PART 2: CIVIL WAR PRISON CAMPS -- FEDERAL RETALIATION
“No aspect of the American Civil War left behind a greater legacy of bitterness and acrimony than the treatment of prisoners of war. . . . And although Northern partisans still invoke [Andersonville] to defame the Confederacy, the Union had its share of equally horrific camps.”
Distorted accounts of maltreatment towards Federal soldiers within Confederate camps came from escaped prisoners and special exchanges for those who were sick but still well enough to travel north. These returning impoverished soldiers shocked the otherwise apathetic Northern people, whom Kyd Douglas regarded as largely indifferent to the fate of their own soldiers and to whom very little individual assistance was ever rendered. Angered by the apparent wonton cruelty of the South as seen in these men, Northern polemicists exploited reports of exaggerated conditions by giving the widespread impression that the South was engaged in the systematic killing of its soldiers. Firstly, having never recognized the Confederacy as a legitimate government, and secondly, aware that the draft riots in New York were contributing to growing calls for peace, influential politicians and journalists consorted to launch a campaign of retaliation in the New York Times. Harper’s Weekly, in an ugly article written by the editor of that journal, avowed: “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.” Congress officially sanctioned the propaganda campaign, and Secretary of War Stanton told the House Committee on the Conduct of the War, that “there appears to have been a deliberate system of savage and barbarous treatment” towards Federal POWs, further inciting Northern contempt.
The term “released on parole,” referred to captured prisoners in the field who were allowed to return home to await their exchange rather than being sent to an internment camp. By mid-1863, the Federals began ignoring paroles while the Confederacy still honored them. At Harper’s Ferry in September 1862, Stonewall Jackson had given parole to 12,500 Federals when he captured the entire garrison days before the battle of Sharpsburg, even allowing all officers to retain their personal side arms and baggage. Grant at Vicksburg and Port Hudson had acted similarly. But Grant had hoped that released Southerners would just go home. Instead, these Southern soldiers returned to their commands and Grant found that he was fighting the same men at Chattanooga. This fueled his anger and later, his remarks to Lincoln about refusing to exchange any more Southern troops. (see again Part 1, and Rhodes, “History of the United States,” pp. 499-500).
One of the worst Union prison camps was Ft. Delaware, located 14 miles south of Wilmington. The filth and vermin that overwhelmed this damp fortress resulted in a remarkably high death rate at nearly 25% of the inmates, and was quickly dubbed “The Andersonville of the North” and “The Fort Delaware Death Pen.”
Rock Island, located in the middle of the Mississippi River, was another infamous camp where “Confederate prisoners were reduced to eating dogs and rats.” Many men were “virtually naked and without adequate protection against the chilling winter cold.” In 20 months, 12,409 men were confined to this Island; nearly 2,000 died in captivity from preventable illnesses and unnecessary exposure. Johnson’s Island, on Lake Erie, experienced severe extremes of cold. In January 1864, the thermometer fell to 28 degrees below zero and inmates were called out in the middle of the night to stand at roll call for the sheer enjoyment of the superintendent to see the suffering of his frozen charges.
But by far the most horrendous Northern camp was located at Elmira, NY, just north of the Pennsylvania border. 9,000 men were confined in a 30-acre stockade meant to accommodate 5,000. Scurvy and dysentery took many lives, but by November 1864, pneumonia reached plague proportions. “Repeated requests for badly needed medicines were ignored by officials in Washington.” Hospitals lacked beds and men lay strewn upon bare floors contaminating otherwise healthy men. Non-cooperative prisoners were gaged and hung by their thumbs. Others were thrown into “sweat boxes” where the occupant had to stand and received neither ventilation, food nor water for the duration of his punishment. Rations gradually decreased, which meant that incarceration led to virtual (and literal) starvation. In March 1865, an average of 16 prisoners were dying each day. Elmira’s death rate topped anything at Andersonville.
But what was possibly most shocking to Southerners were the concentration camps established by the Federal government for hostile civilian populations. Just once such camp fell under the direction of Union General Thomas Ewing, who rounded up large numbers of civilians in Jackson, Vernon, Cass and Bates Counties in Missouri, virtually depopulating these regions, and ordered them to leave all of their worldly possessions behind while setting fire to their homes. Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman stated that his grandmother was one of those confined to a concentration camp: Loading up “what belongings she could into an oxcart, and with six of her children, [she] made the journey to a ‘post’ in Kansas City. Martha Ellen Truman vividly remembered that trek until she died at the age of 94.” Truman’s mother was one of those six children mentioned. (From “Plain Speaking, An Oral History of Harry S. Truman,” pp. 78-79.)
In the end we may legitimately conclude that from these self-evident truths, the resulting campaign of retaliation was “that prisoners in Northern prisons were forced to suffer needlessly . . . for alleged Southern cruelty.” Propaganda contributed to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of innocent Confederate soldiers, but more than that, at the conclusion of the Civil War, there was no proof, either in numbers of Union POW deaths, or in documentation, that “the South had killed off prisoners as part of a deliberate extermination policy.” The true injustice was the execution of Andersonville superintendent Henry Wirtz, for “crimes against humanity,” that the Federal court system was unable to justify but nevertheless upheld. -- Susan E. Hyatt
(Resources: Mark Weber, “The Civil War Concentration Camps,” Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1981; Hugh Simmons, “Paroles & Exchanges of Vicksburg Garrison,” history-site.com; Henry Kyd Douglas op. cit., pp 260-263.)
