Summer Reading

Reading is one of the most enjoyable of summer activities. A good book, with a mesmerizing story and characters, takes us on a journey which costs us nothing but our time. TEETH: The Haunting of Dansbury Plot is a book of which I am immensely proud to have written. I know you'll enjoy the read!

Though this book is a work of fiction and fantasy, during the Civil War there were actual prison-of-war camps where soldiers were housed in horrific, inhumane conditions suffering under enemy commanders notorious for their deliberate cruelty to the prisoners-of-war. One of the cruelest of these commanders was Henry Wirz who was the commander of the infamous Andersonville Prison camp. The character of Albin Sarlewski is based on this man.

Unlike the fictional character of Albin Sarlewski who fled the country after the war ended rather than face a trial for his inhumanity to the prisoners, Wirz was brought to trial. Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace, later the best-selling author of the biblically inspired novel?Ben Hur,?presided over the 63-day military tribunal which lasted from August 23 to October 18.

Thirteen separate charges were leveled against Wirz, alleging such acts as the “inciting, and urging of ferocious bloodhounds to pursue, attack, wound, and tear into pieces, soldiers belonging to the U.S. Army, and the intentional murder of a prisoner (name unknown) upon whom Henry Wirz did feloniously and with malice aforethought, inflict a grievous wound from a pistol.?Wirz refused to have the man attended to by the company doctor and, after six days of suffering, the soldier died.”

Henry Wirz was?hanged on November 10, 1865, in Washington, D.C., the only Confederate officer executed as a war criminal.

Besides Andersonville, two of the worst prisons were Libby Prison and Fort Delaware.

The?Official Records?of the Civil War cite a total of 127,000 Union soldiers who endured the privations of being prisoners-of-war in these camps. These privations ranged from inadequate shelter and clothing, poor hygiene, to outright starvation, intentional cruelty, and harsh summary justice with severe penalties. More than 22,580 prisoners died in captivity. 18 percent of Union captives never returned from incarceration.

Libby Prison, was a Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. The Confederates took over the land from the original owner and made it one of the worst places of the Civil War and it quickly gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded, disease-ridden, and harsh conditions under which officer prisoners from the Union Army were kept. Prisoners suffered from disease, malnutrition and a high mortality rate.

Fort Delaware is located near the fictional Township of Bridge Crossing. The fort was originally devised as a harbor defense facility in 1859. It is located on Pea Patch Island along the Delaware River. During the Civil War the Confederates had control of Fort Delaware and used it as a prison to house captured Union prisoners of war. The fort itself was a horrible place to be but what was even worse were the ‘punishment cells’ outside the fort, similar to those described in the book’s Dansbury Plot. There were ‘hot-holes’, cells that were underground with only a small grated window above the cell. Union soldiers, starved and it has been documented that they were sometimes forced to eat their own dead and dying simply to survive.

My reading about the horrors of the above named prisons, and the infamous Henry Wirz, inspired this book. There are many legends about the ghosts* who haunt the camps and Civil War battlefields. All were woven together to create this story.

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*Many Civil War sites have legends of ghosts and strange happenings. However, the story of Little Cecelia is purely from my own imagination and one, I hope, that adds to your reading enjoyment. KH