The Immortal 600: Surviving Civil War Charleston and Savannah

In 1864,six hundred Confederate prisoners of war, all officers, were taken out of aprison camp in Delaware and transported to South Carolina, where most wereconfined in a Union stockade prison on Morris Island. They were placed in frontof two Union forts as “human shields” during the siege of Charleston andexposed to a fearful barrage of artillery fire from Confederate forts. Many ofthese men would suffer an even worse ordeal at Union-held Fort Pulaski nearSavannah, Georgia, where they were subjected to severe food rationing asretaliatory policy. Author and historian Karen Stokes uses the prisoners’writings to relive the courage, fraternity and struggle of the “Immortal 600."

Karen Stokes is an archivist with the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston, South Carolina. She is a contributor to many historical publications regarding the Civil War. Her first book with History Press, South Carolina Civilians in Sherman's Path: Stories of Courage Amid Civil War Destruction, was published in 2012.