Andersonville
The prisoners at Andersonville were mostly captives from the Army of the Potomac fighting in Virginia. They had been held outside Richmond on Belle Island in the James River. When Grant moved to besiege Richmond/Petersburg the difficulty of moving supplies into the siege area made keeping large numbers of prisoners there senseless. So the Confederacy built a new prison far away from the fighting in the middle of farm country where it would be easier to feed them. Sounds good so far…
You are about to enter Andersonville, one of the largest Confederate prisoner-of-war camps. Of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined here, nearly 13,000 died. "Then came the captives, weary worn and hungry from prolonged travel cooped up like beasts in feight cars. Down from the depot they marched amid the jeers and taunts of a gaping crowd. The gate opened. The stockade swollowed them." (Text of the above sign) Newly arriving prisoners shocked at the first sight and smell of the camp usually exclaimed, 'Is this Hell?' Yes.
Recreation of the daily life in Andersonville.
Art.
Reality. A returned Union soldier, and survivor of Andersonville.
The approach to the main gate.
Looking into the sally port. The prisoners first introduction to the camp.
The main gate.
Once inside there was the dead line, and the smell.
And the over crowded squalor.
Always above the whole mess were the pigeon nests of the guards, young boys, who were rewarded with leave for every prisoner they shot.
The stocks are always a threat for minor infractions.
Other punishments were also possible. This all begs the question, why did the Confederates need to punish the prisoners? They were POW’s not criminals, if they crossed the deadline they were shot, if they escaped they were hunted down with dogs and torn to pieces; so, why the stocks or the rack?
The main gate from the Comandants Office.
The far corner of the camp from the Comandants Office.
The stream inlet to the camp, the place where the prisoners were to get their water.
The outlet, the location of the latrine, the idea was that the stream would flush the contamination out and the prisoners would get their water up stream where it entered the stockade and was clean. There were three problems with this: first, the guards quarters, latrine and laundry were upstream of the camp so the water was already polluted when it entered the camp; second, the stream slowed down as it hit the stockade wall and backed up spreading the pollution from the latrine upstream to the supposed clean water; lastly, in the summer the stream became a stagnant swamp with little or no flow. All of the prisoners suffered from dysentery, and it was the cause of most of the deaths in the camp.
Thje water is still polluted, there are warning signs not to drink.
As the story goes, at the height of the misery caused by the polluted water, the prisoners cried out to the Lord for relief, there was a sudden hard rain, a bolt of lightening and a spring of water suddenly shot up into the air. The spring was within the dead line, but the guards allowed the prisoners to make a flume that carried the clean water into the camp, and countless lives were saved.
The Raiders
Notice these six graves, separate from everyone else, they were from New York.
Mostly, they stole food and shelter making them stronger than everyone else; they were the worst part of a larger gang from New York that prayed upon the rest of the prisoners. The six that were hanged were agreed upon to be the most dangerous by the rest of the inmates. Wirz the camp commandant turned a blind eye to them as did the guards until a delegation of prisoners camp demanded justice, he allowed the prisoners to form their own court, try and hang the men themselves.
A Confederate Response
1. The prison was designed for less than 5,000 men to be held temporarily while waiting prisoner exchange. It was Lincoln that put a stop to prisoner exchange. The Confederates could not feed their own people never the less Yankee prisoners that had invaded their land and destroyed their crops and railroads. The Confederates had no medical supplies due to a perpetual Union blockade entering its forth year. Judge Ould, the Confederate commissioner on exchange for prisoners, proposed October 6, 1864, "that each government shall have the privilege of forwarding for the use and comfort of such of it's prisoners as are held by the other, necessary articles of food and clothing". It took a month to get the consent of the federal authorities to this proposal. Previous to this on January 24, 1864, Judge Ould proposed that the prisoners on each side should be attended by their own surgeons, and that these "should act as Commissaries, with the power to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food clothing, and medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of prisoners" There was no federal reply to this proposal. It appears Lincoln could afford to abandon federal troops that he could replace with fresh troops and Lincoln knew that Lee did not have the same luxury. Much of the suffering at Andersonville was a direct result of Lincoln's prisoner exchange policy. The suffering at Andersonville took place after the termination of prisoner exchange (April 1, 1864 though it resumed again in late January 1865 ). The numbers at the prison grew to 30,000 within 6 months of the termination of prisoner exchange.
2. The guards at the prison were few and as you pointed out quite young. The only way that a few young soldiers could control 30,000 captured men was to have a system of terror otherwise the prisoners would simply over power the guards similar to the way that the armies were over powering the Constitution by invading "free and independent" "sovereign states" Those prisoners would not have been there if they had not left their sovereign states in order to take away the sovereignty of the people of other states. The terror instituted by the prison administrators was equal to the terror being executed by Sheridan, Sherman and Hunter in the burning of civilian property and the initiation of "total war" upon a population that had not even entered federal territory until the second year of war in order to take federal military pressure off of the south.
3. The remote location of the prison was due to the fact that Federals were deep into the interior of the Confederate states. Even with the lack of resources in the south and the termination of prisoner exchange the Confederate States had a better overall survival rate for federal prisoners than did he federal government had for confederate prisoners. Federal prisoners in southern prisons totaled 270,000 of which there were 22,576 died. There were 220,000 Southern prisoners in northern prisons of which 26,436 died. There were more federal prisoners being held and fewer deaths in southern prisons than southern prisoners being held in northern prisons. 8.3% death rate for northern prisoners in southern prisons vs. 12% death rate for southern prisoners in northern prisons. The north had vast resources to provide for all of their soldiers and resources remaining to feed and cloth confederate prisoners if they wished not to exchange them for their own suffering men. They declined exchange and care when the power and resources were at their disposal.
4. The commander of Andersonville was executed after the war at the location of the current Supreme Court office building. Included with this fact is a statement made by Charles S. Dana, Federal Assistant Secretary of War, (Editorial New York Sun 1876) "The Confederate authorities, and especially Mr. Davis, ought not to be held responsible for the terrible privations, sufferings, and injuries which our men had to endure while they were kept in Confederate military prisons. The fact is unquestionable, that while the Confederates desired to exchange prisoners, to send our men home, and to get back their own, General grant steadily and persistently resisted such an exchange....... It was not the Confederate authorities who insisted on keeping our prisoners in distress, want, and disease, but the commander of our own armies........Moreover there is no evidence whatever that it was practicable for the Confederate authorities to feed our prisoners any better than they were fed, or give them any better care and attention than they received." (Randolph H. McKim)
5. Any research on Camp Douglass will reveal equal if not more suffering than was experienced at Andersonville.
Dave's references material for this letter were entirely quoted from A Soldiers Recollections by Randoph H. McKim. The appendix in his book is book thorough. The death rate data was resourced from Mr. Staunton, Federal Secretary of War, dated july 19, 1866. I did not check the official record for verification though the numbers are also claimed to be supported by "Report of Federal Surgeon-General Barnes".
My Response
There were hundreds of Confederate POW camps, only Andersonville was Andersonville, meaning only Wirz was tried and only Wirz was convicted of mistreartment of prisoners. Using the 8.3% figure for over all POW mortality in Southern camps makes Andersonville's 29% look even worse.