Colonel Abram Fulkerson, CSA

Abram Fulkerson (for whom Colorado SCV Camp 2104 is named) was a Confederate officer during the American Civil War, and a Virginia lawyer and politician. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fulkerson was born on May 13, 1834 in Washington County, Virginia, to Abram Fulkerson, Sr. and Margaret Laughlin Vance. His father, Abram, Sr., was a captain and commanded a company of Virginia Militia in Colonel David Sanders Regiment, 4th Brigade, Norfolk Division of Gen. Peter B. Porter, during the War of 1812. His grandfather, James Fulkerson, who had been a Captain in the Virginia Militia, joined with the Overmountain Men and fought the British at the Battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolution.

Abram, Jr. graduated from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington in 1857, where he was a student of Prof. Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson. According to his records at VMI, he had a reputation for being a prankster and wore an "outlandish collar" on his cadet uniform: the collar being the only part of the uniform not covered under regulations. After graduation, he taught school in Palmyra, Virginia, and Rogersville, Tennessee, until the beginning of the American Civil War.

Fulkerson entered Confederate military service in June 1861 as a Captain, having organized a company of men from Hawkins County, Tennessee that was mustered into the 19th Tennessee Infantry Regiment as Company K (The Hawkins Boys) at Knoxville. His was the first company of volunteers organized in East Tennessee. He was elected as Major of the 19th Tennessee Infantry Regiment. He was wounded in the thigh and his horse was shot from under him at the Battle of Shiloh and was reassigned in the resulting reorganization to the 63rd Tennessee Infantry after recovering from his injury. He was elected as Lieutenant Colonel of the 63rd, and was later promoted to full colonel by President Jefferson Davis on February 12, 1864.

While in the 63rd, he was wounded twice more: in the left arm at the Battle of Chickamauga and again at the Second Battle of Petersburg, Virginia (Battle of Petersburg II), the regiment having been reassigned from the Army of Tennessee to the Army of Northern Virginia, where he was taken prisoner on June 17, 1864 and sent to the POW camp at Fort Delaware. On April 18, 1892, Fulkerson wrote an account of his capture and experiences as a prisoner which included this interesting exchange with Union General Burnside:

"The prisoners were halted at the line of guards, and the officer in charge announced to the General that they had captured the colonel of a regiment, many officers and men, three flags, and several pieces of artillery. Rising from his seat, General Burnside approached us, and, addressing me, enquired what regiment I commanded, and being informed that it was a Tennessee regiment, he asked from what part of the State."

"From East Tennessee, I replied. With an expression of astonishment, General Burnside said:"

"It is very strange that you should be fighting us when three-fourths of the people of East Tennessee are on our side." Feeling the rebuke unjust and unbecoming an officer of his rank and position, I replied, with as much spirit as I dared manifest, "Well, General, we have the satisfaction of knowing that if three-fourths of our people are on your side, that the respectable people are on our side. At this the General flew into a rage of passion, and railed at me,"

"You are a liar, you are a liar, sir, and you know it." I replied, "General, I am a prisoner, and you have the power to abuse me as you please, but as to respectability that is a matter of opinion. We regard no man respectable who deserts his country and takes up arms against his own people." To this General Burnside replied, "I have been in East Tennessee, I was at Knoxville, I know these people, and when you say that such men as Andrew Johnson, Brownlow, Baxter, Temple, Netherland, and others, are not respectable, you lie, sir, and you will have to answer for it." At this point I expected he would order me shot by his negro guards, but he continued, "not to any human power, but to a higher power." With a feeling of relief I answered, "O, General, I am ready to take that responsibility."

"Take him on, take him on," the General shouted to our guards, and thence we were marched some two or three miles towards City Point, to the headquarters of General Patrick, the Provost-Marshall General of Grant's army, where we were guarded during the day in a field, without shelter, and under a burning sun. In other respects we were treated with the consideration due prisoners of war by General Patrick, whom we found to be a gentleman."
While a POW, Fulkerson was included in a group that became known as the Immortal Six Hundred, which consisted of 600 captured Confederate officers who were taken to Morris Island at Charleston, South Carolina and used as human shields by the Union Army for six weeks in an attempt to silence the Confederate gunners at Fort Sumter.[1] Though none of the Immortal Six Hundred were killed by the continuing Confederate artillery fire from Fort Sumter, 14 of the Confederate officers died as a result of dysentery and unsanitary conditions.

After Morris Island, he was taken to Fort Pulaski and placed on starvation rations in retaliation for alleged prisoner abuses at Andersonville. There they were crowded into the fort’s cold, damp casemates. For 42 days, a "retaliation ration" of 10 ounces of moldy cornmeal and half a pint of soured onion pickles was the only food issued to the prisoners. The starving men were reduced to supplementing their rations with the occasional rat or stray cat. Thirteen men died there of preventable diseases such as dysentery and scurvy.

At Fort Pulaski, the prisoners organized "The Relief Association of Fort Pulaski for Aid and Relief of the Sick and Less Fortunate Prisoners" on December 13, 1864 and Fulkerson was elected president. Out of their sparse funds, the prisoners collected and expended eleven dollars, according to a report filed by Fulkerson on December 28, 1864.

He was later transferred back to Fort Delaware in March 1865 where he was held until he was discharged and paroled on July 25, 1865, more than three months after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

While at Fort Delaware, it was recorded that Fulkerson was a very thin man, but could float like a cork. The prisoners were taken out to the badly polluted river every day and were allowed to bathe and swim. Fulkerson would lie on his back and float out with the current for ten or fifteen minutes until the guards would grow nervous, fearing that he was attempting to escape.

Two of Fulkerson's brothers also saw service in the Confederate Army: Samuel Vance Fulkerson (1822–1862), who had been a lawyer and Circuit Court judge prior to the war, was the colonel of the 37th Virginia Infantry and was killed at the Battle of Gaines' Mill during the Seven Days Battles, and Isaac Fulkerson (c. 1829-July 20, 1889) was a captain in the 8th Texas Cavalry (Terry's Texas Rangers).

At the close of the war he studied law and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Goodson, later known as Bristol, Virginia, in 1866 with the firm of York & Fulkerson. As a lawyer, he was regarded as a legal giant in Bristol and it is said that he was such a gifted orator that many of the local citizens would go to court and sit in on trials just to hear him speak.

Fulkerson was elected as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, serving from 1871 to 1873. Next he served in the State senate of Virginia 1877-1879. He was elected as a Readjuster Democrat from Virginia's 9th U.S. Congressional District to the Forty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1881-March 3, 1883). Fulkerson was a Democrat, but assisted in organizing the Readjuster Party, after which he returned to the Democratic Party.
Fulkerson resumed the practice of law after leaving Congress. He was again elected to the State House of Delegates in 1888. He was a delegate to the Democratic National (Gold) Convention in 1896.

Fulkerson died in Bristol, Virginia, on December 17, 1902 at the age of 68, after suffering the effects of a stroke and was buried there in East Hill Cemetery.




REFERENCES:
• From Wikipedia on line Encyclopedia
• "The Immortal Six Hundred". National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. http://www.nps.gov/fopu/historyculture/the-immortal-six-hundred.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-16.
• Abram Fulkerson at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2008-02-13
• THE PRISON EXPERIENCE OF A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER, BY ABRAM FULKERSON, late Colonel Sixty-third Tennessee Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS, Volume XXII. Richmond, Va., January-December, 1894, Pages 128 - 147, http://www.csa-dixie.com/csa/prisoners/t64.htm
• Worsham, Dr. W. J., The Old Nineteenth Tennessee Regiment C.S.A., The Guild Bindery Press, 1992.
• Fowler, John D., Mountaineers in Gray: The Nineteenth Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment, C.S.A., The University of Tennessee Press, 2004, ISBN 1-57233-314-6.
• Obituary for Abram Fulkerson, Confederate Veteran Magazine, 1903. http://www.fulkerson.org/1-abe1.html
• Samuel Vance Fulkerson. http://www.fulkerson.org/1-samv1.html
• James Fulkerson. http://www.fulkerson.org/james.html