At the start of the American Civil War, the Federals and Confederates had a gentlemen's agreement regarding prisoners of war. The sides agreed to exchange men of equal rank on the battlefield, a private for a private, a sergeant for a sergeant, and so on. In July 1826, the Dix-Hill Cartel was formed between the North and South allowing for parole and exchange of prisoners. In the chaos of war, the terms of this cartel broke down just three months later resulting in the formation of 150 Union and Confederate prison camps that took the lives of an estimated 56,000 men.
It was soon evident that neither the Union nor the Confederacy were equipped to handle thousands of prisoners, nor did they have the will to do so. "Holding pens" or prison camps took the form of existing fortifications, altered buildings, jails, enclosures around barracks, or fenced areas around tents and open stockades. There were no exemplary prison conditions; all were plagued with poor sanitation, limited shelter and food, overcrowding, and exposure to the elements. One could argue that a sentence to these prisons was a worse fate than the battlefield trenches.
The most notorious hell-hole of the Confederacy, Camp Sumter, was constructed in 1864 near Andersonville, Georgia. Although built to accommodate almost 10,000 captives, by July of that year it was heaving with more than 32,000, mostly enlisted men. The camp covered 26 acres and was designed as an open-air stockade with a 20 foot high log fortification. A stagnant creek that prisoners ludicrously dubbed "Sweet Water Branch" ran through the camp. Used for all their personal needs, it was disease ridden and would flood the camp when summer rainstorms struck. No barracks existed, and prisoners scraped to construct crude lean-tos for shelter. The Confederate troops barely had rations to feed themselves, so the prisoners received little food but rancid grains and spoiled beans or peas. The deplorable circumstances led to the Confederate medical commission relocating prisoners to other camps in September 1864. The deficient diet, appalling conditions, and the hot Georgia sun took its toll with dysentery, malaria, scurvy, and exposure contributing to the death of nearly 30 percent of the 45,000 men that were camped in Andersonville.
Following the closure of Camp Sumter, government workers composed a list of some 13,000 prisoners who had met death at the camp. A national cemetery was later built to honor the those that tragically and senselessly died at Andersonville. As a fitting closure to the horrific loss, the despised superintendent of the camp, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried by a military court for his cruelty and abuse of Union prisoners of war. He was the only military leader to be hanged as a result of the injustices of the prison camps, North and South. General Robert E. Lee, James Seddon, the Secretary of War, and other Confederate generals and politicians were initially charged with "conspiring to injure the health and destroy the lives of United States soldiers held as prisoners by the Confederate States", but in August, 1865 President Andrew Johnson ordered that the charges be dropped.
Conditions were equally appalling in Union camps, with one of the most notable being in Elmira, New York. By July of 1864, Elmira became a functional prison camp constructed of existing vacant barracks that were encircled by a recently built stockade fence. About 700 Confederate prisoners were transferred from other overcrowded Union prisons. In just two months almost 10,000 enlisted men occupied Elmira.
From the start, living conditions were unfit with the barracks holding only half of the prisoners. The rest of the prisoners were overcrowded in tents, even through the cold New York winter. Clean water was nonexistent due to a stagnant pond that stretched the length of the enclosed camp. The nearby Chemung River was above the level of the camp, so drainage was an issue. Due to the lack of vegetables and fruits in the prisoners diet, in just one month there were 793 cases of scurvy. In November 1864 the camp doctor complained to the army surgeon general that there had been 775 deaths. The average of 1,052 men were sick per day in Elmira. Before new barracks could be constructed, the severe winter contributed to more sickness and death. The only good news was that ten prisoners had escaped to freedom after spending two grueling months digging a tunnel 66 feet long under the perimeter of the log stockade. On October 7, 1864, they crawled to safety and freedom.
The North was far better equipped to manage its prison camps than the South, but the death rate at Elmira approached that of Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. The intent to mistreat prisoners was not as blatant in the Elmira camp, as most of the suffering resulted from severe shortages and administrative mismanagement. Of the total 12,122 soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963, or 29%, perished. Following the closure of the camp on July 5, 1865, a cemetery was constructed along the banks of the Chemung River which remains today as a memorial.
Although the casualties of major battles of the American Civil War are often quoted, little is spoken of the atrocities of the war's prison camps in our nation's history lessons. Throughout the war, their was concern and anger expressed from civilians of the North and South about prison conditions, but the wheels of war kept turning with no immediate action taken. The Harper's Weekly deceptively reported on April 15, 1865, "The prisoners at Elmira are well fed and clothed, and there is an efficient medical staff to attend to the sick. They amuse themselves with reading and writing, or making toys and other small articles for sale." Sadly, it can be presumed that blatant misreporting of the facts contributed to the preservation of unfit prison camps and tremendous loss of American lives.