Two companies of men sent forth in the Civil War from Berrien County, Georgia were known as the Berrien Minute Men. For the most part, both companies of Berrien Minute Men traveled with the 29th Georgia Regiment and kept the same campfires, although occasionally they had different stations. The campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were made for most of 1862 at coastal defenses around Savannah, GA.
In February 1862, Berrien Minute Men Company D, and other companies of the 29th GA Regiment were ordered to Camp Tattnall, near Savannah, GA. The Captain of Company D was John C. Lamb, he having been elected to that position October 14, 1861. The camp was south of Savannah and east of the White Bluff Shell Road. It was named in honor of old Commodore Tattnall, who was ‘the hero of the age” and the senior officer of the Navy of Georgia.
Many happenings at Camp Tattnall were recorded in a wartime diary kept by Washington F. Stark (1829-1897), Assistant Commissary of Subsistence for the 29th Georgia Regiment.
Stark had initially joined the 29th Regiment as a private in the Thomas County Volunteers, but as Assistant Commissary of Subsistence he held the rank of Captain. The Commissary Department was in charge of all food or subsistence supplies at a military post. Subsistence supplies were divided into two parts: subsistence stores, consisting of rations, such as meat, flour, coffee, candles, etc., and commissary property, which was the necessary means of issuing and preserving these stores, such as stationary, forms, scales, measures, tools, etc.
Stark’s diary frequently included his observations on men whose service was lost to illness and occasionally on those lost to vice. In the spring of 1862, he briefly ruminated on the fate of an unnamed soldier of Captain John Carroll Lamb’s company of Berrien Minute Men.
[Camp Tattnall] April 15th [1862]
Diary of Washington F. Stark, Assistant Commissary of Subsistence, 29th Georgia Regiment
…One of Capt. Lamb[‘s] men got on a spree the other day, Visited some house of ill fame, got the venereal disease and was carried to the Hospital where he jumped out at the window and broke his leg which has to be amputated. There is not much chance for him to recover. He was one of the stoutest men that he [Captain Lamb] had. So much for Whisky & harlots.
Another soldier of the 29th GA Regiment from Captain Turner’s company, Berry Infantry, was sick in the hospital with Gonorrhea, first at Hospital No. 1 in Savannah, then transferred on April 7 to Guyton Hospital at Whitesville, GA.
Prostitution in Savannah
Historian Tim Lockley observes in his study of Savannah, “The large numbers of Confederate soldiers in the city…no doubt increased demand for the services of prostitutes,” while the disruptions of families and economic distress caused by the war forced more women to prostitute themselves for survival.
Prostitution [was] a profession that was well established in Savannah. In 1808 the local Grand Jury abhorred “the various houses of ill fame in our city from which issue many of the mischiefs that interrupt our peace. it is here our youth are corrupted. It is here that the sacred ties of marriage are forgotten, and the foundation of diseases laid, which shall continue to be felt to the third and fourth generations.”
“Survival Strategies of Poor White Women in Savannah, 1800—1860.”
As in many other port cities Savannah’s prostitutes found a ready clientele in the crowds of visiting sailors who spent their wages while on shore for a few days in the bars and brothels of Bay Street and Yamacraw.” The city authorities seem to have been fairly phlegmatic about prostitution. In 1855 the chief of police noted in his annual report that the easternmost wards of the city were home to “five large houses of ill fame, besides numerous small ones” while the western part of the city contained “four noted houses of ill fame.” Nothing in his report suggested that the chief of police intended to take action against these establishments. The following year the mayor replied to a request for information on prostitution in Savannah from New York physician William Sanger. He reported that ” In this city there are fifteen houses of prostitution, three assignation-houses, ninety-three white, and one hundred and five colored prostitutes.”
In July 1861, George Webb and other citizens of Savannah petitioned the City Council of Savannah to take action to remove brothels from the town.
Petition
Savannah Daily Republican, July 17, 1861
Of George S. Webb and others, stating to [Savannah City] Council that the occupants of the house of ill fame in State Street, between Drayton and Abercorn streets, have not been removed, and asking Council to take action in the matter. On motion, the above was referred to the Marshall for action in the premises.
…It seems clear that brothels often masqueraded as ladies’ boarding houses. Mary Thorpe and Fannie Fall, for instance, were both indicted for “keeping and maintaining a lewd house” by the Superior Court in 1860, yet the census listed them as operating ladies’ boarding houses…The Grand Jury complained in 1864 about “the intrusion into the more public and respectable streets of the city, of houses of ill fame…subjecting our families to sights and scenes which disgrace their presence and outrage their feelings.”
“Survival Strategies of Poor White Women in Savannah, 1800—1860.”
Over the course of the Civil War, sexually transmitted infections reduced the effectiveness of fighting units in the US Army and the Confederate States Army.
Syphilis and gonorrhea, infections spread through sexual contact, were almost as dangerous to Civil War soldiers as combat. At least 8.2 percent of Union troops would be infected with one or the other before war’s end—nearly half the battle-injury rate of 17.5 percent, even without accounting for those who contracted a disease and didn’t know it or didn’t mention it—and the treatments (most involved mercury), when they worked, could sideline a man for weeks.
THE CIVIL WAR, A Smithsonian magazine special report
The incidence of sexually transmitted disease among Confederate soldiers is not known.
Related Posts
- Regimental Feud at Camp Wilson Near Savannah, GA
- Muster Roll of Berrien Minute Men, Co. D, 29th GA Regiment
- Campfires of the Berrien Minute Men
- Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island: Part 1
- Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island: Part 2
- The Berrien Minute Men and the 1861 Expedition Hurricane
- Berrien Minute Men at Brunswick ~ July, 1861
- Letter from Camp Security, GA
- William W. Knight Writes Home About Old Yellow and Men of the 29th Georgia Infantry
- Old Yaller’s Widow Was Denied Pension
- Reward Offered for Confederate Deserters
- Edwin B. Carroll, Captain of the Berrien Minute Men
- Captain J. D. Evans was Skulking and Hiding Out
- Levi J. Knight, Jr on List of Incompetent Confederate Officers
- Isbin T. Giddens Dies of Brain Fever at Guyton Hospital, Georgia
- Matthew O. Giddens ~ Confederate POW
- Causton’s Bluff Part 4: Arrival of the 29th GA Regiment
- Albert Douglass: Soldier Grey and Sailor Blue
- Berry Infantry, 29th Georgia Regiment at the Battle of Port Royal
- Ned Holmes and Civil War Epidemics
- Seaborn Lastinger Shot for Desertion
- Isaac Strickland, Confederate School Teacher
- Levi J. Knight and the Confederate Payroll Fraud
- Berrien Minute Men and the Shoupades
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