The Unsinkable Corpse of Pvt. Jonas Snyder

The steamship McClellan

 

In the spring of 1864, Union General Nathaniel Banks led an expedition up the Red River in an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of Louisiana, whose cotton fields were an important part of the Southern economy. Banks had 30,000 Union troops under his command, mostly from the Department of the Gulf and the Army of the Tennessee. Bolstering these infantry and cavalry divisions was the Mississippi flotilla of the US Navy, commanded by Admiral Porter, which consisting of ten ironclads, three monitors, eleven tinclads, and several smaller vessels.

One would not expect to find a boy from Carbon County among these forces, but, in the spring of 1864, this is exactly where Jonas Snyder found himself. Snyder, who enlisted in 1861, left his home in Mahoning Township and joined the the famous 47th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, which was composed primarily of young men and teenagers of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage from around the Lehigh Valley. Founded by Colonel Tilghman H. Good, the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment was comprised of ten companies. Company I, to which Jonas Snyder belonged, was the largest of these companies with 102 men under the command of Captain Coleman Keck. Upon Keck's resignation in 1864, Company I was turned over to Captain Levi Stuber. Because it covered more miles during the war than any other regiment, the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry became known as "The Traveling Regiment". So it is not surprising that Captain Stuber and his men found themselves in the deep South as part of the Red River campaign.

The 47th Pennsylvanians arrived at Algiers, Louisiana on February 28, 1864, and were then transported by rail to Brashear City before traveling by steamer to Franklin, where they joined up with troops from the Department of the Gulf's 19th Army Corps. With food and water in short supply, the 47th marched for weeks through New Iberia, Vermilionville, Opelousas and other towns en route to Natchitoches, which was their destination. After a brief encampment at Pleasant Hill on the night of April 7, the men began a particularly long and brutal march lasting from dawn to mid-afternoon of the following day, only to run headfirst into Confederate forces under the command of Major General Richard Taylor. The ensuing confrontation, known as the Battle of Sabine Crossroads, saw the 47th Pennsylvanians taking heavy casualties. But their suffering was far from over.

The next day, the 47th Pennsylvanians were ordered to form a defensive position on the Union's far right at Pleasant Hill. As the regiment's right flank spread out and up onto a bluff, they found themselves once again in the line of enemy fire. Although Banks' men eventually battled the rebels to a stalemate that day, the 47th once more suffered heavy losses. The regiment's second in command, Lieutenant Colonel George Warren Alexander, was seriously wounded during the fighting. Also wounded on Pleasant Hill was 65-year-old Benjamin Walls, the regiment's oldest member. Walls was gravely wounded while trying to prevent his regiment's American flag from falling into enemy hands (despite his injuries and being a wealthy farmer, Walls would attempt to re-enlist three years later at the age of 68).

As a result of the Battle of Pleasant Hill, the 47th became the first-- and only-- Pennsylvania regiment to have members held as prisoners of war at the notorious Confederate prison camp, Camp Ford. Sixteen members of the regiment made the grisly 125-mile march to Camp Ford in Texas. Two of these soldiers died in captivity, while another would die several weeks later at a Confederate prison in Shreveport.

Jonas Snyder was not among the sixteen Pennsylvanians taken prisoner, but the nonstop marching and fighting was beginning to take a heavy toll on his body. While records show that the 47th lost a total of 290 men during the war, only 117 died on the battlefield. Disease and illness claimed the lives of the other 173.

Surely, the young Dutchmen from the farmlands of the Lehigh Valley began to wonder if they would ever return home to their Hex-adorned barns and apple orchards; they wondered if they would ever again see the smiling faces of their mothers and fathers, sit down to a plate of panhas, or sink their teeth into a freshly-fried fasnacht. Pennsylvania surely must have seemed as far away as the moon when the 47th was ordered to fall back to Grand Ecore, where they remained until the end of April. And home became even more distant when the Pennsylvanians were forced to retreat further to Alexandria, with the enemy hot on their well-worn heels. On April 23 they managed to thrash Bee's Cavalry at Monett's Ferry, but the victory did little to buoy their spirits; by this time, most Union commanders had already given up the Red River campaign as a lost cause.

The month of May saw the 47th Pennsylvanians retreat across the Atchafalaya River, where they hoped to shield themselves from the pursuing rebels. On May 18, the final battle of the Red River campaign was fought at Yellow Bayou, where Banks' army was able to stave off a Confederate attack thanks to a forest fire ignited by both sides' artillery shells. Perhaps this was a miracle of sorts; for the fire allowed the Federal troops to flee to the safety of New Orleans, from where they would return to Washington, D.C. aboard the steamship McClellan.

It was shortly after the Battle of Yellow Bayou when Pvt. Snyder fell gravely ill and was placed in a military hospital in New Orleans. When the steamship McClellan left New Orleans on July 5, Pvt. Jonas Snyder was aboard, along with other Union troops who had been convalescing in New Orleans, but as the ship crossed the Gulf of Mexico, Snyder succumbed to his illness. He was buried at sea.

It was Lieutenant James W. Stuber, a close friend of Jonas and brother to regimental commander Capt. Levi Stuber, who witnessed the funeral, and recalled, many years later, a bizarre incident that occurred. As was often the case with sea burials, Snyder's body had been weighted down with iron before being placed in the water. Stuber watched the body go overboard and sink into the waters of the gulf, until it had disappeared from sight. Stuber wrote:

"By reason of the under current it returned as it were, and stood erect and life-like upon the water, as if to say I want to go with you, then disappeared again."

Of course, there is probably a scientific explanation for what happened to the corpse of Pvt. Jonas Snyder. Perhaps it was a freak occurrence of nature, or a perfect combination of weight, buoyancy, water temperature, density, current, or any one of a hundred other natural factors. But one of the saving graces of war, especially a war so cruel as the one fought between the states, is its propensity to romanticize the dead long after the soldier has departed from the mortal realm, lest we forget about the sacrifices that were made and the brave men and boys who made those sacrifices.

And one could be forgiven if one chooses to view the "unsinkable corpse" of Jonas Snyder as some sort of supernatural phenomenon. After all, records indicate that every male member of the Snyder family, brothers and cousins alike, enlisted in the 47th Pennsylvanian Infantry. And all, except for one, made it back to the Lehigh Valley. So perhaps it is possible that what Lt. Stuber witnessed aboard the McClennan was one young soldier’s last attempt to come home, after marching countless miles across the deep South with the outfit of heroes known as "The Traveling Regiment".