Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History
By Alan Huffman
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Alan Huffman
Alan Huffman is a freelance journalist and author of several nonfiction books including Lines Were Drawn: Rembering Court-Ordered Integration at a Mississippi High School, Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia, and Ten Point: Deer Camp in the Mississippi Delta, all published by University Press of Mississippi. He has appeared on NPR and numerous other radio shows, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, PBS, Fox News, and other national TV shows.
Read more from Alan Huffman
Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Sultana
Related ebooks
Where Have All the Muskets Gone? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCan America Survive?: 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Flies of a Summer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Blue Sea of Blood: Deciphering the Mysterious Fate of the USS Edsall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaving Big Ben: The USS Franklin and Father Joseph T. O'Callahan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsINVASION Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Without Trace: The Extraordinary Last Voyages of Eight Ships Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTarzan of the Apes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBack from the Deep: The Strange Story of the Sister Subs 'Squalus' and 'Sculpin' Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When That Great Ship Went Down: The Legal and Political Repercussions of the Loss of RMS Titanic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Deposition of Glynnis Smith Mclean, Second-Class Survivor of the Rms Titanic: A Historical Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immigrant: A Young Man’S Trade Skills Spark His Love Affair with America’S Economy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Stranded Heart - The Story of the Mattinau Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDisaster on the Mississippi: The Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tarzan Of The Apes: “For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dove Among Hawks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLifeboat #15 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEamon de Valera Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/51816: The Year Without Summer - eBook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife & Death on the Loxahatchee, The Story of Trapper Nelson Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Return Of The Gallipoli Legend: Jacka Vc Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWings of Love and War: A Novel of Adventure, Romance, and Courage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Tarzan Series (8 Tarzan Novels in 1 volume) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOff the Deep End: A History of Madness at Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip Nolan: The Man Without a Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAustralia's Greatest Escapes: Gripping tales of wartime bravery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Forgotten Chaplain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLost at Sea in Mysterious Circumstances: Vanishings and Undiscovered Shipwrecks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters: Thrilling Stories of Survivors with Photographs and Sketches Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twelve Years a Slave (Illustrated) (Two Pence books) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White Album: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Sultana
19 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frustrating. Picked up from the “disaster response” wish list, Sultana is indeed about disaster response, as the viewpoint characters author Alan Huffman writes about were wounded at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga, captured by the Confederates, subjected to Civil War medical treatment, imprisoned at Andersonville and Cahaba, paroled and loaded (to six times the boat’s rated capacity) on the steamboat Sultana, and blown up in a boiler explosion. It’s no wonder they were all a little jumpy for the rest of their lives.
The written narrative is excellent, with a sort of Red Badge of Courage feel, and covers the entire ordeal – the titular Sultana explosion is perhaps a quarter of the book. Huffman makes extensive use of surviving diaries, which are sometimes ineffably sad – the diarists first optimistic, then giving into increasing despair as the reality of life in Andersonville soaks in and their lives run out in a series of bouts with dysentery, fever, and just plain misery. Huffman goes into some expostulation about what it took to survive both Andersonville and the Sultana, and it turns out to confirm what a lot of other survival accounts say – don’t despair, don’t panic, carry on. Perhaps trite, but also true.
The frustrating part is the total lack of illustration. I know this is a particular hobby-horse of mine, but the narrative cries out for sketch map of Andersonville, a basic deck plan of the Sultana, a medium scale map of where the Sultana blew up, and photographs. Huffman spends several paragraphs describing photographs:
“Then in the next photo, taken after his return, the real change comes. As in every other photographic portrait of him, his hair is carefully coiffed and he is dressed to the nines. But he looks much older, more rugged and worn. His expression is defiant.”
Why not just show the pictures? Some problem with rights? I don’t know, but the lack of illustration seriously detracts from an otherwise worthwhile book. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting but too many digressions and detours from should be the focus of the narrative, the ship and its destruction.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Don’t let the only 3 stars fool you, this is a good book. I only give 4 stars to books that absolutely thrill me and 5 stars is for books that I can’t live without.The weird thing is, I started this book about 5 times and kept putting it aside after the second chapter, but I couldn’t really say why, it wasn’t boring, I just wasn’t getting into it. After I promised someone I would read it, I sat down determined I would read 50 pages a day until I finished it. I read half the book the book that night. The next day I would have finished it, but I was falling asleep because I was tired. I finished it this morning.After all those starts and stops, once I got into the book, I really got into it. The first few chapters talk about enlisting and how ill-prepared the men were for fighting. He also talks about the psychology of survival. Then he gets into the battles of the Civil War, none of the battle scenes are written in an ‘exciting’ fashion, he doesn’t ‘novelize’ the accounts, just reports the facts, the facts are enough. He relates how each man is captured, the conditions of the prisons and the hospitals. It is a wonder anyone who was injured in the Civil War survived, much less lived to old age.For men who had survived battle, injury, disease and incarceration at Andersonville, “the worst confederate prison”, the explosion of the Sultana, on their way home, must have added insult to injury so to speak. Even afterwards, there was no justice either, the ones responsible, even when found guilty were not really punished. Officers were allowed to be ‘honorably discharged’. "Ultimately the Sultana inquiries were mostly for show. Even the death toll was never fully reckoned. Officially, it was listed at just more than twelve hundred, which failed to include an entire trainload of passengers from Camp Fisk."The accepted estimated total was 1,700 dead making it the worst known maritime disaster in America, even eclipsing the Titanic with an estimated 1,500 dead.And the disaster of the Sultana faded into American history. When I told people I was reading a book called “Sultana” they thought I was reading about a middle eastern princess.As I said this is a good book, I would recommend it for history lovers, Civil War aficionados, disaster freaks and the like. I use the word freak affectionately. After all I’m a freak myself. It would be interesting to people for its human nature aspects, how people survive the worst and keep going when even worse happens.