersonville, Georgia prison. Dougherty’s descriptions of the appalling conditions at Andersonville are amongst the most harrowing in the book. The book is housed at the Internet Archive, contributed by the Library of Congress. Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand [...]

Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2012/12/06/prison-diary-of-michael-dougherty-1908/