The same officer was then transferred to Elmira, New York, where nearly 10,000 prisoners were confined during August, 1864. The ground had been a receiving station for recruits. Both wooden barracks and tents were in use. The water was good and the commanding officer was efficient and humane, though some of his subordinates are charged with cruelty, as was also a part of the medical staff. Though an abundance of bread was supplied, little meat was issued, and after the sutlers were excluded, August 18, 1864, an epidemic of scurvy followed. Speaking of some of his fellow prisoners who were finally exchanged, he says: “On they came a ghastly tide with skeleton bodies and lustreless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of all feelings but one—the thought of freedom, the love of home ... some with the seal of death stamped on their wasted cheeks and shrivelled limbs, yet fearing less death than the added agony of death in the hands of enemies.”
Who was responsible for all this misery? Was this horrible suffering deliberately inflicted by the authorities with a fixed purpose in view? Such was undoubtedly the general belief in the North regarding the Confederate government. Secretary Stanton as early as December, 1863, declared that Union soldiers held captive “were deprived of shelter, clothing and food and some have perished from exposure and famine.” After the war, Captain Wirz, the keeper of Andersonville, was tried and convicted by a military tribunal which returned a verdict that he had conspired with Jefferson Davis and others against the lives of Union soldiers. Wirz was hanged Nov. 10, 1865, and General Winder’s death probably saved him from a similar fate.
On the other hand President Davis in a message to the Confederate Congress in December, 1864, says the Union soldiers were given the same rations “in quantity and quality as those served out to our own gallant soldiers” while “the most revolting inhumanity has characterised the conduct of the United States toward the prisoners held by them.”
Many similar official or semi-official statements were made on both sides. Mr. Rhodes has weighed and sifted the evidence, perhaps more thoroughly than any other historian, and his verdict is as follows: “There was no intention on either side to maltreat the prisoners. A mass of men had to be cared for unexpectedly. Arrangements were made in a hurry, and as neither side expected a long duration of the war, they were only makeshifts devised with considerable regard for economy and expenditure. There was bad management at the North and worse at the South owing to less efficient organisation with meagre resources. And it plainly appears from the mass of the evidence that the prisoner at the North was the better off of the two, as he always had food and shelter.”
Mr. Rhodes then compares the revised statistics which show that of 194,743 Union prisoners held by the Confederacy, 30,218 or fifteen and a half per cent. died, while of 214,865 Confederate prisoners 25,976 or twelve per cent. died. He then declares that considering all things the balance was nearly even and that the North has no cause to reproach the South.
In making up this judgment he undoubtedly takes into consideration the attitude of Secretary Stanton and General Grant. When the Confederate authorities, burdened with the great mass of prisoners whom they could not feed, finally and persistently besought exchange upon any terms, General Grant said in August, 1864: “It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them but it is humanity to those left in the ranks. Every man we hold when released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us, at once directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners, then we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they amount to no more than dead men.” Therefore, with iron nerve he resisted all pressure brought to force an exchange, and was sustained by Secretary Stanton. Both these men must share with the Confederate authorities the responsibility for prison horrors.
Handling men in masses is always difficult. In the Crimea, just ten years before the awful winter of 1864, the English army was reduced by famine and disease to a mere skeleton. Here there was no animus, but only incompetence to meet the difficulties of the situation. During the Franco-Prussian War, in spite of the wonderful preparations on the part of Prussia, bitter complaints of the treatment of French prisoners were made. But the misfortunes or the failures of one nation do not excuse or justify those of another. The treatment of the Civil War prisoners fills some of the darkest pages of American history.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A “fleet” in early English meant a “brook,” otherwise a “creek” or “bay,” a term often met with in British geography in the names Northfleet, Byfleet, Purfleet, etc.
[2] “State of Prisons,” i. 36.