When nations or would-be nations prepare for war few items
have lower priorities than the care of prisoners. This was certainly
true of the Civil War in which both sides set up notorious prisons
and prison camps. In part this was due to the enormous number
of prisoners taken during the course of the war. It is estimated
that some 670,000 soldiers were captured - this amounts to about
16 percent of the total number under arms. In part the failure
to establish proper facilities was also due to an early reluctance
by the US government to consider the Confederacy an equal, even
as the British had looked down on the American colonists in the
Revolutionary War.
Initially local parole systems were used to exchange prisoners.
Captured soldiers were paroled and were trusted not to return
to their units until receiving notice of exchange with an equal
prisoner from the other side. A cartel was signed in July 1862
to officially set up a parole and exchange system throughout
the conflict. By this time some 20,000 Confederate prisoners
were held by the Union and 9,000 to 12,000 Union captives were
held by the South. The cartel had exchange rates for prisoners
of different ranks-for example, a major general was worth 30
privates, a colonel was worth 15 privates, a lowly second lieutenant
was exchanged for three privates.
The cartel didn’t hold up long. Some officers began using
their own exchange rates. Notice of exchange, which was supposed
to take place within ten days, took longer, often much longer.
In addition, exchanged Confederates were more likely to actually
return to their units after receiving notice. The Union established
detention camps to hold Union parolees until their exchange notice
came through- administering these camps became chaotic and led
to general disgust with the system. In May 1863 the Union ordered
exchanges ended. By then many black soldiers had joined the Union
ranks. The Confederacy did not recognize them as prisoners of
war (those who were not killed outright by their captors) and
forced them into slavery, further hardening Northern distrust
of the exchange system. Later in the war, short of manpower,
the South requested a restoration of the system several times,
but the requests were refused.
By the end of the war over 150 military prisons had been set
up by both sides. Only two have been judged tolerable- Fort Warren
in the North and Raleigh Barracks in the South. In these 150
places 30,200 Union prisoners (~15 percent of the total prisoners)
died, as did ~25,800 Confederate soldiers (12 percent of the
total held). Dysentery and pneumonia were the great killers,
working on a base of malnutrition, exposure and abysmal sanitation.
The locations and designs of these prisons varied markedly. Some
were existing prisons, old buildings or warehouses, barracks
or tents surrounded by fencing, empty ground surrounded by a
stockade, or just empty ground guarded by sentries.
One of the camps consisting of empty ground surrounded by
a stockade was opened in late February 1862 in southwest Georgia
and called Camp Sumter. It soon became known as Andersonville,
based on the name of a nearby village and railroad station. The
original stockade enclosed 16 acres and was built to hold 8-10,000
prisoners By June it held 22,000 and 2600 had already died. Most
of these men had come by railroad from prisons near Richmond.
A Confederate guard on one train described them as "…ragged,
lousy, filthy, infected with smallpox…diarrhea, scurvy…"
They had to erect huts with scrap wood, lean-tos, tents, or live
in holes covered with ragged blankets. By July there were over
25,000 men in the camp and 10 additional acres were added. Within
two weeks the population grew to 29,000 and by August it reached
the maximum of 33,000. The camp was guarded by two regiments
of troops and a complement of bloodhounds.
For much of its 15 month existence Andersonville was commanded
by Capt. Henry Wirz. But the chaotic conditions there were already
established when Wirz took command in late March ’62. There
is evidence that he attempted to improve the situation in the
camp, including an elaborate plan for improving sanitation, but
never achieved any significant effects. After the war he was
hanged at Old Capitol Prison, on the same scaffold used for the
Lincoln conspirators, and on the present site of the U.S. Supreme
Court.
In addition to the steady procession of burials at Andersonville,
there was one reported birth. Dr. W. J. W. Kerr heard a baby
crying in the camp in July 1864. On investigating he found a
married couple- the Harry Hunts- who had been captured on a ship.
Mrs. Hunt had changed into men’s garb in order to stay with
her husband, and both landed in Andersonville. Dr. Kerr found
mother and infant a home outside the camp and all three family
members were in time paroled. A similar story in a Union prison
was traced to the birth of a puppy, and it must be admitted there
is little substantiation for Kerr’s story.
A Northern prison equal to Andersonville in its tragic record
was Elmira, in west-central New York. It was originally a training
camp for recruits. Described as a plot of low-lying flat land
with poor drainage, it was converted into a prison camp in May
1864. Plans were to use existing barracks that were built to
hold 3000 troops for up to 4000 prisoners, with room to pitch
tents for another 1000. Despite these plans, Quartermaster General
Montgomery C. Meigs declared the site adequate for 10,000. By
the end of July about 4400 POWs were at Elmira and 11 had already
died (additionally, in a train collision in July 141 Elmira-bound
prisoners and 33 guards were killed or injured). By the end of
August 9600 prisoners were in the camp, many with no shelter
since sufficient tents had not arrived. By late September 511
had died and Elmira, with ten deaths per day, led Northern prisons
in death rate.
A new commander started constructing additional barracks and
hospital buildings in September. The medical staff meanwhile,
in a statement reflecting theories of infectious disease current
at the time, reported the drainage problems and the presence
of a cesspool in the camp "…green with putrescence,
filling the air with its messengers of disease and death…
and the hospitals are crowded with victims for the grave."
Although air-borne diseases were probably not significant at
Elmira, the picture they drew tells of the lack of proper sanitation
that spread dysentery and diarrhea, the major killers.
Rations were so scanty that rats became both a dietary staple
and a bartering commodity. Winter brought a smallpox epidemic
and bitter cold that the primitive barracks and tents did little
to mitigate. Pneumonia was soon added to the list of medical
problems. With spring thaws the prison was flooded and rafts
were needed to move hundreds of POWs from the smallpox camp.
In March 1865 the daily death rate reached 15; total recorded
deaths at Elmira were 2,933.
Humanitarian efforts by local civilians, who tried to distribute
food and clothing, were hampered by Federal authorities, sad
to say. The story of the Civil War prisons is a melancholy one
indeed; apathy, callousness, vindictiveness, cruelty, greed,
incompetence and scarcity were all involved. Given the recent
record of our own times why should this surprise us?
Sources:
History of Andersonville, O. L. Futch, University of Florida Press,
1968
Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War, L. R. Speer,
Stackpole Books, Mechanicscurg, PA, 1997
