May 13, 1865
| On May 13, 1865 at a place called Palmito Ranch (also called Palmito Hill or Palmetto Ranch, and possibly other variations) near the Rio Grande River in Texas, there is a skirmish between Confederate and Union troops. This skirmish is recognized as the last military action of the Civil War.
Palmito Ranch was a Confederate victory, but it had no effect on the outcome of the Civil War. |
April 27, 1865
Camp Fisk, near Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a prisoner of war camp holding many Federal prisoners. On April 10, 1865 Confederate authorities sent orders to Camp Fisk for release on parole of all its prisoners. This order came the day after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
The Union prisoners of war at Camp Fisk previously were prisoners at camps such as Cahaba (Castle Morgan), near Selma, Alabama and at the hellhole known as Andersonville, in Georgia. The majority of these freed prisoners from Camp Fisk had suffered long, hard, imprisonments and the strain of existing in a Civil War prisoner of war camp had taken a toll on their health. They were weak with disease and malnourished, their release from Camp Fisk was a welcomed blessing … and a supposed lifesaver.
The Civil War was ending. The freed prisoners looked forward to shedding their old, worn, filthy war uniforms for new, and soon happily returning to their families and homes. Now on their path to freedom, the parolees would have to make a trip up the Mississippi River from Camp Fisk to Cairo, Illinois.
To move these former prisoners of war up the river to Cairo, the Federal government contracted with private steamboat lines. The steamship Sultana was hired to help transport men.
The Sultana was loaded with over 2,000 parolees and other passengers as it began its voyage to Cairo. The Sultana was severely and dangerously overloaded as this steamship was designed to carry only a mere 376 passengers. There were four boilers in the Sultana and all of them required patching at one time or another. The stress of hauling this overload of human cargo proved too much for the Sultana.
Three Sultana boilers exploded about seven miles above Memphis.
The Sultana Disaster
The freed prisoners were weak and sick from their captivity, many of them did not know how to swim and were injured by the boiler explosions. For many of these poor men, men who had survived cruel prisoner of war captivity and treatment, their final fate was drowning in the Mississippi.
The figures vary, but 783 to 786 people were rescued from the muddy Mississippi waters. Those saved from the water were taken to Memphis hospitals. Sadly, 200 of them later died from their ordeal. Estimates are that between 1,500 and 1,700 people died because of the Sultana explosion.
The remnants of the Sultana explosion drifted down the Mississippi River, eventually sinking opposite the city of Memphis. Today, the Sultana’s remnants are buried deep in mud at the bottom of the Mississippi River.
More people died in the Sultana explosion, than died when the Titanic sank in April of 1912.