Father Whelan’s Bread

and Sec’y. of War Edwin Stanton

Father Whelan at Andersonville. Source nps.gov

For a time during the Civil War Father Peter Whelan was chaplain of the Confederate troops known as the Montgomery Guards, or, as the Savannah Republican called them, “the Romish portion of the garrison.”¹

In July 1864 the Irish-born priest was sent by Bishop Augustin Verot to the infamous Andersonville prison where he ministered to thousands of Union prisoners for several months. In September he borrowed $16,000 in Confederate money from Henry Horne, a Georgian, and purchased ten thousand pounds of flour, which was baked into much-needed bread and distributed at the prison. Survivors of the Andersonville horrors remembered him as the “Angel of Andersonville.”

More than a year later, after the war’s end, to repay Horne, Whelan solicited reimbursement of $400 from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who, in turn, demanded receipts!

Father Whelan’s thoughtful - and scathing - reply is a thing of beauty and well-worth reading:

Newspapers.com. The Weekly Telegraph, May 28, 1866. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-weekly-telegraph-whelan-stanton/145524711/.

Father Whelan died February 6, 1871, at the age of sixty-nine; his mortal remains interred in the Catholic Cemetery in Savannah.

May the Angel of Andersonville, who preferred “justice and honesty to health and strength,” rest in peace.

1. Rebel Bishop, John Gannon, Bruce Pub., 1964, 93.