This essay answers the question: Did Andersonville deserve the reputation as the war's worst military prison? Andersonville Prison October 30, 2017 In the winter of 1863, Richard Winder, quartermaster of the newly constructed Camp Sumter, made passable arrangements for corn to be ground for the arriving prisoners.[1] However, Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville prison, was remotely located from clean water and sources of supply, disadvantaging the prison from receiving proper requirements. Before the first one-thousand men arrived, Winder had yet to gather cooking instruments, flour, meal, and beef, and his bacon rations were enough to last the prisoners for only three days.[2] It is evident that Andersonville prison was off to a difficult start, and that its conditions would deteriorate by the end of the American Civil War. The thesis of this paper is that Andersonville prison deserves the reputation as the war’s worst military prison, due to the location of the prison, the living conditions, the treatment of prisoners, the Confederacy’s prisoner of war system, and postwar claims regarding that treatment. Initially, as the prison’s location was scoped out by Confederate officials, it was arguably more favorable than the Confederacy’s Camp Richmond, located in Belle Isle, an island in the city of Richmond, Virginia. It seems, at first, that Andersonville prison had a squeaky-clean reputation compared to the atrocities at Belle Isle prison. Belle Isle was a place of bug infestation, overcrowding, and constant low rations.[3] Federal inmates huddled together for lack of heating and space, and some even froze to death. Even more so, some of the Belle Isle captives betrayed their fellow brothers, as they stole from the weak to feed the strong.[4] These prisoners were among the first one-thousand shuttled to Andersonville prison, as some likened the prison as a “pen not-fit for hogs.”[5] Indeed, Andersonville prison was not situated on lice-infested sand like Belle Isle, but on a stretch of low hills, marshes, and swamps.[6] Instead of laying on the cold, hard ground of Belle Isle, men burrowed themselves into the Andersonville ground for warmth, as a mole burrows underground for refuge.[7] It was almost as if these prisoners of war knew they would not be properly buried unless they did it for themselves, as they ran the risk of suffocation from cave-ins or drowning from heavy rains.[8] Not only did most prisoners lack proper shelter from various elements of extreme heat or cold, but they also lacked adequate clothing. Men who had arrived from numerous Confederate prisons already wore scraps for clothing, and some wore nothing but the skin on their backs. One prisoner sewed his shirtsleeves, sugar and coffee bags, and a tentmate’s knapsack together to create a makeshift bivouac.[9] Winder’s preparations for the prisoners lack any real progress before prisoners arrived, as its stockade was partially completed, along with the kitchen and officer headquarters. Once these were even completed, the stockade was so congested it made little difference.[10] As shelter and clothing were withheld from Union prisoners, rations were stretched and malnutrition was a longtime companion. One Andersonville inmate described his daily ration as a “pint of cooked beans well-seasoned with sand and bugs, a piece of bacon most as large as a walnut and four ounces of corn bread.”[11] The monotony of these meals, coupled with a tainted water supply from overuse and fecal matter, caused chronic diarrhea, dysentery, scurvy, dropsy, and inflammation of the bowels, not to mention smallpox and typhoid.[12] However, it can be said that Winder’s desire for more substantial fare stemmed from a rational fear of an outbreak than any real kindness on his part.[13] The diet of these men was insufficient, as some went without food for days; the Confederacy as a nation was running scarce on food, and the holistic mismanagement of distributing food to prisoners heightened feelings of despondency and the sound of hungry bellies. Although each of these claims are rational and even justifiable, it was not the case after late fall of 1863. Due to the state of the Confederacy, the rebel government authorized a policy that reduced prisoner rations in order to “sustain” the Union prisoner’s health. Even so, officials decided that if the Confederate army could not supply troops with proper meat, then prisoner rations for meat would be completely removed from their diet.[14] Furthermore, several thousand Danville inmates were sent to Andersonville due to its dwindling food supply, officials knowing “full well [Andersonville] was in no way prepared to receive them.”[15] The evils of Andersonville were prevalent, nay, commonplace, in most prisons during the Civil War. Alabama’s Cahaba prison held roughly seven hundred Union prisoners in an unfinished cotton warehouse, which had no roof, no floor, and a crude fireplace that produced more smoke than heat. These men would be sent to Andersonville in April of 1864.[16] The Union’s Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois is often lauded as the “North’s Andersonville.” At Camp Douglas, prisoners were subject to confinement in the dungeon for “trivial infractions,” like drawing water from the wrong well. Camp Douglas would be one of the largest Union prisoner of war camps, “functioning” at a peak of eighteen thousand. Andersonville would have more than double the size, boasting numbers of forty-five thousand incarcerated inmates.[17] Another Union prison, Rock Island, Illinois, was eerily similar to Andersonville. Each similarity fit the bill: there was a widespread endemic of smallpox, the prison was cheaply constructed from stockpiles of boards and framing materials, and it was considerably isolated from potential enemy attack.[18] Libby Prison also had a reputation for harsh treatment, as the walls were whitewashed so the prison guards could clearly see captives trying to escape.[19] The treatment of prisoners in Andersonville harkens images of extermination camps of the Second World War. Two hundred of the first prisoners to arrive were stuffed into four boxcars, where they stood in cramped conditions for three days with only a day’s ration of food.[20] Captain Henry Wirz took command of the prison in 1864, where he established Andersonville’s infamous “deadline.” Although Camp Douglas and other major prisons utilized the deadline, due to the inflating number of inmates, an invisible barrier was needed to control the masses. Essentially, between the stockade wall and the invisible deadline was a no man’s land—anyone who passed the deadline was liable to get a load of buckshot.[21] Although about twenty prisoners were shot in the fourteen months of Andersonville’s existence, the sentries were extremely conscientious about the deadline, often shooting anything that was within range of no man’s land. Despite this claim, prisoners were under the guards’ mercy. One summer night in 1864, a prisoner stepped over the deadline, causing immediate fire from the sentry above, injuring not the offender but two sleeping bystanders. Within the next month, a newly arrived inmate would be shot through the head because he was not aware of the rules.[22] The Confederacy’s prisoner of war system was dismal at best. By the end of 1861, the Confederacy established a system that would oversee the dozens of prison camps during the war, including Andersonville. Confederate leaders realized there was a shortage of foodstuffs, medicine, and basic necessities (including water, shelter, clothing). Thus, scant rations were given to Confederate soldiers, and completely insufficient rations given to Union prisoners. This system was also severely lacking administratively, as there were poorly executed distribution plans and inadequate training of prison guards and sentries. As the war raged on, conditions at Andersonville and southern prison systems would depreciate, underscoring that the conditions were deplorable from the start. Andersonville prison being a prime example—the lack of preparation and the “policy of deliberate neglect” was paltry as well as cruel.[23] While the Confederacy lacked the staff to conduct routine inspections of the prisons’ welfare, some Union prisons had health and welfare examinations.[24] Some Union prisons, like Fort Warren, allowed men to daily cathartics, food, clothing, and money from home, including sending letters to relatives.[25] Overall, the Confederacy’s prisoner of war system was ill-conceived and muddled, thus building Andersonville’s infamous reputation.[26] When Winder assigned Wirz to Camp Sumter, Andersonville prisoners “fend[ed] for themselves.”[27] Sadly, Andersonville would see approximately forty-five thousand inmates pass through its open doors, and peak of over thirty-three thousand prisoners in August of 1864. Of that forty-five thousand, thirteen thousand would perish in the Georgia sun.[28] Daniel Chandler and Dr, Joseph Jones, inspectors sent to Andersonville, were equal in their evaluations of the prison. They both argued that the prison officials made little to no effort in obtaining proper food supplies, that they starved the prisoners so their deaths would decongest the camp, and that the lack of shelter and proper hospitals contributed to most prisoners’ deaths.[29] Andersonville, indeed, was a glimpse of hell. After the war, Andersonville was intended to return to Georgia farmland, the ground rich with fourteen months of human excrement and man-fertilizer. However, the federal government purchased the land from one of the original owners, Ben Dykes, where it was converted into a national monument and cemetery for the lost Union soldiers.[30] Henry Wirz was arrested and executed after the war, a small justification for the atrocities at Andersonville prison.[31] The Confederacy’s justifications of Union prisoner maltreatment are superfluous as well as weak. Regardless that most, if not all southern prisons had limited medical supplies, it does not justify the uncleanliness and unsanitary conditions Andersonville inmates had to face. The nascent Confederacy was not without ability to improve their prisons, but the refusal to make decisions to improve Union captives’ plight.[32] President Davis wrote to a confidante ten years after the war, that, “We all knew of the disease and fatalities among the prisoners at Andersonville,” he just willingly turned a blind eye to its troubles.[33] It seems that Andersonville was a place of great injustice, and would forever remain the most brutal of all Civil War prisons. Bibliography Futch, Ovid. History of Andersonville Prison. With a new introduction by Michael Gray. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2011. Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Pickenpaugh, Roger. Captives in Blue: Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013. Sanders, Charles W. While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Footnotes
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