The Civil War Concentration Camps
by Mark Weber
No aspect of the American Civil War left behind a greater legacy of bitterness and acrimony than the treatment of prisoners of war. "Andersonville" still conjures up images of horror unmatched in American History. And although Northern partisans still invoke the infamous Southern camp to defame the Confederacy, the Union had its share of equally horrific camps. Prison camps on both sides produced scenes of wretched, disease-ridden and emaciated prisoners as repulsive as any to come out of the Second World War.
Partisans in both the North and the South produced wildly exaggerated novels, reminiscences of prisoners, journalistic accounts and even official government reports which charged the enemy with wanton criminal policies of murderous intent. It took several decades for Revisionist historians to separate fact from propagandistic fancy and deliberate distortion from misunderstanding. Even today the bitter legacy of hate lingers on in widespread but often grossly distorted accounts from this tragic chapter of American history.
Neither side deliberately set out to maltreat prisoners. Arrangements were made hurriedly to deal with unexpected masses of men. As neither side expected the war to last long, these measures were only makeshifts undertaken with minimum expenditure. Management was bad on both sides, but worse in the South owing to poorer, more decentralized organization and more meager resources. Thus, prisoners held by the Union were somewhat better off.
In the first phase of the war, 1861-1862, the relatively small numbers of prisoners taken by both sides were well treated. Both sides agreed to a prisoner exchange arrangement which operated during the latter half of 1862. Under the cartel, captives remaining after the exchanges were paroled. But the agreement broke down, in part because of Northern refusal to recognize the Confederate authorities as anything other than "rebels," and in part over the Negro question.
''In a war of this kind, words are things. If we must address Davis as president of the Confederacy, we cannot exchange and the prisoners should not wish it," declared the influential Harper's Weekly.
Following the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863, the North began enlisting former slaves into the Federal army. Confederate President Jefferson Davis declared that "all Negro slaves captured in arms" and their White officers should be delivered over to the South to be dealt with according to law. That could mean rigorous prosecution under strict laws relating to Negro insurrections.
Still, special exchanges on a reduced scale continued, but from 1863 onwards, both sides were holding large numbers of prisoners.
On 17 April 1864, General Grant ordered that no more Confederate prisoners were to be paroled or exchanged until there were released a sufficient number of Union officers and men to equal the parolees at Vicksburg and Port Hudson and unless the Confederate authorities would agree to make no distinction whatsoever between White and Negro prisoners.
On 10 August, the Confederate government offered to exchange officer for officer and man for man, accompanying the proposal with a statement on conditions at Andersonville. This offer induced General Grant to reveal his real reason for refusing any further exchanges. "Every man we hold, when released on parole or otherwise," Grant reported to Washington, "becomes an active soldier against us at once either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat and would compromise our safety here." (Rhodes, pp499-500)
In October, Lee proposed to Grant another man-to-man exchange of prisoners. Grant asked whether Lee would turn over Negro troops "the same as White soldiers?" When Lee declared that "Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange," the negotiations completely broke down.
After the cessation of prisoner exchanges under the cartel, the camps of the South became crowded and the growing poverty of the Confederacy resulted in excessive suffering in the Southern stockades. Reports about these conditions in the Northern press created the belief that the ill treatment was part of a deliberate policy. The inevitable war hatred made such a belief readily credible.
After the war, Confederate partisans laid responsibility for camp conditions (on both sides) at the feet of the Federal authorities. They pointed to the Northern cancellation of the parole and exchange cartel which put a heavy and unexpected strain on the Southern prisoner program. They also condemned the North for its deliberate cut in rations for Confederate prisoners as a reaction to reports of bad conditions in the Southern camps.
The best known of all the Civil War camps today is Andersonville. Officially designated Camp Sumter, the prison stockade was located in south-central Georgia, about 20 miles from Plains. More than 45 000 Union soldiers were confined there between February 1864, when the first prisoners arrived, and April 1865, when it was captured. Of these, 12 912 died, about 28 percent of the total, and were buried on the camp grounds, now a National Cemetery. (Baker, p10)
Andersonville was a prison for enlisted soldiers. After the first few months, officers were confined at Macon. The camp was originally designed to hold 10 000 men, but by late June that number had jumped to 26 000. By August the 26 1/2 acre camp was holding over 32 000 soldiers. Overcrowding continued to remain a serious problem. Guards kept watch from sentry boxes and shot any prisoner who crossed a wooden railing called the "deadline." A strip of ground between the "deadline" and the palisades was called the "deadrun."
The Confederates lacked necessary tools for adequate housing. Some of the early prisoners were able to construct a few rude huts of scrap wood. Many more sought shelter in dilapidated tents. Others dug holes in the ground for protection, but hundreds had no shelter of any kind against the pouring rain, southern heat and winter cold.
No clothing was provided, and many prisoners who were transferred to Andersonville from other camps were dressed only in rags. Even decent clothing deteriorated quickly, and some prisoners had virtually nothing to wear.
The prisoners received the same daily ration as the guards: one and one-fourth pound of corn meal and either one pound of beef or one-third pound of bacon. The meager diet was only occasionally supplemented with beans, rice, peas or molasses. Northern soldiers were unused to this ration. But Southern troopers had fought long and hard on the usual fare of "hog and hominy."
A stream flowed through the treeless stockade, dividing it roughly in half. It quickly became polluted with waste, creating a horrible stench over the whole camp.
Almost 30 percent of the prisoners confined to Andersonville during the camp's 13 month existence died there. Most succumbed to dysentery, gangrene, diarrhea and scurvy. The Confederates lacked adequate facilities, personnel and medical supplies to arrest the diseases. An average of more than 900 prisoners died each month. The poorly-equipped and -staffed camp hospital was woefully inadequate to deal with the wretched conditions. Confederate surgeon Joseph Jones called Andersonville "a giant mass of human misery."
Thieves and murderers among the prisoners stole food and clothing from their comrades. The most notorious were part of a large, organized group called the "Andersonville Raiders" which held sway within the stockade for nearly four months. Robberies and murders were daily occurrences until six of the ringleaders were caught and hanged. Other members of the Raiders were forced to run a gauntlet of club-wielding prisoners.
The camp guard force consisted of four regiments of the Georgia militia, generally made up of undisciplined older men and untrained young men. Efforts by the camp commander to replace them with more seasoned soldiers remained futile since every able-bodied man was needed to meet Gen. Sherman's troops advancing toward Atlanta.
Prisoners on both sides were held in some 150 prison camps. And while Andersonville is the best remembered, several others equalled or even surpassed the Georgia camp in squalor and deadliness.
Some 12,000 Union soldiers were confined at Richmond in several centers, the worst of which was Belle Isle, a lowlying island on the James River. Less than half of the 6,000 prisoners could seek shelter in tents; most slept on the ground without clothing or blankets. Many had no pants, shirts or shoes, and went without fuel or soap. At least ten men died a day in vermin-ridden conditions of inexpressible filthiness. The entire surface of the island compound became saturated with putrid waste matter. Hospitals for the prisoners in Richmond quickly became overcrowded and many died on Belle Isle without ever having seen a doctor.
Rations were meager indeed. Christmas Day, 1863, saw the prisoners without rations of any kind. The daily ration of a pound of bread and a half-pound of beef was steadily reduced. Bread gave way to cornbread of unsifted meal. One small sweet potato replaced the meat. For the last two weeks of captivity the entire daily ration consisted of three-fourths of a pound of cornbread.
The Confederate diet was hardly better. A Confederate official declared that the prisoners in Richmond were given the same rations as the Southern troops and that if the food was inadequate, it was due to the destructive warfare being waged by the North. Confederate soldiers in Richmond went without meat by January 1864. Severe shortages in the Southern capital brought astronomical food prices and bread riots.
The camps at Salisbury, North Carolina, and elsewhere reproduced the worst features of Andersonville on a smaller scale. A lack of water at Salisbury brought conditions of filth and unbearable stench. The daily ration there for both prisoner and guard was soup and twenty ounces of bread without meat or sorghum. Many internees lacked clothing or shelter and "muggers" among the prisoners robbed their comrades. The disease rate soared. From October 1864 to February 1865, 3,479 prisoners died out of the 10,321 confined there, or over one third of the total. (Hesseltine,1964, p170)
Conditions in the North were little better. One of the worst of the Union camps was Ft. Delaware, located on an island about 14 miles south of Wilmington. The filth and vermin in the damp fortress prison encouraged a high death rate. Most of the 2436 Confederate prisoners who died in what some called "The Andersonville of the North" succumbed to scurvy and dysentery.
Another infamous Union camp was Rock Island, located on an island in the Mississippi River between Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. A report in the New York Daily News of 3 January 1865 stated that the Confederate prisoners were reduced to eating dogs and rats, and that many were virtually naked and without adequate protection against the chilling winter cold. Recalcitrant prisoners were subject to a variety of imaginative punishments, including hanging by thumbs.
A total of 12,409 men were confined to Rock Island prison during its 20 month existence. Of these, 730 were transferred to other stations, 3,876 were exchanged, 41 successfully escaped, 5,581 were paroled home, and some 4,000 enlisted in Federal units slated for Western duty, and 1,960 died in captivity. (Hesseltine, 1972, p58)
By far the most horrendous Northern camp was Elmira, located in New York a few miles from the Pennsylvania line. Some 9000 prisoners were confined to a camp meant to hold only 5,000.
Two observation towers were erected right outside the prison walls. For 15 cents, spectators could watch the wretched prisoners within the compound. When winter struck Elmira in late 1864, prisoners lacking blankets and clad in rags collapsed in droves from exposure. By early December, half-naked men stood ankle-deep in show to answer the morning roll call.
A one-acre lagoon of stagnant water within the 30-acre stockade served as a latrine and garbage dump, giving rise to disease. Scurvy and diarrhea took many lives. By November 1864, pneumonia had reached plague proportions. An epidemic of smallpox broke out a month later and remained an ever-present killer.
Repeated requests for badly needed medicines were ignored by officials in Washington. The pathetically equipped hospital lacked beds, equipment and personnel. By late December 1864, at least 70 men were lying on bare hospital floors and another 200 diseased and dying men lay in the regular prison quarters, contaminating their healthier comrades.
Non-cooperative prisoners were punished in a variety of ways. Some were confined to the "sweat box" in which the occupant stood immobile and received no ventilation, food or water for the duration of the punishment period. Other men were gagged or hung by their thumbs. Because no prisoner received his regular rations while serving a sentence, punishment meant virtual starvation.
One prison commander would often visit the camp at midnight in freezing weather to have the men called out for "roll call."...
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