A Harper’s Weekly artist sketched an orderly and clean Elmira Prison that was a far cry from actual conditions. For a modest sum, curious townspeople were permitted to mount observation towers and view the prisoners.
Small wonder that great suffering existed in most prison camps, both North and South. In the nine-month history of the huge prison at Andersonville, Ga., a total of 45,613 Federals were jammed into a Stockade containing one polluted stream of water, few shelters, less food, and no sanitation. Over 12,900 prisoners died of disease, exposure, and starvation at Andersonville. Confederate authorities maintained that Federal prisoners in Andersonville received the same slim food ration as did their guards, and that the whole South suffered badly for want of medicines.
Only captured Federal officers were confined in Libby Prison. Several escapes, and innumerable charges of inhuman treatment, marked this compound’s four-year history.
The North’s prison camp at Elmira, N. Y., had many similarities to Andersonville. This Federal compound existed for a year. During that time, 2,963 of 12,123 Confederate prisoners died from various causes. In the twenty-month life of Rock Island Prison Camp, 1,960 of 12,400 Southern inmates succumbed to exposure and disease. At six remote tobacco warehouses in Danville, Virginia, 1,400 of 7,000 Federal prisoners died of smallpox, malnutrition, and intestinal disorders in the space of a year.
In all, the Chief of the U. S. Record and Pension Office reported in 1903, 25,976 Confederates and 30,218 Federals died in Civil War prisons.
It is difficult still to give an accurate and impartial summary of Civil War prisons. Conflicting facts, lost records, and bitter feelings hamper attempts to arrive at a just verdict. But perhaps Prof. James Ford Rhodes was not far from the truth when he stated: “All things considered the statistics show no reason why the North should reproach the South [about atrocious prison conditions]. If we add to one side of the account the refusal to exchange the prisoners and the greater resources, and to the other the distress of the Confederacy, the balance struck will not be far from even. Certain it is that no deliberate intention existed either in Richmond or Washington to inflict suffering on captives more than inevitably accompanied their confinement.”
The Confederate Commissary General Of Prisons was Gen. John H. Winder of Maryland.