by Fran Moriarty

Created on: April 16, 2008

At the start of the Civil War, the United States was unprepared for war.This was evident when the Federal forces faced the Confederate forces at Bull Run in 1861. The ladies and gentlemen of Washington ventured to nearby hilltops to watch the show. The roar of cannon and crack of muskets filled the air with a cloud of smoke. The panic that set in when the first soldiers crumbled to the ground, resulted in a race back to Washington . Troops and well dressed folk mingled in the retreat. The war was on and the reality of what laid ahead stunned the two armies.

As unprepared as the two sides were for war, the preparation for housing prisoners was far from a major concern. America never had prisoner of war camps. At most the country had no more than 100 prisoners at a time. As the two American sides went to battle and began to capture the enemy, hastily prepared training camps were converted into prisoner of war camps. Shortly after the war commenced, an agreement for prisoner exchange was ironed out. Camps did not need to be large since prisoners would be housed only long enough for an exchange to take place.

Each side would eventually establish seven or eight prisoner of war camps before the end of the war. Conditions in the camps were deplorable. Nearly 60,000 men would die of disease, starvation, poor sanitation, exposure and ignorance. Diets which lacked fruits caused outbreaks of scurvy while diseases such as, Smallpox, dysentery, and cholera, were common in all camps. Malaria was a disease reserved for the confederate camps.

Boredom in camps led the internees to develop plans to escape. Some were just dreams and fantasies. While others turned in actual escapes. Escapees that were recaptured were treated harshly. Hanging by thumbs, beatings, and floggings were not uncommon. Sores and wounds often led to gangrene. Southerns were unfamiliar with the brutal winters of the North while Northerners had to endure the plague of mosquitoes and thread of malaria. Death and boredom were companions to all POWs.

In April of 1864, General US Grant called an end to the POW exchange program. His staff and he decided that there was no reason to supply fit soldiers for confederate armies and receive in turn the skeletons of union troops. Grant reasoned that exchanging POWs benefited the south and would cause the war to drag on indefinitely.

As a result, the camp populations swelled. Camps that had been designed for 3000 men found 10,000 inmates cramped into 25 acres of fenced in

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