page_title: Peter Whelan (priest)
section_title: Andersonville Prison
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Whelan (priest) / Civil War / Andersonville Prison
caption_attribution_description: English: Historical marker for Father Peter Whelan
context_page_description: Father Peter Whelan was an Irish-born Catholic priest who distinguished himself as a chaplain for both Confederate troops and Union prisoners of war during the American Civil War. Father Whelan previously served as a missionary in North Carolina and pastor of Georgia's first Catholic parish, and twice served as administrator of the entire diocese of Savannah.
  He initially ministered to Confederate troops including the Montgomery Guards, an Irish company established in Savannah for the First Georgia Volunteer Regiment. He remained with them during the Union siege of Fort Pulaski which guarded Savannah harbor, and volunteered to remain with them during their imprisonment in New York in 1862. About a year after his release in a prisoner exchange, he was assigned to minister to the Union prisoners-of-war held at Andersonville, Georgia, where he became known as the "Angel of Andersonville." Nonetheless, according to a biographer in 1959, Father Whelan "never received a lasting place in the history of the Southland he loved so well."
context_section_description: In May 1864, the Reverend William Hamilton, pastor of Assumption Church in Macon and the man responsible for the Catholic missions in southwestern Georgia, was visiting Americus, Georgia.  He accidentally came upon Andersonville prison, which was officially known as "Camp Sumter," and stopped to learn how many Catholics were there. What he saw led him to write a report to the bishop about the condition of the stockade and hospital and to suggest that a priest be provided immediately.   Bishop Verot asked Whelan to go.  Before departing, the sixty-two-year-old priest, along with Father Hamilton visited Major General Howell Cobb, a Georgian with close ties to the Confederate administration.  Hamilton described the terrible conditions that he had seen and recommended that a parole be arranged for the prisoners. Cobb promised to inform the authorities in Richmond, but, as he had feared, nothing was done to help.
  Whelan arrived at Andersonville on June 16, 1864.  While other priests and even the bishop would come for brief periods, Whelan alone remained for nearly four months during the hottest season of the year and the period of the highest mortality.  He departed in October after many of the prisoners had been removed to other locations.
  Although the priest did not leave a record of the shock of his first entry into Andersonville, Father Hamilton described his impressions of subsequent visits vividly:
  I found the stockade extremely filthy; the men all huddled together and covered with vermin (lice).… I found [the hospital] almost as crowded as the stockade.  The men were dying there very rapidly from scurvy…diarrhea and dysentery…They were not only covered with the ordinary vermin but also maggots…they had nothing under them at all except the ground.
  Into this nightmare came Whelan to begin a ministry unlike any that he had performed or would ever encounter again.  After a restless night on his bunk in a little twelve-by-eight foot hut about a mile from the prison, he rose each day at dawn, took a scant breakfast and said his prayers.  Then he walked the hot, dusty path to the stockade, where he stayed from 9 a.m. until nearly sundown; then it was back to the hut for night prayer and some food.  He fell asleep exhausted and  "full of sorrow for what he had seen all day." 
  The stockade sloped down on both sides to a small stream about a yard wide and foot deep. Since no arrangement had been made for sewage disposal, this one creek had to provide drinking, cooking, and bathing water, while also serving as the latrine. Into the creek was thrown the waste of two nearby Confederate camps as well as the grease and garbage from the cookhouse.  Soon the slow-flowing stream became a mass of thick, liquid pollution.  As thousands more prisoners came and milled about its banks, some of the very sick were unable to extricate themselves from the mire; others who could not reach the "sinks," as they were called, had to relieve themselves in the mud.  The creek soon became a new source of disease for the entire stockade. Father Whelan and his fellow priests had to exert an almost "superhuman effort" passing through this area in order to get from one side of the camp to the other.
  All this was too much for Father Henry Clavreul, who had joined Whelan in August.  He became sick with continual vomiting and later wrote: "Whelan decided that I should leave, so I took the trains back to Savannah whilst the…old priest retraced his steps to the stockade."  As the number of prisoners grew steadily to about 33,000, Whelan requested more help.  He was joined first by the Reverend John Kirby of Augusta, and then, by the multilingual Jesuit, the Reverend Anselm Usannez, from Spring Hill College near Mobile.  Each worked for two weeks before leaving the camp.
caption: Historic marker for Whelan in Andersonville, GA
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