Belle Isle, the prison for the enlisted men, was a wooded island in the James, once a place of resort for pleasure. On it was constructed a prison pen with few buildings. The supply of tents was insufficient, the water supply not good, and the food worse than in Libby. During the summer months the mortality was not excessive, but when the sharp winter came on, the ill-fed, poorly-clothed, badly-sheltered prisoners suffered terribly. On January 5th, 1864, five are said to have been frozen to death. The general testimony seems to show that the officers were humane, but many acts of cruelty on the part of the guards undoubtedly occurred. Some of the prisoners were desperate characters, bounty jumpers and the like, and they did not scruple to rob and even murder their comrades. Many lost hope and observed no sanitary precautions. The report of the U. S. Surgeon who received late in the war one hundred and eighty-nine prisoners from this place, says: “Every case wore upon it the visage of hunger, the expression of despair.... Their hair was dishevelled, their beards long and matted with dirt, their skin blackened and caked with the most loathsome filth, their bodies and clothing covered with vermin.”
As the number of prisoners and the difficulty of feeding them in Virginia increased, arrangements were made to send them southward. Orders were given in November, 1863, to select a site for a prison in southern Georgia. The little hamlet of Andersonville, sixty-two miles south of Macon, was chosen and a log stockade fifteen feet high enclosing about sixteen and a half acres was constructed. A small stream about five feet wide and a foot deep divided the pen, and was expected to furnish water and carry away the sewage. No shelters of any account were constructed, and the bake house was so constructed that the waste from it fouled the stream.
Prisoners began to arrive in February, 1864, before the work was completed, and during August the number was nearly 33,000. Though the stockade had been enlarged in June, to include twenty-six and a half acres, three and a half acres of the area were too marshy to be used. In addition a light railing fifteen feet from the wall indicated the “dead line” across which a prisoner passed at his peril. A simple calculation will show that only a few square feet were available for each of the poor wretches, and the crowding if nothing else was bound to produce sickness.
The regular Confederate ration was ordered issued at first, consisting of one-third of a pound of pork and one and one-fourth pounds of corn meal with beans, rice and molasses as often as practicable, but this was soon reduced. Gen. J. H. Winder, commandant of prisons, telegraphed to Richmond, July 25, 1864, that with 29,400 prisoners, 2,650 troops and 500 labourers, there was not a day’s ration on hand, and suggested that at least ten days’ supplies should be always kept in reserve. He was answered that Lee’s army could be furnished with only one day’s food at a time, and that it was impossible to grant his request.
The quality of the food was bad, the bread was only half cooked, there was insufficient wood for the prisoners to cook the meat, and some of the scanty supply was appropriated by the hungry guards who fared little, if any, better than the prisoners, so far as food was concerned. The prison also contained many desperate characters who robbed their fellow prisoners. These outrages became so frequent, that with the consent of Capt. Henry Wirz, the commander of the stockade, the prisoners themselves organised a court, tried, convicted and hanged six of these miscreants, after which, the “raiders,” as they were called, were more careful.
During the summer of 1864, the stockade was a hell on earth. Ten thousand men might have lived within the enclosure with some degree of decency. Thirty thousand could not. The stream could not carry away the filth, and heavy rains spread it over a large part of the enclosure.
The hospital, though moved to the outside of the stockade, could not care for the sick. Proper food, medicine, and appliances were lacking even if the medical staff had been larger and more skilful. The United States had made medicines contraband of war and many simple drugs could not be had at any price. Truly the hospital was a “gigantic mass of human misery.”
The rations issued grew smaller, and more uncertain. President Davis declares that they were the same issued to the soldiers in the field and that more could not be expected, particularly as the Confederacy was, in the face of rebuffs, constantly urging an exchange of prisoners. A visitor to the Executive Mansion in Richmond, who remained to dinner, relates that the meal consisted of fried bacon and corn bread. In the spring of 1864, General Lee had meat upon his table twice a week, but his usual fare was cabbage, sweet potatoes and corn bread, while sometimes the troops marched for days with no other food than parched corn, which they pounded into a coarse powder and mixed with water. Yet during all this time, there was food in some parts of the South, but poor transportation facilities made it unavailable.
The mortality at Andersonville was fearful. During July, 1864, it was 62.7 per thousand prisoners. In all, from first to last, 49,485 prisoners were confined here, of whom more than 12,800 died, a rate of twenty-six per cent. How many more died soon after exchange, or else dragged out a miserable existence with shattered health and broken spirits, can never be computed. That distinguished and impartial historian, Mr. James Ford Rhodes, well says: “Thus insufficiently nourished, exposed by day to the fierce Southern sun, by night to dews, drenched with torrential rains, languishing amidst filth and stench, breathing polluted air, homesick, depressed, desperate, these men were an easy prey to the diseases of diarrhœa, dysentery, scurvy and gangrene.”
In September, 1864, the near approach of General Sherman caused the temporary abandonment of the prison. The inmates were sent to Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S. C., and thence to Florence, S. C., and Millen, Ga. This last named place was soon abandoned and the prisoners sent back to Andersonville. The place had been somewhat cleansed, by sun, wind and rain, and as it was not again so crowded, conditions were decidedly better.