Solivagant USA

A must-see stop in Marion, Arkansas!

A true story of bribes, 2,015 exchanged Union Prisoners of War, a handful of crew and others, and the deaths of 1700 either from the boilers exploding, or the cold waters of the Mississippi. The prison pens in Andersonville and Cahaba for a number of reasons when established in the spring of 1864 were overcrowded, with little food, medical, or sanitation offered by the Confederacy. On April 9, 1865 the Civil War ended. On April 24 a long column of blue-clad soldiers walked to Vicksburg, MS and boarded a steamboat meant to carry 376 passengers. After the explosion three days later seven miles north of Memphis, TN, approximately 300 survived to tell stories of war, terror, hope, and loss.

As I examined the exhibits, I wondered why the worst maritime disaster in American—and one of the worst in world history—is unknown. I’m certain the Museum would greet James Cameron with open arms should he film another Titantic. The Titantic was three times larger, and certainly not overloaded. The truth likely lies in the fact that four years of death and destruction, an assassinated President and capture of his murderer, and sheer fatigue in the face of the future changes. No one was wealthy, or important. For these POWs, those who had hoped to embrace them again, and the survivors who told the stories of their comrades and their own (read Rev. Chester Berry (1892) ”Loss of the Sultana and Reminisce of Survivors,”) we can learn, and remember.