Upon the Altar of the Nation

by Harry S. Stout

  The Confederate response was predictable. Insofar as their entire society rested on the institution of slavery, and inasmuch as that institution considered slaves as property, there could be no proper exchange of a black soldier for a white soldier, a black human for a white human. For Confederate Agent of Exchange Robert Ould, this meant that the North pressed an “inadmissible claim” that “recaptured slaves shall be treated as prisoners of war.”10

  Compounding the moral issue of race was the issue of honor. When Grant discovered that paroled Confederate soldiers from Vicksburg were fighting in Tennessee without mutual agreement, he viewed that as a loss of honor.

  Strategic reasons existed as well as to why a refusal to exchange would work better for the North than for the South. In his letter to Ould, Butler pointed out that Confederates supporting the resumption of exchange were motivated “by the depleted condition of their armies, and a desire to get into the field ... the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the United States, in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your prisons.”11

  While wrong about the “hale and hearty” Confederate prisoners, Butler was right about the Confederacy desperately wanting to bring prisoners back to serve in the army. Strategically, Grant also realized that he more easily than the Confederacy could afford the lost manpower of inactive prisoners. The prospects of a quicker victory and fewer lives lost in the field made the breakdown of “exchange” worthwhile and, in Grant’s eyes, even moral.

  Living conditions in Confederate prisons were unarguably harsher than in Union prisons, but so were living conditions in the Confederate army and Confederate society in general. Most Northern camps, such as Elmira, Douglas, Morton, Butler, Johnson’s Island, and Alton, had barracks. Most Confederate prisons—especially prisons for enlisted soldiers—offered only partial shelter or mere tents.

  If Yankee prisoners were fed and clothed less than prisoners held by the North, so were Confederate soldiers. Even as the women of Richmond rioted for lack of bread, so Federal prisoners at Libby Prison and Belle Isle suffered food shortages and poor diet. Only the worst cases who were sent to the hospital received two meals a day, the rest only one of diminishing nutrition.

  In a statement on conditions in Richmond prisons and hospitals, Thomas James, a hospital steward, described the suffering, in particular of the prisoners in Belle Isle, who lacked the shelter afforded Union officers in Libby Prison. One surgeon was a “brute” to the very ill prisoners sent to the hospital, but “others were very kind to the men and did all in their power, but the material to prescribe from was so limited they were unable to accomplish much good.” Diseases ran rampant: “The principal diseases were typhoid fever, typhoid pneumonia, chronic diarrhea, and dysentery, but the two last mentioned was the cause of death in the majority of cases.”12

  Northern writers, cartoonists, and even General Grant assumed the North would never mistreat prisoners and that all were healthy and well fed. Nothing could have been farther from the facts. While certainly better supplied and maintained than their counterparts in the South, Northern prisons were also overcrowded and unsanitary death camps. Examination of the higher mortality rates in Confederate prisons, while important, must be weighed against the fact that “lower” mortality rates in the North were still astounding. Nothing could match the 29 percent mortality rate at Andersonville (thirteen thousand of forty-five thousand) except for Salisbury Prison in North Carolina, whose rate was even higher. But the overall mortality statistics—15.5 percent of Northern prisoners and 12 percent of Southern prisoners—were scandalous on both sides.13

  Salisbury inmates were mostly political prisoners and Yankee deserters, with POWs added only after October 1864. From October 1864 to February 1865 (when exchanges were resumed), 3,479 of Salisbury’s 10,321 prisoners died—a higher rate than at Andersonville. In Northern prisons, the highest mortality rates for POWs occurred at Rock Island, Illinois (77 percent); Elmira, New York (32.5 percent); Alton, Illinois (21 percent); and Camp Butler, Illinois (20 percent).14

  Clearly prisoner-of-war camps were a tragedy. But were they immoral, as the participants claimed? Insofar as morality refers to intent and not unintended consequences, it is hard to affix guilt on either nation for deliberately plotting to starve or murder innocent prisoners. The historian James M. McPherson rightly concludes that “the treatment of prisoners during the Civil War was something that neither side could be proud of.”15 No evidence exists, however, of a program of cruelty and extermination aimed at white soldiers on either side.

  But if the macro world of prisons and prisoners was more victim than perpetrator of evil, micro stories exist that point to the moral consequences of inhuman enslavement, whether of slaves on the plantations or of prisoners in the camps. Most glaring was Confederate mistreatment of black prisoners. By an act of the Confederate Congress, black prisoners had to be named in local newspapers and their status as prisoners or recaptured slaves revealed for their owners to claim them. The majority who remained in prison suffered even harsher conditions than those endured by their white counterparts. While languishing behind Confederate lines, they were frequently employed like slaves in hard labor on Confederate railroads or fortifications around Mobile, Alabama.16 While wasting away in Andersonville, Union Private Robert Knox Sneden observed that “the Negroes do all the hardest work of course. They often get lashed by their masters or overseers, as we can hear their cries of pain plainly on still nights.”17

  Related to the deliberate mistreatment and exploitation of black prisoners was the use of them as human shields. In July 1863, following the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and during the siege of Charleston, Colonel John L. Branch conceived the idea of placing enemy prisoners of war under fire of their own siege guns to discourage Federal bombardments. The plan was to include all Yankee prisoners, officers and enlisted men alike: “these prisoners to be exposed during our operations.”18 But black prisoners bore a disproportionate amount of the danger and hard labor. The same was true at Richmond, where black prisoners were placed on the city’s fortifications under direct Federal fire. The practice continued until Northern generals placed an equal number of Confederate prisoners at Union fortifications under fire.19

  A more general moral issue developed around stealing from guards and from fellow prisoners. The rules of war recognized by both sides forbade stealing from the prisoners. But among both hungry Confederate prison guards and cold Federal guards, the pillage of prisoners was rife. Food, clothing, cash, and valuables of any sort were in play.

  No good prisons existed in the South or North. In July 1864 Confederate prisoners were transferred from Point Lookout to vacant barracks at Elmira, New York. Familiar problems of sanitation and disease appeared, augmented by a rash of scurvy caused by no-vegetable diets. By the end of August, more than seven hundred cases of scurvy had been reported. In October word emerged from Camp Douglas of a rapid increase of fatalities, and Elmira health officials concluded that based on mortality rates in August and September, the entire prison would be depopulated within a year.20

  The worst prison conditions of all existed at the infamous Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. With the rapid rise of prisoners on both sides, and with Grant’s army marching on Richmond, Belle Isle could no longer hold the bulk of prisoners, and new facilities had to be constructed. In October 1863 Lee recommended moving prisoners away from Richmond to Danville, Virginia. But Danville proved inadequate, and in November, Andersonville, Georgia, was selected as the site for a new prison.

  The site seemed ideally isolated from Confederate cities and invading armies. But tragically, no one recognized that those very advantages would prove disastrously disadvantageous for the prisoners. There were simply no real provisions to build a protected environment. Basic staples such as nails and rope could not be found to build shelters.21 Shortages of lumber meant no buildings and, by spring, no coffins.

&nb
sp; The first prisoners began arriving at Andersonville from Richmond in February 1864 and continued at a rate of four hundred per day. Since shelter was not available, prisoners had to survive on their own, often with little more than a blanket to provide warmth or protection from the sun. The prison contained no cells, but all inmates had to live within the brutally enforced boundaries—the original “deadline”—with guards ordered to shoot any and all who crossed them.

  Andersonville Prison, southwest view of the stockade showing the “deadline.” Close to thirteen thousand Union prisoners of war lost their lives there. Thousands more perished in other camps, both Federal and Confederate.

  By May the bakery was completed and prisoners received the same rations as guards. But the only stream into the camp was polluted by refuse from the bakery. Already weakened from their stay in Richmond, prisoners died steadily from disease—especially bowel diseases like diarrhea and dysentery, combined with scurvy. Survival and recovery were hindered even more by the widespread presence of what psychologists today would term clinical depression. When Captain William Chauncey arrived as a prisoner at Andersonville on May 29, he wrote in his diary: “No shelter, or rations except corn meal. Water insufficient for the number confined here. No conveniences for washing or in fact for living at all. I can only think of hell upon earth.”22

  “Sergeant” Henry Wirz in Richmond’s Belle Isle was transferred to command the interior of the prison in Andersonville as “Captain” Wirz (the exterior guard force was commanded by Colonel A. W. Persons). Of Wirz, one prisoner would write: “The half-mocking respect which the [Union] officers in the Richmond prisons had for the bustling efficiency of Sergeant Wirz ... was changed in the new prison to bitter hatred. The fact that he was a foreigner and spoke with [a German] accent militated against his making a good impression.” Rumors abounded that Wirz personally shot soldiers and that guards were given furlough time for each Yankee they killed. Had Union officers been present at Andersonville, some marginal improvement might have been achieved, but officers were confined at Macon, Georgia.

  In a state of complete demoralization, prisoners fought with each other. By August the prison designed to hold only ten thousand reached a population of nearly thirty-three thousand men, making Andersonville the fifth largest “city” in the Confederacy. The prisoners defecated in a swamp, which in turn bred maggots. One prisoner recalled: “The largest crawled out in the hot sand, shed their tail-like appendages; wings would unfold, and an attempt be made to fly; and thousands were clumsily dropping all over the camp. They tumbled into our mush, bedding places, and on the faces of the sick and dying.” Wirz permitted aid from the Sanitary Commission, but it arrived irregularly and did nothing to prevent the spread of disease.

  One remarkable account of prison life in Andersonville appears in the diary of Sergeant John L. Ransom, the brigade quartermaster of the Ninth Michigan Calvary23 On November 6, 1863, Ransom was captured in east Tennessee and taken to Belle Isle Prison just as prisoner exchanges were being discontinued. From there he was transported to Camp Sumter, Andersonville. On March 14 Ransom arrived at the camp, where the prisoners were left out in the open air, surrounded by a wooden stockade and the ubiquitous deadline of boards running around the inside of the stockade. The lack of cover led Ransom to the immediate understanding that “it is going to be an awful place during the summer months here, and thousands will die no doubt.”

  He was right. Invariably, the prisoners’ despair turned to rage against their captors. Their rage also focused inward in self-destructive patterns generated by depression. Worse yet, furies were directed at one another in shameful displays of theft, brutality, and even murder. As spring moved into “the summer that killed thirteen thousand men,” the prisoners escalated the fighting among themselves, responding with violence to trivial arguments or interservice brawls between soldiers, sailors, and marines. There were no officers to intervene. Morale reached so low a pitch that prisoners often refused to take care of themselves, making a bad situation worse: “Many have long hair, which, being never combed, is matted together and full of vermin. With sunken eyes, blackened countenances from pitch pine smoke, rags and disease, the men look sickening. The air reeks with nastiness, and it is wonder that we live at all. When will relief come to us?”

  With thousands of new prisoners swelling the already putrid and overcrowded camp, spirits plummeted still further: “New men are perfectly thunderstruck at the hole they have got into. A great many give right up and die in a few weeks, and some in a week.” But Ransom was not one of them: “Could give up and die in a short time but won’t. Have got living reduced to a science. »

  Where soldiers could maintain their morale and love of Union, prisoners could not. The fault, Ransom concluded, was not only with the Confederates who were too poor to properly feed and clothe their own soldiers but more with the Union leaders who canceled the exchange cartel. By March 30 Ransom was willing to concede that “our government is at fault in not providing some way to get us out of here. The hot weather months must kill us all outright.”24

  Outside of Andersonville, Union officers urged the government to act as Ransom requested. In a letter written on August 14, 1864, by Federal officers in Charleston Prison to President Lincoln, on behalf of enlisted prisoners in Andersonville, the officers pleaded with the president “to use every honorable effort to secure a general exchange of prisoners, thereby relieving thousands of our comrades from the horrors now surrounding them.”

  Chief of the horrors was starvation: “Nothing more demoralizes soldiers and develops the evil passions of man than starvation ... the terrible condition of Union prisoners at Andersonville can be readily imagined. They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life. Numbers crazed by their sufferings wander about in a state of idiocy; others deliberately cross the dead-line and are remorselessly shot down. In behalf of these men, we most earnestly appeal to the President of the United States.”25

  If the exchange of slaves was the only issue preventing the cartel, the officers continued, “we beg to suggest some facts bearing upon the question.” In a calculated willingness to betray black prisoners for the sake of whites, the officers proceeded to suggest that blacks were actually better off: “It is true they are again made slaves, but their slavery is freedom and happiness compared with the cruel existence imposed upon our gallant [white] men. They are not bereft of hope, as are the Union soldiers dying by inches. Their chances of escape are tenfold greater than those of the white soldiers, and their condition, viewed in all its lights, is tolerable in comparison with that of the prisoners.”26 While sympathetic, Lincoln remained unmoved, citing the moral obligation incurred by promises to black soldiers. By this point, Lincoln was playing all sides of the moral card, while bearing a large portion of the responsibility for unimaginable suffering and death.

  In contrast to soldiers embracing religion, many of the prisoners around Ransom lost their faith. While some continued to pray, “very many too who have been heretofore religiously inclined, throw off all restraint and are about the worst.” God did not deliver them or grant them laurels from the battlefield when they died. God must have died or deserted the cause.27

  By June, fellow prisoners—“raiders”—were robbing and killing weaker mates at alarming rates: “Raiders kill some one now every day. No restraint in the least. Men who were no doubt respectable at home, are now the worst villains in the world.” Only after the prisoners threatened Wirz with a full-scale riot did he consent to allow them to organize a police force of “Regulators” and supply them with clubs to apprehend the leading raiders. Soon “arrests” were made: “The raiders fight for their very life, and are only taken after being thoroughly whipped.” Once rounded up, fellow prisoners trained in law established criminal trials on charges ranging from theft to murder. Six gang leaders were sentenced to be hanged for murder, and another eighty-six sentenced to “run the gauntlet” inside the stockade. Although too weak to join in the gaun
tlet, Ransom could scarce contain his excitement at the prospect of hangings.

  On July 11 the convicted murderers were led to the hastily constructed gallows and allowed last words. Most blamed starvation or “bad company” for their actions. One “spoke of his mother and sisters in New York, that he cared nothing as far as he himself was concerned, but the news that would be carried home to his people made him want to curse God he had ever been born.” The hangings themselves were received by the prisoners as long overdue justice. As the condemned prisoners (now doubly so) made their confessions, others shouted and interrupted them, eager to see justice—or revenge—executed. Ransom wrote:I occupied a near position to the hanging and saw it all from first to last, and stood there until they were taken down and carried away. Was a strange sight to see and the first hanging I ever witnessed. The raiders had many friends who crowded around and denounced the whole affair and but for the police there would have been a riot; many both for and against the execution were knocked down.... Have got back to my quarters thoroughly prostrated and worn out with fatigue and excitement, and only hope that to-day’s lesson will right matters as regards raiding.28

  The hangings did diminish the killing but not the theft. With order restored “the men have settled right down to the business of dying, with no interruption.” Each day as many as 220 died in the stockade and the camp hospital. By the end of July, Ransom could not walk and “am trouble with poor sight together with scurvy and dropsy. My teeth are all loose and it is with difficulty I can eat.” The daily presence of death and dying inured all to the decencies of life:There is no such thing as delicacy here. Nine out of ten would as soon eat with a corpse for a table as any other way. In the middle of last night [July 18] I was awakened by being kicked by a dying man. He was soon dead. In his struggles he had floundered clear into our bed. Got up and moved the body off a few feet, and again went to sleep to dream of the hideous sights. I can never get used to it as some do. Often wake most scared to death, and shuddering from head to foot. Almost dread to go to sleep on this account. I am getting worse and worse, and prison ditto.