Camp Sumter aka Andersonville Prison

My new story began bugging me before I had finished my previous one.

I could hear a woman worrying over a man, a drunkard that used to be one of her best friends. The situation was deteriorating to the point that she feared for his life. And she was mad. Mad at him and mad at the woman she assumed had brought him to this level of his life. Only, the problem wasn't a woman. The man is haunted by his memories of his time in Hell. Andersonville Prison.

Andersonville was officially known as Camp Sumter. Sounds innocent enough, doesn't it? Who could have known it was to become synonymous with shame and terror?

Andersonville was situated in southwest Georgia. In Feburary the Confederancy started shipping prisoners to the still unfinished compound. By the time it was completed in July, the 10,000 man camp had more than 32,000 prisoners inside it's 20 foot walls.

By 1865, when the men there were freed, the prison had a population of 45,000 men. 12,912 prisoners died there during it's brief duration. It is said that more than 100 men died everyday during the summer months.

Why did so many die? Dysentry, scruvy, malaria, exposure-take your pick as all of these were rampant in Andersonville. There wasn't enough rations to go around, the men didn't have enough shelter (remember, it was built as a 10,000 man prison-not to accomadate the 45,000 it held), and the creek that flowed through it was both their source of drinking water and the latrine.

I'm not saying that the Confederate camp was the only one of it's kind. The Union had prison camps that had almost as bad statics in New York and Chicago. But the Union had the means to provide for their prisoners of war-the Confederacy was starving, literally. The Confederate Army couldn't supply enough rations to feed their army, let alone prisoners of war. Regardless of where the blame lay, when the Northern people saw the state of the prisoners, they demanded vegenance. After being found guilty of war crimes, Captain Henry Wirz was hanged in November 1865.

But the images that came from Andersonville haunted me. The men looked like survivors of the German concentration camps. Those that were lucky enough to survive it must have been haunted by what they saw. And the fact that they survived. All of this sparked an idea, that turned into a nagging, that is slowly evolving into a new book.

My Favorite Outlaw

Being a western writer, I have researched a lot of outlaws. And being human, of course one of them quickly became my favorite. My favorite outlaw has all of the things we look for when wanting a great legend: a Robin Hood-esque reason for becoming an outlaw, a perceived injustice, and, the thing that makes everyone fascinated with outlaws, a mysterious disappearance. Who do you think of when you hear that list? Jesse James? Butch Cassidy? Billy the Kid? But none of those are my favorite. My favorite outlaw is Henry Barry Lowrie.



Henry Barry Lowrie was a Lumbee Indian from Robeson County, North Carolina.
Lowrie, like so many other outlaws, took to a life of crime during the Civil War. Being an Indian in North Carolina during the War meant that Lowrie was harassed by the Home Guard, who regularly came and pressed the Lumbee men to work on building Fort Fischer. If a man didn’t want to be dragged into building the fort, he hid in the swamps that surrounded the area. Lowrie tired of being harassed and decided to strike back, killing two members of the Home Guard that had a long standing feud with his family.


The Homeguard struck back, accusing Lowrie’s father, Allen, and his oldest brother, William, of stealing. On March 3, 1865 the Home Guard arrested both men, convened an illegal court, and executed Allen and William Lowrie. It is said that Henry watched the executions from behind some bushes and vowed to take his revenge.


For months, Henry hid in the swamps while being considered a wanted man. On December 7, 1865, during Henry’s wedding ceremony to Rhoda Strong, the Home Guard arrested him with no warrant. Legend has it that Henry filed his way out of the jail and, still shackled, made his way home to Rhoda.


Henry started a band, known as Lowrie’s band, of disgruntled Indians, two African Americans, and one Scotsman. They started robbing rich white residents of Robeson County, earning them the reputation of being the local ‘Robin Hoods’. When the state government declared them outlaws and posted rewards for them, the band retaliated with violence. This stretch of violence resulted in the deaths of 10 members of the Police Guard and the Lowrie Band.


In 1871, the chief of the Police Guard had the Lowrie women gathered up and held them hostage in prison. Lowrie and his gang sent the chief a letter demanding the immediate release of their women or an escalation of violence and like treatment to their women-folk. What was the chief to do but release the Lowrie women?


The last known crime of Lowrie and his band came on February 16, 1872 when they raided Lumberton and stole over a $1000 worth of goods and a safe containing $20,000. The safe was later discovered, open and empty, in the sheriff’s office. It is said by some that the reward money that the government had gathered had been in that safe at Pope and McLeod’s General Store, others say that the $12,000 reward went unclaimed. But all accounts say that Henry Barry Lowrie disappeared after that heist.


While rumors abounded that Henry had accidentally blown his own head off while cleaning his gun, several others hinted that he had escaped to the West. And to further stimulate these speculations, it is said that at least twice a year, Rhoda took trips out west. She never said where she was going or who she was visiting.


While I gathered all of this information, I little cared about which version was true. We all know that rumors surround outlaws and that the truth is probably a little of all of them. But Henry Barry Lowrie stirred the ‘What if’ component of my brain like none of the other outlaw legends had.


So how about it readers, is there an outlaw, famous or infamous, that strikes a chord with you and has quickly become a favorite?