Here is one story a man tells of his great-grandfather and the emotional wreckage a disaster may wreak:
"My great grandfather was a passenger on the Sultana when it blew up near Memphis. He was sleeping at the stern of the ship when the boiler exploded. He describes his agony in his military records.
On board the Sultana, he was thrown from the stern of the ship where he was sleeping next to someone with the last name of White. He and the other soldier clung to debris and were rescued by a fisherman in a boat. His name was apparently put on the dead list and his father who also fought in the war, came to retrieve his body only to find him alive.
He never was the same after Andersonville and the Sultana. One thing he wrote was 'I can still see myself as with my own eyes, crawling, weak from hunger and dying of thirst. God forgive them, I can't.. ' "
He continues:
"He suffered, and some of that suffering echoed down to present generations. There are those of us who suffer from the after effects of a war we never knew. His daughter had to take care of him until he was placed in the Soldier's Home in Ohio. She was very bitter because of having to take care of him to the exclusion of all else. So bitter in fact, that she burned all of his things upon his death. She raised her granddaughter because the child's mother died at age 28. The anger and resentment was passed on to this granddaughter (my mother) who grew up an angry woman and who carried on the legacy of abuse to her children. My brother died at the age of 46 because of drugs and alcohol. My four sisters have all been married several times."
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