Andersonville

Torture, screams, no food: These are the conditions of prisons during the Civil War. The lack of attention to prisoners led to many gruesome things such as eating live animals. The two most infamous prisons were Andersonville in the South and Elmira in the North. Both had terrible conditions that were largely caused by the psychology of the War: If the other side doesn’t have men they can’t fight and likewise with weak men. Both prisons were alike in that men died, but each is infamous in their own way of how the men died.

Since the Confederacy was collapsing, the South had little food and medical supplies. It was suffering greatly and to stop this an exchange system for prisoners of equal rank went on for one and a half years. Also, men were paroled and released after signing a paper stating that would not bear arms until officially exchanged. Later the exchange system was stopped because the North realized that it was benefiting the Confederacy. After all, the North could afford to lose men as prisoners but the South couldn’t afford to replace troops. The Union then could stop the South’s ability to carry on the War. As a result of this, the number and size of prisons increased. Crowding, inadequat

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

Bucking and gagging was another punishment. It was built of a roughly hewn pine log stockade. One case was too much arsenic, which can be poisonous. In August, 1864 a miracle happened. The Union officially said that these problems resulted from “lack of appetite because of homesickness” and “slightly inferior quality of food owing to the severe drought of the year”. The corpses were placed in trenches shoulder to shoulder. Others simply prayed for help from God. It was too small to serve both purposes for so many men that it became the main cause of illness. In the letter it is stated that Elmira had a number of barracks which could be used as a prison camp for recent Confederate prisoners. It was a Confederate camp in Georgia from 1864 on. Many froze to death, especially in the tents. The sick were mostly put in tents, but a few of the worst cases were put in barracks. The hot temperature and the drought made many prisoners want to buy food, but vendors were not allowed to sell as order of Hoffman. Colt was put in as Governor of the camp. By August, all the tents had been used up and more were sent in, though not enough.

Approximate Word count = 2360
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.