Immortal Six Hundred

Who is Immortal Six Hundred?

In 1864, the Confederate Army imprisoned 50 Union Army officers as human shields against federal artillery in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in an attempt to stop Union artillery from firing upon civilians in the city. In retaliation, United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered six hundred captured Confederate officers to be taken to Morris Island, South Carolina, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor and used as human shields for forty-five days in an attempt to silence the Confederate gunners manning Fort Sumter. These men became known in the South as the Immortal Six Hundred.

At one point General Foster planned an exchange of the six hundred, but it was stopped by General Grant who had previously terminated all prisoner of war exchanges due to the history of Confederate mistreatment of captured US colored troops and wrote, "In no circumstances will he be allowed to make exchanges of prisoners of war ."

Three of the six hundred died from subsistence on starvation rations issued as retaliation for the conditions found by the Union at the Confederate prisons in Andersonville, Georgia, and Salisbury, North Carolina.