Prison Camps of the Civil War - Term Paper Example

A SENTENCE OF DEATH: APATHY AND NEGLECT AT ELMIRA AND CAMP SUMTER TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………….1 2. ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION………………………………....2 3. MEDICAL FACILITIES…………………….…………………………………..4 4. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS……………………………………………………...5 5. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………...6 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The Civil War prison camps at Camp Sumter (also known as Andersonville) and Elmira bear the distinction of having been the two worst internment facilities in the conflict between the states. Both were products of neglect and of the circumstances of war, which dictated that both sides devote resources to their own troops rather than to enemy soldiers, prisoners though they were. Logistical concerns were among the most problematic during the Civil War. Armies in the field commonly suffered from deprivation, from shortages of materiel, ammunition and proper clothing. As such, the Federal and Confederate governments were too concerned with overcoming these problems to pay sufficient heed to housing and caring for prisoners. But there was something uglier at work in the neglect both sides exhibited. Propaganda and a human desire for revenge manifested itself against the helpless prisoners at Andersonville as well as Elmira, where “Secretary of War E.M. Stanton ordered Northern prison authorities to reduce food, fuel, shelter, and clothing of prisoners to levels which he and the propagandists of the North contended were parallel to conditions in the South.”1 Much has been written of the primitive nature of medicine during the Civil War. Soldiers in both armies died in the hundreds of thousands from illness and infection – the situation was exponentially worse in prison camps, where medical care was virtually non-existent. Government policy regarding prisoners also worsened an already desperate situation. Union authorities refused to continue the practice of prisoner exchange late in the war, eliminating the possibility that the burgeoning populations at Elmira and Andersonville might be reduced through attrition. For all intents and purpose, prisoners of war sent to these camps were 2 delivered up to death as surely as were those soldiers Burnside sent against Lee’s defenses at Fredericksburg, or the men of Pickett’s division who were mowed down in droves at Gettysburg. CHAPTER 2: ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION Ultimately, a lack of organization on both sides was to blame for the disasters at Elmira and Andersonville. North and South were far too committed to victory on the battlefield to devote time, personnel or even thought to their prison camps. “Neither North nor South had such a surplus of talent that it could spare first-class soldiers or administrators for prison duties.”2 Careful planning was not in evidence on either side; indeed, both were guilty of reacting to situations that were usually already out of control. With minimal government administrative controls in place, it fell to doctors to manage affairs as best they could. Unfortunately, medical professionals on both sides proved poorly qualified to manage logistics as well as discharge their surgical duties. “Either because of failure to understand the regulations (which were often poorly explained, if at all), or from frustration with petty record keeping, doctors violated protocol. As a result, they were censured for not properly filling out forms for improperly using the hospital fund, and for eating food intended for patients.”3 At both Elmira and Andersonville, this was a blueprint for disaster. In the case of the Confederacy, most prisoners were crowded into fetid camps at Richmond until 1863, when facilities in Alabama and the Carolinas were officially opened. Nevertheless, these facilities were insufficient to handle the tens of thousands of Union prisoners. By 1864, when Camp Sumter was opened, the Confederacy’s strained resources were 3 near the breaking point, with little in the way of food or medical resources available to send to prison camps. When Union prisoners arrived at Andersonville, they found that “There was no shelter from the sun and rain. There were no bathrooms…men used their blankets and overcoats to make little tents.”4 When the weather turned hot in southern Georgia, the bad conditions at Andersonville took a turn for the worse. “Weather getting warmer, water warmer and nastier, food worse and less in quantities, and more prisoners coming nearly every day,” wrote Union prisoner John L. Ransom.5 Elmira, though housing a smaller population than Camp Sumter, was as strained and unprepared for the sheer volume of prisoners it housed. As the North’s victories mounted, the numbers of Confederate prisoners grew apace. By late 1864, Elmira held nearly 10,000 Confederate prisoners of war in a facility built to accommodate roughly half that amount. It would eventually top out at more than 12,000. Much of the increase was due to the refusal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to engage in any further exchange of prisoners; consequently, more than 5,100 new prisoners remained at Elmira, adding to the 4,400 already interned there.6 Problems with the contractor hired to build the barracks led to chronic shortages of housing and cooking facilities. An outbreak of scurvy soon resulted. “The vitamin deficiency caused assorted spots and irritations on the body, but was principally remembered, as one victim from Elmira put it, for the way it ‘attacked the mouths and gums, becoming so spongy and sore that 4 portions could be removed with the fingers.’”7 There existed a curious symbiosis between Elmira and Andersonville: the Confederate prisoners at Elmira suffered from Northern repercussions when news of conditions at Andersonville reached Washington. Secretary Stanton’s form of reprisal was to curtail rations, medicine and other desperately needed supplies. CHAPTER 3: MEDICAL FACILITIES In July 1864, a Union medical officer named Henry Hubbard was placed in charge of a ward in the Andersonville camp hospital. With a badly deficient medical staff on hand, the Confederates pressed Hubbard into service to help handle the flow of wounded in the days after the Battle of Atlanta. Hubbard’s firsthand account of his experiences stands as one of the most harrowing reports on the state of medical care in the Civil War. He writes bitterly about both the lack of basic supplies and the indifference of the camp officials. Hubbard was stationed in an enclosed field south of the main stockade, where he found “no bedding, no clothing, no bandages, no medicine and but little food. Many undressed wounds were fly-blown and swarming with maggots. This the Confederate surgeons said was good for the wounds – assisting nature in the removal of effete matter, I suppose. But the prisoners disliked being eaten by worms before death…”8 Hubbard recounts that out of approximately 40,000 prisoners at Andersonville in late 1864, roughly one-third died due to such conditions. Medicine and hospital care were also subjects of terrible neglect at Elmira. Both sides were guilty of not being prepared to treat prisoners suffering from gunshot or shrapnel wounds 5 (which were common enough among new prisoners), to say nothing of disease and malnutrition. In the North, where resources were more plentiful, it approached the criminal, retribution or no. In the beginning, the wounded and sick at Elmira couldn’t be treated at all. “At first the prison had no hospital. Even after one was constructed there were not enough beds for the patients. The prison had no chief surgeon until after the camp had been open for a month. One of the major sources of disease at Elmira was Foster’s Pond, a large stagnant pool filled with filth, which polluted the drinking water and caused many intestinal diseases.”9 The two officers who commanded at Elmira, Seth Eastman and Benjamin Tracy, were inflexible when it came to following orders and showed no sympathy for the prisoners or concern over the squalid conditions. It is hardly surprising that Elmira had the highest rate of smallpox cases among federal prison camps (Andersonville had the highest rate among Confederate camps). CHAPTER 4: PHYSICAL CONDITIONS Elmira and Andersonville exhibited similarities and differences in terms of dimension, construction and layout. As the South’s largest prison camp, Andersonville was slightly larger than Elmira. By mid-1864, it encompassed more than 26 acres and was surrounded by a 15-foot-high stockade fence that measured 1,620 feet long by 779 feet wide. There was also an inner fence that served as a barrier that prisoners were forbidden to cross. The main water supply came from a stream called Stockade Creek, which the prisoners were forced to use for drinking, washing and toilet purposes. The site of the Elmira camp was comparable to Andersonville in size and to some extent in layout, but its location was probably even worse than its counterpart in Georgia. Part of the former Union military installation called Camp Rathbun, 6 Elmira was situated below the level of the nearby Chemung River, which flooded in March 1865, adding immeasurably to the suffering of the prisoners. After rising more than three feet above flood stage, it began to inundate the camp. Unfortunately for the prisoners, the river’s rising coincided with the latter stages of a smallpox epidemic. One Confederate prisoner gave a particularly colorful account of what he witnessed. “We had a flood while I was there, from snow melting in the mountains. It made us climb to the second bunk like possums. I saw the Yankees sail through our wards on little skiffs, in at one door and out at the other.”10 Area businesses in the Elmira community benefited somewhat from construction of the camp, for which the government contracted for construction, heating supplies and food. The situation at Andersonville was far different, and reflects the fundamental economic differences between North and South. Slaves and Confederate soldiers were put to work constructing the camp beginning in January 1864, a task that took about six weeks.11 However, only three sides of the compound wall had been completed by the time prisoners began arriving. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION As the two most notorious prison camps of the Civil War, Elmira and Andersonville exhibited many of the same harrowing physical and functional similarities. Both failed criminally in providing basic human necessities of shelter, food, water, clothing and medical care. Prisoners in both camps suffered cruelly from the non-exchange policy the Union put into effect in late 1864 to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. The two facilities differed in terms of prisoner populations and in the fact that the federal government had more money and resources 7 available (though much of this was purposely withheld). Perhaps the most interesting difference between the two is shown in the circumstances by which they were built and maintained. Slave labor was central to the construction of Andersonville, while Elmira was the product of capitalistic endeavors in the form of army contracts. Significantly, this fundamental democratic principle was the one the Union was fighting so hard and at such cost to preserve throughout the entire nation. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources: Holmes, Clayton W. The Elmira Prison Camp: A History of the Military Prison at Elmira, N.Y. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912. Hubbard, Capt. H.R. Andersonville Hospital Conditions. Mendon, IL: The Mendon Dispatch, 3 March 1904. Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary – With List of the Dead. Secondary Sources: Hesseltine, William B. Civil War Prisons. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1962. Schroeder-Lein, Glenna R. The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008. Wade, Linda R. Prison Camps of the Civil War. Edna, MN: Abdo Publishing Co., 1998. Read More