DK - The American Civil War

most infamous of Civil War prison

camps, but all of them shared, to an

extent, its sins.

Over 400,000 men were at some

point held as prisoners of war during

the conflict, and more than 56,000

of them died in captivity. Ultimately

the death rate for both North and

South together was approximately

13 percent—more than twice the

death rate on the battlefield.

Nearly 3,000 men died there—the

majority from exposure, disease, and

malnutrition—in the 12 months that

Elmira operated.

A living hell

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter,

was all these camps writ large.

Carved out of the pinewoods of

southwestern Georgia in early

1864, it was a stockade built for

10,000 Union prisoners that

soon held three times that

number. It offered no shelter.

The sweltering inmates stretched

rags on sticks and burrowed into the

ground to escape the relentless sun. Its

one creek was both water source and

camp sewer. Dysentery was rampant,

medical attention nonexistent, and

rations sparse. Nearly 13,000 men

died there—30 percent of the prison’s

population. Andersonville became the

Libby Prison mess kit
Although Libby Prison was severely overcrowded, Union
captives held there were comparatively well treated.
These items were issued to Colonel John S. Crocker
of the 93rd New York Volunteers upon his arrival.

Mass grave at Andersonville

Prisoners lay one of their fellow inmates in one of the

mass graves outside the stockade. This was a daily duty

for the men held at Andersonville.

“The sight is worse than any

sight of battlefields or any

collections of the wounded,

even the bloodiest.”

WALT WHITMAN, ON RELEASED UNION PRISONERS OF WAR, SPECIMEN DAYS, 1882

In 1865, the Confederacy changed its policy

on captured black soldiers and prisoner

exchanges were resumed, but these never

reached their earlier rates.

GOING HOME

After the war ended—sometimes months

after—Confederate prisoners in northern

camps took a loyalty oath and were given

train passes to go back home.

LEGACY OF BITTERNESS

Images of emaciated

Andersonville survivors,

published in the North

after the war, helped

exacerbate sectional

hostility during

Reconstruction

338–39 ❯❯. Health

issues dogged some of

the survivors for the rest

of their lives.

CRIMINAL OR SCAPEGOAT

Henry Wirz, commander at Andersonville,

was tried by a U.S. military court and convicted

of “impairing the health and destroying

the lives of prisoners.” He was hanged in

November 1865, the only prison official on

either side to be executed for war crimes.

AFTER

HENRY WIRZ