Between 1861 and 1865, American Civil War prison camps were operated by the Union and the Confederacy to detain over 400,000 captured soldiers. From the start of the Civil War through to 1863 a parole exchange system saw most prisoners of war swapped relatively quickly. However, from 1863 this broke down following the Confederacy's refusal to treat black and white Union prisoners equally, leading to soaring numbers held on both sides.
Records indicate the capture of 211,411Unionsoldiers, with 16,668paroledand30,218diedin captivity;of Confederate soldiers, 462,684 were captured, 247,769 paroledand25,976died in captivity. Just over 12% of the captives in Northern prisons died, compared to 15.5% for Southern prisons.[1]
Lorien Foote has noted, "the suffering of prisoners did more to inhibit postwar reconciliation than any other episode of the war."[2]
Parole
Lacking means for dealing with large numbers of captured troops early in the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate governments both relied on the traditional European system of parole and exchange of prisoners. A prisoner who was on parole promised not to fight again until his name was "exchanged" for a similar man on the other side. Then both of them could rejoin their units. While awaiting exchange, prisoners were briefly confined to permanent camps. The exchange system broke down in mid-1863 when the Confederacy refused to treat captured black prisoners as equal to white prisoners. The prison populations on both sides then soared. There were 32 major Confederate prisons, 16 of them in the Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.[3] Training camps were often turned into prisons, and new prisons also had to be made. The North had a much larger population than the South, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was well aware that keeping its soldiers in Northern prisons hurt the Southern economy and war effort.
Returned prisoners of war exchanging their rags for new clothing, drawn by William Waud
At the outbreak of the war, the federal government avoided any action, including prisoner exchanges, that might be viewed as official recognition of the Confederate government in Richmond. Public opinion forced a change after the First Battle of Bull Run, when the Confederates captured over one thousand Union soldiers.[4]
Union and Confederate forces exchanged prisoners sporadically, often as an act of humanity between opposing commanders. Support for prisoner exchanges grew throughout the initial months of the war, as the North saw increasing numbers of its soldiers captured. Petitions from prisoners in the South and editorials in Northern newspapers brought pressure on the Lincoln administration.[4] On December 11, 1861, the US Congress passed a joint resolution calling on President Lincoln to "inaugurate systematic measures for the exchange of prisoners in the present rebellion".[5] In two meetings on February 23 and March 1, 1862, Union Major Gen. John E. Wool and Confederate Brig. Gen. Howell Cobb met to reach an agreement on prisoner exchanges. They discussed many of the provisions later adopted in the Dix-Hill agreement. However, differences over which side would cover expenses for prisoner transportation stymied the negotiations.
Dix-Hill Cartel of 1862
Prison camps were largely empty in mid-1862, thanks to the informal exchanges. Both sides agreed to formalize the system. Negotiations resumed in July 1862, when Union Maj. Gen. John A. Dix and Confederate Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill were assigned the task. The agreement established a scale of equivalents for the exchange of military officers and enlisted men. Thus a navy captain or an army colonel was worth fifteen privates or ordinary seamen, while personnel of equal ranks were exchanged man for man. Each government appointed an agent to handle the exchange and parole of prisoners. The agreement also allowed the exchange of non-combatants, such as citizens accused of "disloyalty", and civilian employees of the military, and allowed the informal exchange or parole of captives between the commanders of the opposing forces.
Authorities were to parole any prisoners not formally exchanged within ten days following their capture. The terms of the cartel prohibited paroled prisoners from returning to the military in any capacity including "the performance of field, garrison, police, or guard, or constabulary duty".[6]
End of exchanges
The exchange system collapsed in 1863 because the Confederacy refused to treat Black prisoners the same as Whites. They said they were probably ex-slaves and belonged to their masters, not to the Union Army.[7] The South needed the exchanges much more than the North did, because of the severe manpower shortage in the Confederacy. In 1864 Ulysses Grant, noting the "prisoner gap" (Union camps held far more prisoners than Confederate camps), decided that the growing prisoner gap gave him a decided military advantage. He therefore opposed wholesale exchanges until the end was in sight. Around 5,600 Confederates were allowed to join the Union Army. Known as "galvanized Yankees" these troops were stationed in the West facing Native Americans.[8]
Prisoner exchanges resumed early in 1865, just before the war's end, with the Confederates sending 17,000 prisoners North while receiving 24,000 men.[9] On April 23, after the war ended, the riverboat Sultana was taking 1900 ex-prisoners North on the Mississippi River when it exploded, killing about 1500 of them.
Death rates
The overall mortality rates in prisons on both sides were similar, and quite high. Many Southern prisons were located in regions with high disease rates, and were routinely short of medicine, doctors, food and ice. Northerners often believed their men were being deliberately weakened and killed in Confederate prisons, and demanded that conditions in Northern prisons be equally harsh, even though shortages were not a problem in the North.[10]
About 56,000 soldiers died in prisons during the war, accounting for almost 10% of all Civil War fatalities.[11] During a period of 14 months in Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia, 13,000 (28%) of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined there died.[12] At Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, 10% of its Confederate prisoners died during one cold winter month; and Elmira Prison in New York state, with a death rate of 25%, very nearly equaled that of Andersonville.[13]
Established in May 1861 and closed in 1865. The camp's original capacity was for 4,000 men, but at times more than 7,000 prisoners were accommodated. The capacity was increased to 7,000, but towards the end of the war up to 10,000 men were crammed into the facility.[14]
The memorial to the Confederate dead at Camp Chase, dedicated in 1909
Camp Douglas, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville", was the largest Union POW Camp. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862 and is noteworthy due to its poor living conditions and a death rate of roughly 15%. Of the 26,060 interned over the four years, roughly 4,000 died from starvation, execution, or exposure.[15]
Originally established as Camp Rathbun, a training base, the site was converted to a prisoner of war camp in 1864 with a capacity for approximately 12,000 prisoners. Before its closure in 1865, 2,963 prisoners died there from various causes.[16]
13,000 of the 45,000 Union soldiers imprisoned here died, making Andersonville the deadliest prison in the Civil War. The site is now the National POW Museum.
To relieve some of the conditions at Andersonville, a larger prison was constructed in the summer of 1864 near the Lawton Depot in the town of Millen, Georgia. Around 10,000 prisoners were moved to Camp Lawton between October and late November 1864. It is currently a state park, Magnolia Springs.
The Confederate prison at Danville, Va., was not one prison camp but six tobacco warehouses in which captured Union soldiers were confined during 1863–1865. Only Prison Number 6 remains on site at 300 Lynn Street
↑ The position is denied in James Gillispie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (2012); he says there was no conspiracy to maltreat Confederate prisoners. However, he compares the death rates in Northern camps with the death rates of Confederate soldiers in a Confederate hospital that faced severe shortages; he did not compare with a Union hospital for Union soldiers.
↑ "Camp Ford". The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
Bibliography
General
Burnham, Philip. So Far from Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons (2003)
Butts, Michele Tucker. Galvanized Yankees on the Upper Missouri: The Face of Loyalty (2003); Confederate POWs who joined the US Army
Current, Richard N. et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (1993); reprinted in The Confederacy: Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia (1998), articles on "Prisoners of War" and "Prisons"
Gillispie, James M. Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (2012) excerpt and text search
Gray, Michael P., ed. Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered (2018) online review
Hesseltine, William B. (1930). Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology. Ohio State University Press.
Hesseltine, William B. (1935). "The Propaganda Literature of Confederate Prisons," Journal of Southern History 1#1 pp.56–66 in JSTOR
Joslyn, Mauriel P. (1996). Captives Immortal: The Story of Six Hundred Confederate Officers and the United States Prisoner of War Policy. White Mane Publishing.
Kellogg, Robert H. (1865). Life and Death in Rebel Prisons: Giving a Complete History of the Inhumane and Barbarous Treatment of Our Brave Soldiers by Rebel Authorities, Inflicting Terrible Suffering and Frightful Mortality, Principally at Andersonville, Ga., and Florence, S.C., Describing Plans of Escape, Arrival of Prisoners, with Numerous and Varied Incidents and Anecdotes of Prison Life. Hartford, CT: L. Stebbins.
Pickenpaugh, Roger (2013). Captives in Blue: The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacyexcerpt and text search
Pickenpaugh, Roger (2009). Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union.
Robins, Glenn. "Race, Repatriation, and Galvanized Rebels: Union Prisoners and the Exchange Question in Deep South Prison Camps," Civil War History (2007) 53#2 pp.117–140 in Project MUSE.
Sanders, Charles W., Jr. (2005). While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Louisiana State University Press.
Silkenat, David (2019). Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-1-4696-4972-6.
Speer, Lonnie R. (1997). Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War.
Speer, Lonnie R. (2002). War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation Against Civil War POWs. Stackpole Books.
Stokes, Karen (2013). The Immortal 600: Surviving Civil War Charleston and Savannah. The History Press.
Specific camps
Arnold-Scriber, Theresa and Scriber, Terry G. (2012). Ship Island, Mississippi: Rosters and History of the Civil War Prison. McFarland excerpt and text search
Byrne, Frank L., "Libby Prison: A Study in Emotions," Journal of Southern History (1958) 24(4): 430–444. in JSTOR
Casstevens, Frances (2004). George W. Alexander and Castle Thunder: A Confederate Prison and Its Commandant. McFarland.
Davis, Robert Scott (2006). Ghosts and Shadows of Andersonville: Essays on the Secret Social Histories of America's Deadliest Prison. Mercer University Press.
Fetzer Jr., Dale and Bruce E. Mowdey (2002). Unlikely Allies: Fort Delaware's Prison Community in the Civil War. Stackpole Books.
Genoways, Ted and Genoways, Hugh H. (eds.) (2001). A Perfect Picture of Hell: Eyewitness Accounts by Civil War Prisoners from the 12th Iowa. University of Iowa Press.
Gray, Michael P. (2001). The Business of Captivity in the Chemung Valley: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison (2001)
Hesseltine William B., ed. (1972). Civil War Prisons. reprints among other articles:
Futch, Ovid (1962). "Prison Life at Andersonville," Civil War History 8#2 pp.121–135
McLain, Minor H. (1962) "The Military Prison at Fort Warren," Civil War History. 8#2 pp.135–151.
Robertson, James I., Jr. (1962). "The Scourge of Elmira," Civil War History. 8#2 pp.184–201.
Walker, T. R. (1962). "Rock Island Prison Barracks," Civil War History. 8#2 pp.152–163.
Hesseltine, William B. (1956). "Andersonville Revisited," The Georgia Review. 10#1 pp.92–101 in JSTOR
Horigan, Michael (2002). Elmira: Death Camp of the North. Stackpole Books.
Levy, George (1999). To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862–65. (2nd ed.) excerpt and text search.
Marvel, William (1994). Andersonville: The Last Depot. University of North Carolina Press.
McAdams, Benton (2000). Rebels at Rock Island: The Story of a Civil War Prison.
Richardson, Rufus B. "Andersonville," New Englander and Yale Review (November 1880) 39# 157 pp.729–774 online
Triebe, Richard H. (2011). Fort Fisher to Elmira: The Fateful Journey of 518 Confederate Soldiers. CreateSpace.
Waggoner, Jesse. "The Role of the Physician: Eugene Sanger and a Standard of Care at the Elmira Prison Camp," Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences (2008) 63#1 pp 1–22; Sanger reportedly boasted of killing enemy soldiers.
Wheelan, Joseph (2010). Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison. New York: Public Affairs.
Historiography
Chesson, Michael B. (1996). "Prison Camps and Prisoners of War," in Steven E. Woodworth, ed., The American Civil War. pp.466–78; review of published studies.
Cloyd, Benjamin G. (2010). Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory. (Louisiana State University Press. Traces shifts in Americans' views of the brutal treatment of soldiers in both Confederate and Union prisons, from raw memories in the decades after the war to a position that deflected responsibility. excerpt and text search
Robins, Glenn. "Andersonville in History and Memory," Georgia Historical Quarterly (2011) 95#3, pp.408–422; review of Cloyd (2010)
Fiction
Kantor, MacKinlay (1956). Andersonville. A novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
Primary sources
reports from Harper's Weekly 1863–64; illustrated
Civil War Research Database search for individual soldiers
Chandler's 1864 Confederate report; the single most important original document. From Official Records series. ii. vol. vii. pp.546–551
Extracts from the Minutes of Proceedings of the Standing Committee of the United States Sanitary Commission...1864 , with hair-raising details
Appendix to the Report of the Sanitary Commission (1864) much more detail
Trial of Captain Henry Wirz with documents
Ransom, John. Andersonville] (original edition 1881; reprinted as Andersonville Diary); first person account that greatly exaggerated conditions; historians consider it untrustworthy as a primary source.
Robert H. Kellogg, Life and Death in Rebel Prisons (1866) ch 1
prison letters from Massachusetts men who died in prison
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
The postage stamps and postal system of the Confederate States of America carried the mail of the Confederacy for a brief period in U.S. history. Early in 1861 when South Carolina no longer considered itself part of the Union and demanded that the U.S. Army abandon Fort Sumter, plans for a Confederate postal system were already underway. Indeed, the Confederate Post Office was established on February 21, 1861; and it was not until April 12 that the American Civil War officially began, when the Confederate Army fired upon U.S. soldiers who had refused to abandon the fort. However, the United States Post Office Department continued to handle the mail of the seceded states as usual during the first weeks of the war. It was not until June 1 that the Confederate Post Office took over collection and delivery, now faced with the task of providing postage stamps and mail services for its citizens.
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Henry Wirz was a Swiss-born American military officer and convicted war criminal who served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
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Cahaba Prison, also known as Castle Morgan, held prisoners of war in Dallas County, Alabama where the Confederacy held captive Union soldiers during the American Civil War. The prison was located in the small Alabama town of Cahaba, at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers, not far from Selma. It suffered a serious flood in 1865. At the time, Cahaba was still the county seat, but that was moved to Selma in 1866. Cahaba Prison was known for having one of the lowest death rates of any Civil War prison camp mainly because of the humane treatment from the Confederate commandant.
Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville," was one of the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camps for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. Based south of the city on the prairie, it was also used as a training and detention camp for Union soldiers. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862. Later in 1862 the Union Army again used Camp Douglas as a training camp. In the fall of 1862, the Union Army used the facility as a detention camp for paroled Confederate prisoners.
Andersonville is a 1996 American television film directed by John Frankenheimer about a group of Union soldiers during the American Civil War who are captured by the Confederates and sent to an infamous Confederate prison camp.
The Florence Stockade, also known as The Stockade or the Confederate States Military Prison at Florence, was a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp located on the outskirts of Florence, South Carolina, during the American Civil War. It operated from September 1864 through February 1865; during this time, as many as 18,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned there, about 2,800 of whom died.
Camp Chase was a military staging and training camp established in Columbus, Ohio in May 1861 after the start of the American Civil War. It also included a large Union-operated prison camp for Confederate prisoners during the American Civil War.
Andersonville is a novel by MacKinlay Kantor concerning the Confederate prisoner of war camp Andersonville prison during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The novel was originally published in 1955, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.
Florena Budwin was a Union Army soldier from Philadelphia who, disguised as a man, enlisted with her husband, an artillery captain, in the Civil War in order to stay with him. After being captured, she died of complications of pneumonia. She was buried in Florence National Cemetery, the first woman soldier to be afforded that honor.
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Galvanized Yankees was a term from the American Civil War denoting former Confederate prisoners of war who swore allegiance to the United States and joined the Union Army. Approximately 5,600 former Confederate soldiers enlisted in the United States Volunteers, organized into six regiments of infantry between January 1864 and November 1866. Of those, more than 250 had begun their service as Union soldiers, were captured in battle, then enlisted in prison to join a regiment of the Confederate States Army. They surrendered to Union forces in December 1864 and were held by the United States as deserters, but were saved from prosecution by being enlisted in the 5th and 6th U.S. Volunteers. An additional 800 former Confederates served in volunteer regiments raised by the states, forming ten companies. Four of those companies saw combat in the Western Theater against the Confederate Army, two served on the western frontier, and one became an independent company of U.S. Volunteers, serving in Minnesota.
Camp Morton was a military training ground and a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Indianapolis, Indiana, during the American Civil War. It was named for Indiana governor Oliver Morton. Prior to the war, the site served as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. During the war, Camp Morton was initially used as a military training ground. The first Union troops arrived at the camp in April 1861. After the fall of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh, the site was converted into a prisoner-of-war camp. The first Confederate prisoners arrived at Camp Morton on February 22, 1862; its last prisoners were paroled on June 12, 1865. At the conclusion of the war, the property resumed its role as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. In 1891 the property was sold and developed into a residential neighborhood known as Morton Place, a part of the Herron-Morton Place Historic District.
The Dix–Hill Cartel was the first official system for exchanging prisoners during the American Civil War. It was signed by Union Major General John A. Dix and Confederate Major General D. H. Hill at Haxall's Landing on the James River in Virginia on July 22, 1862.
The Immortal Six Hundred were 600 Confederate officers who were held prisoner by the Union Army in 1864–65. In the summer of 1863, the Confederacy passed a resolution stating all captured African-American soldiers and the officers of colored troops would not be returned. The resolution also allowed for any captured officer of colored troops to be executed and any captured African-American soldier be sold into slavery. The resolution caused a breakdown in the exchange of captured soldiers as the Union demanded all soldiers be treated equally. The Immortal Six Hundred were one group of officers who could not be exchanged.
John Henry Winder was a career United States Army officer who served with distinction during the Mexican–American War. He later served as a Confederate general officer during the American Civil War.
Joseph H. Tucker was a banker, businessman and Illinois militia colonel during the first two years of the American Civil War. He was given initial responsibility for building Camp Douglas at Chicago, Illinois, and was the first commander of the camp. Originally a training camp for Union Army recruits, in 1862 and 1863 Camp Douglas was converted into a prison camp for Confederate States Army prisoners captured by the Union Army. Tucker was commander of the camp from the start of its construction in October 1861 until September 28, 1862, except between February 26, 1862, and June 19, 1862. During this time, the camp was used as a training facility and had its initial use as a prisoner of war camp. Tucker was never mustered into the Union Army, remaining a colonel in the Illinois militia during the term of his service in the Civil War.
A parole camp was a place during the American Civil War in which Union or Confederate soldiers on parole could be kept by their own side, in a non-combat role. They could be restored to a combat role if some prisoners of war were traded to the other side. That would enable them to be returned to a combat role as an exchange for the newly-freed prisoners of war. Conditions in the camps were unpleasant; the parolees refused to do guard duty or routine work and claimed that would violate their parole. Many escaped to go home.
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