[VAcourier] Group wants to fly Confederate flag at memorial

[Virginia Division SCV Communication List]

Group wants to fly Confederate flag at memorial
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
By Jesse Yeatman
Staff Writer

Without proper markings, thousands of graves were moved not once, but 
twice, from a massive prison camp for Confederate soldiers that operated 
at Point Lookout at the southernmost tip of St. Mary's.

A pair of memorials -- and a third in the works -- attempt to keep the 
men's memories alive. And a group of the dead's kin still honor the 
prisoners, who records show were mistreated and ill fed.

The Point Lookout prison camp, officially known as Camp Hoffman for the 
Federal Commissary General of Prisoners Col. William Hoffman, operated 
for about 18 months, opening in August 1863 just after the battle of 
Gettysburg. It was designed to hold up to 10,000 prisoners, but as many 
as 20,000 were there at a single time and more than 50,000 passed 
through the prison during its time in operation.

With only tents and blankets, the prisoners suffered exposure, disease 
and starvation. Reports of the number of Confederate soldiers and 
sympathizers who died at the camp vary widely, from as few as 3,000 to 
as many as 14,000.

Bitterness ensued between the north and south for some years after the 
war had ended, and many Confederate graves were never officially or 
permanently marked. By the late 1890s reconciliation had begun in 
earnest, according to the National Cemetery Administration.

In 1906 a federal commission was formed to mark the graves of the 
Confederate dead. The Van Amringe Granite Company of Boston was 
contracted to build at least four Confederate monuments at Point 
Lookout, as well as at Finn's Point National Cemetery in New Jersey, and 
North Alton Confederate Cemetery, and Confederate Mound in Oakwoods 
Cemetery, both in Illinois. In all, 24 monuments to Confederate soldiers 
are located in NCA cemeteries.

By 1910 the federal government erected an 85-foot monument with 3,389 
names of Confederate POWs who died at Point Lookout to mark a mass grave 
where bodies had been moved. This was the first federal monument to pay 
honor to Confederate soldiers.

Originally the bodies were in individual graves with wooden markers in 
an area next to Tanners Creek. A fire destroyed the markers and in 1870 
the bodies were moved a mile or so inland to where they rest today, 
under or near the federal monument, according to the NCA. A state 
monument was erected in 1876, listing a total of 3,004 prisoners who 
died. This monument was moved several times and now stands next to the 
federal monument.

Jim Dunbar said some people have estimated that more than 14,000 
Confederates and incarcerated civilians died at the prison. Only one 
unknown is listed, which is unbelievable to Jim Dunbar and others. Some 
descendants have letters or other evidence that an ancestor whose name 
is not on the monument perished at the prison.

Dunbar has ancestors who died at the camp and is a member of the Point 
Lookout Prisoners of War Descendants Organization. In addition to the 
thousands of Confederate prisoners who died, ''more than 300 guards died 
of things like yellow fever," Dunbar said. ''And these men were well fed."

Edwin Beitzell, a local historian and author, wrote in 1972 that the 
death toll would have exceeded 4,000.

''His references are very good. It's taken from what Congress called the 
Official War of the Rebellion," Dunbar said of Beitzell's writings in 
''Point Lookout Prison Camp For Confederates," originally published in 1972.

Local residents, who were mostly Southern sympathizers despite 
Maryland's remaining in the Union, helped some escapees and when caught 
were also imprisoned at Point Lookout.

''During the war, the people of St. Mary's County were not conspicuous 
for their loyalty to the federal government," Beitzell wrote. ''Indeed, 
no one seems to remember any white resident of the county who fought for 
the north, although there were a few. On the other hand, practically 
every family in the county had members in the Confederate service. At 
the beginning of 1861, excitement was at a fever-pitch."

Beitzell made many of his observations based on diaries from actual 
prisoners and archived records. ''The story of the prison camp is a 
horrid story to tell. It is a story of cruel decisions in high places -- 
decisions arrived at coldly and without compassion," Beitzell wrote. 
''It is a story of diarrhea and dysentery, of typhoid and typhus, of 
burning sands and freezing cold in rotten tents -- it is a story of 
senseless shootings by guards, it is a story of despair and the death of 
4,000 prisoners, many of whom could have been saved."

Several years ago the Point Lookout POW Descendants Organization began 
building a memorial on a lot sold to it by a private owner.

''The reason we started this over here is we used to fly the Confederate 
flag right underneath the American flag," Dunbar said. Dunbar said that 
his group had tried to hold ceremonies at the federal monument site but 
that speeches, albeit sometimes ''fiery," were censored by the Veterans 
Administration.

In part because there are no Union soldiers buried in the cemetery where 
the monument stands, the group feels it has a right to fly the 
Confederate battle flag over the monument. ''This was their flag that 
they fought under, was imprisoned for, and died for," according to the 
group's Web site. The group is requesting a change to the Veterans 
Administration rules regarding flags and that the battle flag fly over 
the grave 365 days a year.

''The Supreme Court ruled against them," said Kirk Leopard, director of 
Baltimore National Cemetery Complex, who also has jurisdiction over the 
Point Lookout cemetery and monument.

''It's seen as a separate country," Leopard said of the Confederacy. And 
based on U.S. regulations, only the American flag is flown over national 
cemeteries, Leopard said.

''We try to work with them and accommodate them as much as possible," 
Leopard said. He said he would like to see the events at the park be 
less about the flag and more about the soldiers who died at Point 
Lookout in the line of service.

For the last several years the group has solicited donations and planned 
a new privately owned memorial a block away from the state and federal 
monuments. Several flagpoles are in place and ground has been broken, 
but construction has been slow. The memorial will have informational 
kiosks and feature flags from each state that fought with the 
Confederacy. ''We want the people to hear, as [radio legend] Paul Harvey 
would say, 'the rest of the story,'" Dunbar said.

For Dunbar and others in his group, it all comes down to kin who died at 
Point Lookout. ''These men shouldn't have died at the hands of their 
captors," he said. It would be dishonorable, Dunbar said, to not fly the 
flag they fought and died for and instead fly the flag of their enemy 
over their graves.

As for the racist undertones represented by the battle flag, Dunbar said 
that is not what it signified nor is it why the organization wants to 
use it. He points to the use of the American flag by groups like the Ku 
Klux Klan. And, ''There's more slaves sold under that flag and none were 
sold under [the Confederate battle] flag," he said. ''To them the war 
wasn't about slavery. It was about preserving the Union, states' 
rights." People fighting on both sides owned slaves, and there were 
black soldiers who served on the Confederate as well as the Union side.

The new Confederate Memorial Park plans its own monument, which will 
include names of those who died at the prison camp and were left off the 
federal monument, as well as flags and trees from each of the 
Confederate States of America and a POW statue. The group purchased land 
next to the park.

The prison camp site is steeped in history, from its early European 
explorations by Capt. John Smith to the land grant to George Calvert, 
Lord Baltimore, whose son later used the point as a personal manor. It 
was the subject of British raids during the War of 1812 and has remained 
the location of a lighthouse used to warn mariners of the extended 
underwater point. A planned resort was disrupted when, in 1862, the 
federal government erected Hammond Hospital at the tip of the point. 
Since the war a hotel once operated at the site and now the region's 
most visited state park on a 500-acre peninsula.

Although much of the prison site is now under water, the earth works of 
Fort Lincoln still stands today on the shore near Cornfield Harbor. 
According to the park's Web site, open graves from which the Confederate 
dead were removed a century ago are still discernible near the bay shore.

Some of the barracks and officer quarters have been recreated by the 
Friends of Point Lookout. Each June the park hosts Blue and Gray Days 
featuring re-enactors. This year's celebration will be June 9 and 10.

E-mail Jesse Yeatman at jyeatman at somdnews.com <mailto:jyeatman at somdnews.com>




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