As a followup to yesterday's post about reasons why we read, I thought I would talk a little bit about why I read the last book that I read.

Over the weekend, I finally finished, after weeks of the slow, careful reading this novel requires, MacKinlay Kantor's massive, magisterial, and all but forgotten Andersonville. Andersonville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, but you won't see it on many (if any) course syllabi, and I doubt it will enjoy the sort of brief but intense literary revival that Oprah has recently afforded Kantor's contemporaries, John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers. Andersonville is not only very long (upwards of 800 pages), but very dense (you skim, you lose). It's also so deeply, intensely historical that you can't read it--or can't read it with much profit--without a significant amount of self-directed historical supplementation. Most basically, you need to know what Andersonville was and why it matters to know what it was. This in turn means you need to have more than the glancing knowledge of the Civil War that most of us blithely consider to be adequate. This in turn means that you need to have already in place some sort of historical handle on that part of the past, some reason for caring about the gorier details of an increasingly remote moment of American military history. In our contemporary social studies mindset, we tend to think of the Civil War in terms of broad social shifts and isolated dramatic events: the freeing of the slaves, the assassination of Lincoln, the devastation of the slow-moving, agricultural lifestyle of the South by the emerging industrial war machine of the North. We don't study battles much in school because military history is far out of fashion. And we don't talk much, if at all, about the POW camps as a result. The military side of the Civil War is, for many non-war buff Americans, a virtual blank.

I include myself among those many non-war buff Americans--or I would have, before this summer. This summer, though, a family history project I have been doing on and off for the past year or so has led me in some surprising directions. I have found myself reading about the California gold rush--because I have a great-great grandfather who came with his family to San Francisco from England to prospect. I have found myself reading about the Colorado gold rush that took place several decades after California's--because I have another great-great English grandfather who uprooted his family from a comfortable life on the Devon coast to try mining in Denver. I've read about the building of the transcontinental railroad, and I've studied the histories of both the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific lines--because I've got a great grandfather who got himself out from under the impoverishing onus of Irish immigrant life, and also out to California from New York, by becoming a machinist specializing in steam locomotives. I've studied the history of Iowa, with particular emphasis on the enclave of Irish immigrants that settled in the western part of the state shortly after the state was formed, because I have another set of ancestors who found their way to a farm there after fleeing famine-ridden Ireland. I've also become interested in the Civil War, and in particular in Civil War prison camps--because I have a great-great-great uncle, brother to my maternal great-great grandmother, who died in a Confederate prison late in 1864.

David Sells--descendant of the Dutch immigrant Ludwick Von Zell--grew up on a farm in southern Ohio, in the same town where, coincidentally, Ulysses S. Grant, future commander of the Union army, grew up. He was a distant relative of the colossally incompetent George Armstrong Custer--precise relation still to be discovered--who also grew up in the area. He enlisted in August 1862 at the decidedly not ripe age of 18, and served as a chaplain in the 89th Ohio Infantry, Company C, until he and the rest of his company were captured in September 1863 at Chickamauga. Chickamauga is known today to have been an egregiously mismanaged battle from the Union's standpoint. David Sells was one of the many to suffer the eventually fatal consequences of that mismanagement.

The first stop for the 89th Ohio was Belle Isle, an island prison at Richmond situated in the middle of the James River. Belle Isle was overcrowded, rations were scarce, sickness was rampant, and uprisings were pretty regular events. Belle Isle was also a very public prison--located at the heart of one of the busiest cities in Virginia, it was awfully hard to hide what went on there, and impossible to conceal the deplorable conditions under which prisoners contrived to live (click on the link above to see how fully documented Belle Isle was in the Richmond press). The overcrowding, the expense, and the visibility of Belle Isle motivated the Confederates to build another prison further south, away from the public eye, that could handle Belle Isle's overflow. That prison would become known as Andersonville.

In the winter of 1864, a primitive stockade was built in the little hamlet of Anderson, Sumter County, Georgia. The site was chosen for its remoteness and for the little spring that fed the area. It was imagined that the spring would supply fresh water to the prisoners confined at Camp Sumter (the prison's official name), but in fact it was largely trampled into nonexistence during the building of the stockade itself. When prisoners began arriving at the camp in Februrary 1864, what they encountered was a 29-acre holding pen, without shelter of any kind, without trees for shade, and without a source of clean water. Instead, there was a brackish muck that ran through the center of the camp. The remains of what was once a little stream flowing with clear, pure springwater, it became the camp's dysenteric toilet practically overnight. Prisoners at Andersonville were compelled to drink the tainted water that served as a privy to thousands of sickly men and as breeding ground to millions of mosquitos and flies. David Sells was one of these prisoners. He and the rest of his company were transferred from Belle Isle to Andersonville during the early months of 1864.

Andersonville was designed to hold about 10,000 men. But by the time it was itself closed down later that summer, it held 30,000. Many were nearly naked (the Confederates did not supply clothing), all were nearly starved (what little food was rationed to the prisoners was often rotten or, in the case of corn bread, so thick with jagged pieces of unground cob that the men could not eat it for fear of the damage it would do to their already bleeding intestines). Those who had shelter of any kind slept under "shebangs," makeshift tents comprised of clothing and blankets draped over short wooden poles. The stench of the place could be smelled for miles. The death rate, from starvation, scurvy, gangrene (which could arise from even the smallest scratch), dysentery, and so on, was astronomical--nearly one third of the men confined there died there. The death rate was also, tragically, avoidable--what the Confederate officers lacked in the way of resources and basic compassion the local Georgians did not. They attempted on more than one occasion to bring food and clothing to the prisoners in the stockade, often robbing their own closets and tables to do so. But they were turned away at the gate.

In late summer, as Atlanta fell to the Union and General Sherman prepared for his famous march to the sea, the Confederates determined that Andersonville, which lay more or less in Sherman's path, had to be vacated. Two new prisons were built to handle those Andersonville prisoners healthy enough to walk (a goodly number could not walk, and were left behind on the notion that even if Sherman freed them, they would not be physically able to fight for their cause). Those new prisons were at Savannah and Florence, South Carolina. David Sells, who could still walk in the late summer of 1864, was removed to the newly built Florence Stockade. Conditions there were much as they were at Andersonville. Sickness and death ran rampant--so much so that by the end of November, more than 10 per cent of the prisoners had died and the prison officers, loathe to shoulder the moral burden of that statistic, were removing the sickest to hospitals. David Sells missed that moment by a hair's breadth. On November 23, he died in Florence stockade. He was 21. The cause of death was recorded, with haunting minimalism, as "starvation."

So what does all this have to do with Kantor's novel? I'll explain tomorrow.

Another hotorical footnote, more for readers than for Erin, whom I suspect already knows this: Maj. Henry Wirz, the commandant of Andersonville, was the only Confederate officer to be hanged for war crimes.

The trial of Wirz was made into a play and then a movie (staring William Shatner!). Clearly there was something that caught the American imagination (more specifically I think, the Northern imagination) in the fifties, early sixties about Confederate prisons. BTW Union prisons weren't any better.

Kantor does great things with the character of Wirz--not the least of which is the recurring focus on Wirz's nagging war wound, which has incapacitated his right hand and has him constantly performing surgery on himself in the hope of fishing out bone fragments and opening underlying abscesses.

There's lots of good material on Wirz on the web--this site features a photograph of his hanging, which took place, fittingly, within the Andersonville stockade.

Thanks, Erin, for that well written piece about Andersonville. I do have the historical background you recommend and I'm going to see if I can track down a copy of the novel over lunch. The only drawback is that, at 800 pages, it may be a little heavy to take back and forth on the train.

RP,

There are lots of good cheap copies available used through the Amazon site. Buyer beware, though--the cheapest ones tend to be illegible due to sadistically small print. The more eye-friendly Plume edition is the way to go.

Enjoy!

BTW Union prisons weren't any better.

I don't think you can say this. Union prisons certainly were not model, but the mortality rate (to use just one example) was an order of magnitude better than the Confederate ones.

Thanks, Erin. I'll keep that in mind!

The official U.S. position on the treatment of Confederate prisoners of war during The War for Southern Independence would shock many modern Americans. The data, facts and statistics have been thoroughly eliminated from American history books. One must research the original documents to discover the horrible truth.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the U.S. House of Representatives passed the following resolution: "Rebel prisoners in our hands are to be subjected to a treatment finding its parallels only in the conduct of savage tribes and resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food and wanton exposure of their persons."

One Yankee prison commander boasted that he had killed more Confederate soldiers than any Union officer on the front battle lines.

The story of Confederate prison camps, especially Andersonville, has been misrepresented. There was no deliberate attempt to mistreat northern POWs. The South asked the North to send doctors and medicine, and they tried to exchange the prisoners.

The North refused and finally the Confederacy offered the North cotton and gold as payment to take them without exchange. Again the North refused to do so. They knew the Confederate States of America would be honor bound to try to feed and house the Union POWs and to do so would hamper the Confederate war effort.

Andersonville? Doesn't seem so bad when you look at comparitive statistics. If you don't believe me. Go check for yourself. I'd much rather have been a Union soldier in Andersonville than find myself in a Federal prison camp.

Luzier, since I haven't researched the matter, I don't know whether the larger historical points you're making are true or not. But what I can say is that a House resolution is only an expression of legislative opinion. It is not a bill requiring the concurrence of the Senate or presentation to the President, so it is not law. By itself, the resolution you quote means no more with respect to the actual conduct of the war than the annual Congressional resolutions honoring the winners of the World Series does to the operations of Major League Baseball.

BTW, could we get an actual citation for that resolution?

Luzier wrote: I'd much rather have been a Union soldier in Andersonville than find myself in a Federal prison camp.

I live on the site of a Union prisoner of war camp, Camp Morton. After the war, the *prisoners* commissioned a bust of the camp commandant -- now in the rotunda of the state capitol -- in recognition of his humane treatment of Confederate prisoners.

There was no deliberate attempt to mistreat northern POWs.

I never said there was. Most of the problems at Andersonville paralleled problems the Confederacy was having in general: poor logistics. If you can't even get supplies to your own troops, POW camps are really going to suffer.

This, additionally, explains the Union's comparatively better treatment. Since the North never experienced shortages to the extent the South did, they could afford better care for their POWs.

And while you can't fault the South for not feeding their POWs, you can fault them for not releasing them unilaterally.

The South asked the North to send doctors and medicine, and they tried to exchange the prisoners.

True. And the North did so--until after the Emancipation Proclamation, when the South announced their "shoot-on-sight" policy towards black Union POWs. The North refused to cooperate while such an odious policy was in force, and one rather excitable officer even lined up Confederate POWs to shoot in retaliation (though, as I remember, he was prevented from actually doing so).

This situation continued until early 1865, when the Confederates started their own plan to use slaves as soldiers, and thus dropped their policy. At that point, the North resumed POW trades.

Andersonville? Doesn't seem so bad when you look at comparitive statistics.

You mean like the comparative mortality stats? I don't have them in front of me, but the figures were in the range of 2% for Union POW camps vs. 26% for Confederate.

It is true that there was much to criticize about Union treatment of POWs as well. But if you're going to play the comparison game, or claim that the South was better in some way, you're going to have to do better than that.

Andersonville Prison.
Testimony of Dr. Isaiah H. White, Late Surgeon Confederate States Army, As To The Treatment of Prisoners There.
Southern Historical Society Papers.
Vol. XVII. Richmond, Va., January-December. 1889.

[Richmond Times, August 7, 1890,]

Recently several articles have appeared in leading magazines and journals in the country agitating the treatment of prisoners at Andersonville and other Southern prisons during the late war between the States.
In order that the true condition of this subject might be learned, a reporter for The Times called upon Dr. Isaiah H. White yesterday, who was chief surgeon of military prisoners east of the Mississippi during those days, and his headquarters were for a time at Andersonville.
As evidence of the efficiency of Dr. Isaiah H. White in the position which he held the "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion," in referring to one of his sanitary reports, says: "The following extract shows him neither insensible to the suffering around him nor ignorant of the cause."

DR. WHITE'S POSITION.

"The papers published by the committee of the House of Representatives show that Dr. Isaiah H. White, surgeon in charge of the prison camp, repeatedly called the attention of his superiors to the condition of the prisoners, appealing for medical and hospital supplies, additional medical officers, and adequate supply of cooking utensils, hospital tents, &c. The medical profession owes a debt of gratitude to this gentleman and his colleagues in their labors for the unfortunate men confined at Andersonville."

FACTS FROM KNOWLEDGE.

When asked to give his knowledge of the facts connected with the reports of the inhuman treatment of Federal prisoners by Confederate authorities, Dr. White said: "It is not easy to see what purpose is served by the publication of these articles. Under circumstances like those of the civil war, the remembrance is painful."

SADDEST EPISODE.

It was the saddest of its episodes not to be willingly recalled either by the North or South. If its history is to be written, however, it is better for it to be based upon facts than fiction.
"It is a well-known fact," said Dr. White, "that the Confederate authorities used every means in their power to secure the exchange of prisoners, but it was the policy of the United States Government to prevent it, as is well shown by a letter of General Grant to General Butler, dated August the 18th, 1864, in which he said:
'It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise, 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.'
"This policy," continued the Doctor, "not only kept our men out of the field, but threw upon our impoverished commissariat the feeding of a large number of prisoners."

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS.

In refutation of the charge that prisoners were starved, let it be noted that the Confederate Congress in May, 1861, passed a bill providing that the rations furnished to prisoners of war should be the same in quantity and quality as those issued to the enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy. And the prisoners at Andersonville received the same rations that were furnished the Confederate guard. That this was sometimes scant, every old rebel in the field can testify. But this was due to our poverty.

MORTALITY.

"According to the report of Secretary of War Stanton, the number of Federal prisoners who died in Confederate prisons is 22,576, and according to the same authority the number of Confederate prisoners who died in Northern prisons is 26,436. According to the report of Surgeon-General Barnes the number of Confederates held in Northern prisons during the war was 220,000, and the number of Federal prisoners held in Confederate prisons was 270,000."
"It is to be observed that in all of the calculations of mortality made by the writers of these articles the figures relate to Andersonville, which was acknowledged the most unhealthy of any of our prisons, and yet the mortality rate will compare favorably with that of Alton, Ill., which was 509,4 annually per thousand."

CAMP AT ANDERSONVILLE.

The camp at Andersonville was established on a naturally healthy site in the highlands of Sumpter county, Georgia. The officers sent to locate this prison were instructed to prepare a camp for the reception of ten thousand prisoners. For this purpose twenty-seven acres, consisting of the northern and southern exposures of two rising grounds, between which ran a stream from west to east, was selected. In August, 1864, nearly thirty-three thousand prisoners were crowded together in this area, in consequence of the refusal of the United States Government to exchange prisoners, we having no other prison to which to send them at that time.

CAUSE OF DISEASE.

The sudden aggregation of these men at a camp unprepared for their reception, originally designed for only ten thousand men, developed many unsanitary conditions, which combined with pre-existing causes, evolving sickness and stamping it with a greater virulence. The most prominent of these were: The men came from a higher latitude and unaccustomed to a Southern climate in the most unhealthy season of the year, August. The temporary detective police of the camp, and the insufficient protection in quarters, and the bread ration, consisting of corn-meal used largely in the South, to which they were unaccustomed, contributed to the spread of diarrhúa and dysentery, which was the cause of eighty-six per cent. of the entire number of deaths. But the evil influences exercised by the camp conditions and diet would not have been followed by the same mortality had the same ground and shelters been crowded to the same extent with well-disciplined troops waiting for the opening of a campaign.

BROKEN DOWN PHYSICALLY.

These men on their arrival were broken down physically by previous hardships, hurried marches, want of sleep, deficient rations, and exposures in all kinds of weather, by night and by day that precede and attend the hostile meeting of armies. The prisoners seldom carried from the fields a sufficiency of clothing and blankets to protect them from weather changes. The depression of spirit consequent on defeat and capture, the home-sickness of the prisoners, and the despondency caused by the thought that they had been left by their own Government in the hands of the enemy with no prospect of exchange, conspired to render every cause of disease more potent in its action, and were the main factors in the production of disease and death.
"How were you off for medical supplies, Doctor ?" asked the reporter.
"We were sadly deficient in medicines, the United States Government having declared medicines contraband of war, and by the blockade prohibiting us from getting them abroad, we were thrown largely on the use of indigenous remedies."

GRANT'S TESTIMONY.

The following testimony of General Grant may be of interest. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, February 11th, 1865, General Grant's answers were as follows:
Question. It has been said that we refused to exchange prisoners because we found ours starved, diseased, unserviceable when we received them, and did not like to exchange sound men for such men.
Answer. There never has been any such reason as that. That has been a reason for making exchanges. I will confess that if our men who are prisoners in the South were really well taken care of, suffering nothing except a little privation of liberty, then, in a military point of view, it would not be good policy for us to exchange, because every man they get back is forced right into the army at once, while that is not the case with our prisoners when we receive them. In fact, the half of our returned prisoners will never go into the army again, and none of them will until after they have had a furlough of thirty or sixty days. Still the fact of their suffering as they do is a reason for making this exchange as rapidly as possible.
Question. And never has been a reason for not making the exchange?
Answer. It never has. Exchanges having been suspended by reason of disagreements on the part of agents of exchange on both sides before I came in command of the armies of the United States, and it being near the opening of the spring campaign I did not deem it advisable or just to the men who had to fight our battles to reinforce the enemy with thirty or forty thousand disciplined troops at that time. An immediate resumption of exchanges would have had that effect without giving us corresponding benefits. The suffering said to exist among our prisoners South was a powerful argument against the course pursued, and I so felt it.

HILL TO BLAINE.

During the amnesty debate in the House of Representatives in 1876, Hill, of Georgia, replying to statements of Blaine, discussed the history of the exchange of prisoners, dwelling on the fact that the cartel which was established in 1862 was interrupted in 1863, and that the Federal authorities refused to continue the exchange of prisoners. "The next effort," he said, "in the same direction was made in January, 1864, when Robert Ould, Confederate agent of exchange, wrote to the Federal agent of exchange, proposing, in view of the difficulties attending the release of prisoners, that the surgeons of the army on each side be allowed to attend their own soldiers while prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and should have charge of their nursing and medicine and provisions; which proposition was also rejected."
Continuing, Mr. Hill said: "In August, 1864, there were two more propositions. The cartel of exchange had been broken by the Federals under certain pretences, and the prisoners were accumulating on both sides to such an extent that Mr. Ould made another proposition to waive every objection and to agree to whatever terms the Federal Government would demand, and to renew the exchange of prisoners, man for man, and officer for officer, just as the Federal Government might prescribe. That proposition was also rejected. In the same month, August, 1864, finding that the Federal Government would neither exchange prisoners nor agree to sending surgeons to the prisoners on each side, the Confederate Government officially proposed, in August, 1864, that if the Federal Government would send steamers and transports to Savannah, the Confederate Government would return the sick and wounded prisoners on its hands without an equivalent. That proposition, which was communicated to the Federal authorities in August, 1864, was not answered until December, 1864, when some ships were sent to Savannah. The record will show that the chief suffering, the chief mortality at Andersonville, was between August and December, 1864. We sought to allay that suffering by asking you to take your prisoners off our hands without equivalent, and without asking you to return a man for them, and you refused."
Mr. Hill quoted a series of resolutions passed by the Federal prisoners at Andersonville in 1864, September 28th, in which all due praise is given the Confederate Government for the attention paid them, and in which it was said that the sufferings which they endured were not caused intentionally by the Confederate Government, but by the force of circumstances. Commenting, Mr. Hill said: "Brave men are always honest, and true soldiers never slander; I would believe the statement of those gallant soldiers at Andersonville, as contained in those resolutions, in preference to the whole tribe of Republican politicians."

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS *

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIGURES OF SECRETARY STANTON
*
*SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS
Vol. I. Richmond, Va., March, 1876.
No.3. March - Pages 216- 218



FIGURES OF SECRETARY STANTON.
Yet after all that has been said on this subject, the stubborn fact remains that over three per cent. more Confederates perished in Northern prisons than of Federal prisoners in Southern prisons. The figures to prove this statement have been several times given in this discussion, but they are so significant that we give them again in the form in which they were presented by Honorable B. H. Hill in his masterly reply to Mr. Blaine. Mr. Hill said:
"Now, will the gentleman believe testimony from the dead? The Bible says, "The tree is known by its fruits." And, after all, what is the test of suffering of these prisoners North and South? The test is the result. Now, I call the attention of gentlemen to this fact, that the report of Mr. Stanton, the secretary of War - you will believe him, will you not? - on the 19th of July, 1866 - send to the library and get it -exhibits the fact that of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands during the war, only 22,576 died, while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 26,436 died. And Surgeon-General Barnes reports in an official report - I suppose you will believe him - that in round numbers the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands amounted to 220,000, while the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands amounted to 270,000. Out of the 270,000 in Confederate hands 22,000 died, while of the 220,000 Confederates in Federal hands over 26,000 died.
The ration is this:
More than twelve per cent. of the Confederates in Federal hands died, and less than nine per cent. of the Federals in Confederate hands died. What is the logic of these facts according to the gentleman from Maine? I scorn to charge murder upon the officials of Northern prisons, as the gentleman has done upon Confederate prison, as the gentleman has done upon Confederate prison officials. I labor to demonstrate that such miseries are inevitable in prison life, no matter how humane the regulations."
An effort has since been made by the Radical press to discredit these figures, and it has been charged that "Jeff. Davis manufactured them for Hill's use." But with ample time to prepare his rejoinder, and all of the authorities at hand, Mr. Blaine did not dare to deny them. He fully admitted their truth, and only endeavored to weaken their force by the following explanation, of which we give him the full benefit:
"Now, in regard to the relative number of prisoners that died in the North and the south respectively, the gentleman undertook to show that a great many more prisoners died in the hands of the Union authorities than in the hands of the Rebels. I have had conversations with surgeons of the army about that, and they say that there were a large number of deaths of Rebel prisoners, but that during the latter period of the war they came into our hands very much exhausted, ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, so that they died in our prisons of diseases that they brought with them. And one eminent surgeon said, without wishing at all to be quoted in this debate, that the question was not only what was the condition of the prisoners when they came to us, but what it was when they were sent back. Our men were taken in full health and strength; they came back wasted and worn - mere skeletons. The Rebel prisoners, in large numbers, were, when taken, emaciated and reduced; and General Grant says that at the time such superhuman efforts were made for exchange there were 90,000 men that would have re-enforced the Confederate armies the next day, prisoners in our hands who were in good health and ready for fight. This consideration sheds a great deal of light on what the gentleman states."
The substance of this extract is that Mr. Blaine does not deny the greater mortality of our prisoners in Northern prisons, but accounts for it on the supposition that our men were so much "Exhausted, so ill-clad, ill-fed and diseased," that they "died of diseases that they brought with them."
Now, if this explanation were true it would contain a fatal stab to Mr. Blaine's whole argument to prove Confederate cruelty to prisoners. If our own soldiers were so ill-clad and ill-fed as to render them exhausted, and so diseased that when taken prisoners they died like sheep, despite the tender nursing and kind, watchful care which (according to Mr. Blaine) they received at the hands of their captors, how could a Government which had not the means of making better provision for its own soldiers provide any better than we did for the thousands of prisoners which were captured by these emaciated skeletons?
And what shall we say of General Grant and his splendid army of two hundred thousand hale, hearty, well equipped men, who, in the campaign of 1864, were beaten on every field by forty thousand of these "emaciated and reduced" creatures, until, after losing over a third of their men, they were compelled to skulk behind their fortifications at Petersburg, and absolutely refused "the open field and fair fight," which Lee and his "ragamuffins" offered them at every point from the Wilderness to Petersburg?
But, of course, the whole thing is absurd. Our men were on half rations, and in rags, it is true; but a healthier, hardier set of fellows never marched or fought, and they died in Northern prisons (as we shall hereafter show) because of inexcusably harsh treatment.
These official figures of Mr. Stanton and Surgeon-General Barnes tell the whole story, and nail to the counter the base slander against the Confederate Government.

While Luzier's source is not reliable (post-facto memories, biased reporting etc.), there is kernel of truth. I was thinking of the Elmira prison a shortlived union prison camp in NY that had the highest death rate of any camp North or South.

Hmm. When looking at the online stats for POW casualties, they are much more even (12% Union vs. 15% Confederate, according to a couple). I'll have to take a look again at that McPherson discussion of the POW situation.

I will point out that the "Southern Historical Society Papers" were part of a movement to whitewash the Confederate cause. Note, for example, their focus on Grant's role in the interruption of POW exchanges, with no mention of the South's policy towards black Union POWs.

I suppose the main lesson remains clear: there were atrocities on both sides, Confederate shortages helped to make theirs worse, and we should neither demonize nor minimize either side.

Some of the stuff I'm finding suggests that one reason that more confederates may have died in northern POW camps was that they were in worse condition when they came in, due to the general supply problems that the confederacy had. Union soldiers went into the camps with more physical reserves, and so could survive equally bad or even worse conditions in greater numbers.

This is of some interest personally. We started doing some serious geneology work a few years ago, and discovered that my great-great-grandfather enlisted in the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in 1861, was captured in early June of 1864, and spent the rest of the war in Andersonville. We have found no records suggesting that he was moved, and the only disposition we've found in any of the online info merely says that he "survived Andersonville". Pension and other info suggests that he never really recovered from the experience.

I'll have to look up Kantor's book.

Since "Southern" sources are suspect for their accuracy, perhaps this link to an article published by the Elmira, New York Historian will help convince ya'll that the North wasn't so "caring" in their treatments of Confederate prisoners.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/military/elmcivwr.htm

Please note the death rated quoted is 25%.

Also, I can provide the citation to the resolution regarding treatment of Confederate POW's, but you'll have to wait until Monday, it is on the home computer.

BOOK REVIEW

By Bill Ward

Philip Burnham. So far From Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons. Taylor Trade Publishing. 2003. Lanham, Maryland. 320 pages. $25,00. ISBN 1-58979-016-2.

Usually in discussions of the Civil War and prisoners of that war, the first images to surface are those of the infamous Camp Sumter, Georgia, better known as Andersonville. Historians also might recall Confederate prisons at Florence, S.C., or Salisbury, N.C. It must be hard for students to understand that Andersonville was not the only prison camp and that the Union Army maintained several prisoner-of-war camps, as well.

Until recent years, history has not been open to the brutal deprivation suffered by Confederate prisoners in Yankee camps. Itís a story begging to be told about the 11 Civil War POW camps spread across the far reaches of the North. Places like Point Lookout, Maryland; Johnsonís Island (northern Ohio); Camp Douglas (Chicago); and Elmira, New York, whose nightmarish conditions earned it the name ìHellmira.î

In So Far From Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons, Phillip Burham paints a macabre scene of a mixture of events from the Civil War, or more accurately, The War Between the States. He stirs together a mess of humanity in the boiling cauldrons of Southern battlefields and Northern prison camps. His sources of eyewitness information remain alive through documents left by five men who experienced first hand the horrors of being Northern POWs.

Oddly enough, one of those five prisoners was a Union soldier, Frank Wilkeson. A Union Army volunteer, only 16 years old at the time, Wilkeson saw the worst kinds of criminals released from Northern jails and transported south under guard for conscription into the Union Army.

Berry Benson focused all his energy on escaping from the New York hellhole, sometimes called Andersonville on ice. Constantly digging tunnels with other prisoners, Benson felt a dire urgency to gain his freedom, after having been transferred from other camps to Elmira.

Anthony Keiley of Petersburg, Va., the better educated of the prisoners, was a glib-tongue lawyer-politician that talked prison officials into giving him a job that he enjoyed, logging prisoners into Elmira. Then he had to start logging them out, up to 20 or 30 dead in a day. After the war, and always the politician, Keiley became mayor of Richmond.

In one of his prison observations, Keiley wrote: ìThe Northern people, and I speak from long acquaintance with them, care much less for Negroes than weÖ. It is the free states that have made the most odiously discriminating laws against the Negroes as have characterized Chicago and New York.î He referred to the New York City draft riots, a reminder that many of the white men who stood guard over him had serious doubts themselves about the fighting ability and intelligence of the black men who had joined the Union army by the thousands.

Then there was John King, a skilled craftsman who refused to build coffins for his fellow prisoners. And Marcus Toney refused to take the Union oath of loyalty to gain his freedom, nor would he take it until many years after the warís end.

Shocking images of gaunt figures with hollow eyes and protruding bones that were released from the Georgia prison at Andersonville have filled our history books. But little thought has been given to the fate of Southern prisoners held in the north. If lessons in morality are to be taught, itís that the South was starving due to the pillaging and destruction wrought by the marauding hordes of William T. Sherman in Georgia and Phillip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. With scarcely any food to feed Southern armies and civilians, almost nothing was available for prisoners.

In locales such as Elmira, food and medicine was plentiful to the Union Army. Still, Confederate prisoners were subjected to starvation and death by diseases for which medicine was purposely withheld. A unique method of thinning out the prison population was to place inmates with smallpox in barracks or tents with ìwellî prisoners. Malnourishment, exposure to extreme heat in the summer, extreme cold in the winter, and water contaminated with sewage helped take its toll. At Camp Douglas, in particular, prisoners wore lightweight clothes, even during the biting Chicago winters, to reduce escape attempts. Many Confederate prisoners froze to death.

Some of the Union prisons also became sources of entertainment. Enterprising businessmen built tall wooden towers near the prison fences. They charged civilians up to 10 cents a head to climb up and watch the prisoners in the stockades, on display like animals in a zoo. The bathroom facilities often were no more than latrines ó trenches out in the open. Everything was sport for the spectators. This kind of unseemly entertainment was available for Northerners at Camp Douglas and Elmira.

But perhaps one of the most villainous individuals at the prison was a Union Army doctor, Major Eugene Francis Sanger, the hospital chief and a ìbruteî in Keileyís estimation. By some accounts, Sanger failed to provide even minimum attention to those under his care, and some of his activities rivaled those of Josef Mengele during a later war.

As Keiley wrote, Sangerís ìsystematic inhumanity to the sickî was apparently a response to the rumors of alleged Andersonville atrocities. ìI do not doubt that many of those who died at Elmira perished from actual starvation,î reflected Keiley with bitter irony, who believed himself to be ìin a country where food was cheap and abundant.î Union Army medical officers at Elmira and at Camp Douglas would likely have been brought up on war crimes charges had the South won the war.

On July 19, 1866, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War for the Federal government, published a report about prisoners held during the war. Figures in Stantonís report belie the cruelty often associated with Confederate prison camps. From the first to the last, Confederate armies captured and held in prisons 270,000 men. The Federal armies held 220,000 men. Of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands, 22,576 died. Conversely 26,576 Rebels died in ìYankee captivityîó six times the number of Confederate dead at the battle of Gettysburg, and twice that for the Southern dead of Antietam, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Seven Days, Shiloh, and Second Manassas combined.

The Confederates, with 50,000 more prisoners, had 4,000 fewer inmate deaths. END.

Bill Ward is a writer, historical researcher, and public speaker living in Salisbury, NC. Contact him at wardwriters@bellsouth.net.

Andersonville had the worst outright conditions of any of the camps, but Elmira and Grande Isle on Lake Michigan had death rates that met or often exceeded those of Andersonville.
The reason that the Andersonville prisoners were not exchanged, which is something the south tried to do numerous times, is that the south would not waver on their policy of no exchange for black troops, and the fact that the hard-pressed confederacy would put their returned prisoners immediately back into action. So, the north abolished the exchange program in early 1864 to punish the south for it's stance on black prisoners and to exacerbate the battle of attrition that by that time the war had become.
There's no doubt the south tried to do something about Andersonville, but the troops that guarded the prison were not fed much better than the prisoners, neither were confederate troops in Virginia or Tennessee for that matter. What can a government do with/for prisoners when it can barely feed it's own troops?
I have always seen the prisoners of Andersonville as pawns in a monstrous game of one-upsmanship. They were abandoned by their own government to prove a point and to effect the south's already lean manpower. They were at the mercy of a morally bankrupt and administratively inept General Winder, and Henry Wirz, so preoccupied with his arm and the immense responsibility of running Andersonville w/ little or nothing in the way of help or resources, was not able to do handle his duty in the most humanitarian way possible. However, to say Wirz was ultimately to blame for the horrors of Andersonville is like saying Oswald was the lone shooter. Andersonville was what it was, but both sides share complicity in that shameful little slice of history.