This exhibit focuses on the often overlooked suffering of prisoners of war during the bloodiest conflict in American history. Studying the organization and conditions of both Union and Confederate prison camps, prisoners’ experiences, and the distinct memory of the camps’ horrors will provide a comprehensive overview of what is known as the Civil War prison system. Specifically, this exhibit will examine the hardships of black prisoners of war, the structure and conditions of Union and Confederate prison camps, and a detailed study of the notorious Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia.
The introduction of black soldiers into the Union Army posed a new problem for the prisoner exchange system between the Union and the Confederacy. The Confederacy refused to exchange captured black Union soldiers, stating that they were “contraband” stolen from the South by the Union and refused to treat them as their white counterparts, instead, they were enslaved or executed. On July 30, 1863, President Lincoln published the Executive Order of Retaliation, which eventually led to the destruction of the prisoner exchange system between the Union and the Confederacy. The Order of Retaliation stated that any mistreatment, execution, or enslavement of captured black soldiers would lead to the same punishment exacted upon a captured white Confederate soldier.
The Confederacy was also unwilling to exchange black soldiers for their white soldiers, citing that it was an unfair exchange because the black soldiers were stolen and by giving them back to the Union, they were giving up property that was rightfully theirs. The Union was unwilling to receive only their white troops back, putting black soldiers and white soldiers on the same level of importance. Eventually, this stalemate between the Union and the Confederacy led to the downfall of the prisoner exchange system.
With no end of the war in sight, prisons became crowded; food and medical attention were in high demand but short order, this led to starvation, diseases, infections, and death running rampant through the camps in both the North and the South. This begs the question: how much of the inhumane treatment of prisoners was from pure human cruelty, and how much was it from a lack of supplies and manpower to keep the prisons fully functional? Either way, captured black soldiers were crucial in the treatment of prisoners, and the downfall of the prisoner exchange system during the Civil War.
As with the Confederate prison system, the breakdown in prisoner exchanges increased prison populations and helped Union prisons developed a reputation for harshness during and after the conclusion of the Civil War. While several hundred thousand Confederate men died on the battlefields of America’s bloodiest war, surviving casualties, if taken into custody by Union soldiers, were transported north. Soldiers, such as John King, whose memoir is explored in this exhibit, were treated (minimally) for their wounds, then sent by way of rail car to prisons, such as Camp Chase in Ohio, or Elmira in Elmira, New York. Though these soldiers survived some of the costliest battles in American history, their real trials began once aboard Union rail transportation. In one extremely rare occurrence, several hundred Confederate men, in the custody of the Union, died as the rail car they were aboard derailed on the way to Elmira, New York. Apart from such uncommon accidents, the cramped conditions and poor state of most men made the journey particularly arduous.
By all accounts, the Union provided adequate living conditions once in any of the prison camps in the Union prison system. In this exhibit there are two competing documents from Elmira, more commonly referred to as “Hellmira” for particularly harsh conditions. In one letter, an Elmira guard counters rumors of poor treatment, assuring readers that guards and staff provide clothing, food and shelter to Confederate soldiers. A letter from an inmate at Elmira depicts a different reality, in which the men struggled to make it through a bitter New York winter. These documents, combined with an image of Elmira Prison Camp from near the end of the war in 1865 depict a camp which was wholly less harsh than the popular Hellmira nickname would suggest.
The sheer number of soldiers brought into custody across the Union prison system as a result of the halt in exchanges during the beginning of the war, meant that both the Union and Confederacy struggled to supply prison camps. The Union prison system suffered from severe overpopulation and a strain on supplies, especially as the war dragged on through 1864 and early 1865. However, most available information suggests Union prison authorities did not act on motives of vengeance in their dealings with Confederate soldiers. Photographs of Elmira and the transportation of Confederate soldiers to northern prisons show the brutal, but unavoidable and often forgotten reality associated with managing hundreds of thousands of prisoners from a bloody and bitter conflict.
The Confederate prison system during the Civil War reflects the desperate conditions that the Confederacy continued to face as the war dragged on and prisoner exchanges ceased. While much attention is rightly paid to the soldiers who suffered and died on the battlefields that were mostly located within the Confederacy, the experiences of Union prisoners of war who survived the fighting only to languish in Confederate prison camps are often forgotten. This exhibit will draw some of these experiences into the light, and explore how the conditions of poorly designed Confederate prison camps prolonged the suffering of Union prisoners through a variety of primary sources.
The photograph in this exhibit of an emaciated Union prisoner liberated from the Belle Island, Virginia prison camp sums up the horrendous experiences that many prisoners faced inside Confederate prison camps. As the Confederacy struggled to mobilize its army and its population for the war, the prisoners it captured on the battlefield paid the price of its disorganization. Prisoners suffered through inhumane conditions due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and lack of adequate rations. At the beginning of the war, many of these hastily erected Confederate camps were located in the area surrounding Richmond, Virginia. The conditions of camps in this area can be seen through the diary of a Union Congressman who was held in a Richmond camp called Belle Island and the recollections of a Union soldier who escaped from Libby Prison, which was another Richmond camp.
Richmond was not the only area where the Confederacy established and ran its prison camps, however. An image of prison guards and black slaves burying dead prisoners, taken at the notorious Andersonville prison camp in Georgia towards the end of the war in 1864, shows that prison camps were only getting worse as body counts continued to pile up. Conditions were often so bad in many Confederate camps by late 1864 that concerned Union citizens wrote letters to President Lincoln asking for official retaliation against Confederate prisoners being held in Union prison camps, such as the letter from a Mrs. A.A. Moor shown in this exhibit. This was partly due to a halt in prisoner exchanges that caused both sides to suffer greatly as they were forced to take on more prisoners. Confederate camps located in more remote areas, such as Camp Groce in Texas, avoided the horrors of camps like Andersonville due to their distance from major battlefields. The prison newspaper included in this exhibit that was run by inmates from Camp Groce shows that even though dehumanizing conditions characterized many Confederate camps, there were certainly exceptions to the norm. Overall, the Confederate prison system reminds scholars that what took place after the fighting on the battlefield during the Civil War should be treated with equal importance: the suffering and dying of Union prisoners should not be forgotten.
Finally, the horrible conditions at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia also reveal the depth of suffering and dehumanization that could occur off the battlefield. While the breakdown of the system of exchanges led to the overcrowding of prisons both North and South, Andersonville represents the greatest failure to accommodate the increasingly large number of prisoners of war. Andersonville did not provide shelter for its prisoners, leading them to construct rudimentary tents in a disordered, haphazard fashion. Food and sanitation were both in woefully short supply. Much of the camp was covered in human excrement and was infested with vermin. Disease ran rampant and the mortality rate was unusually high. Many of the men who survived Andersonville were severely emaciated, having the appearance of skeletons.
The sheer number of deaths and degraded condition of existence resulted in one of the greatest examples of dehumanization to ever occur in the American Civil War. The high degree of slaughter and death on battlefields is often what we think of when we contemplate Civil War suffering. Andersonville concentrated many of the horrors of wartime, likely surpassing the suffering of the bloodiest battles. While battles may include mass slaughter, the experience at Andersonville included a more universal, slower, and deeper level of degradation and misery than that experienced at Shiloh, Antietam, or Gettysburg.
In fact, the horrors of Andersonville were so great that they laid a lasting impression in the nation’s consciousness. To many, Andersonville was justly considered one of the greatest tragedies brought about by the war. The North considered it to be clear evidence of the inhumanity and barbarism of the Confederacy, a lasting symbol of Southern treachery. The experience of prisoners at Andersonville potently reveals how the dehumanization and tragedy of the Civil War extended beyond the battlefield. The experience of soldiers cannot only focus on great battles. In some cases, capture and imprisonment brought about deeper suffering than anything they had previously experienced.
The Civil War Prison System 