|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
"Prison Door" .wav sound file  |
For any soldier having the accursed misfortune
of being caught and imprisoned rather than killed by the enemy was facing a
fate often much worse than any mini ball could ever inflict. In prisons like
Georgia's
Andersonville,
, you slowly wither away in the agonie
of starvation. With much of peoples attention focused on Andersonville (as I
am about to do), it was by no means the only Civil War era hell on earth
called a prison. There were others, both in the
North, and in the south.
It wasn't
uncommon that in any given 24 hour period, at the height of the Civil War
and prison overpopulation, 100 souls would parish. Some dying from starvation,
gangrene, deseases and at the hands of others, but most of all, men died from
diarea. Once a man found himself with a case of "the runs" his fate was
pretty much sealed.
A teenage cavalryman named Micheal Dougherty was able to keep a journal for
15 months while imprisoned at Andersonville. Most of the others who came
inside with a writing utencil and paper gave up on keeping a diary/journal
after the first couple of weeks.
On May 8th, 1864, Micheal Dougherty wrote:
A few days later he entered this into his jurnal:
As the prison population skyrocketed to somewhere above 30,000 men, the
daily rations were reduced to a mear teaspoon of salt, three tablespoons of
beans and half a pint of unsifted cornmeal.
Running down the center of the stockade was a filthy creek which was the
only source of dinking water for the inmates and also served as a sewer.
Most of the prisoners lived in holes scratched into the ground. Any man
caught on or near the "Dead Line" were immediately shot(the term "Dead Line" has its origins in the prisons of our
Civil War)
In the words of seventeen year old Eliza F. Andrews about her never to be
forgotten visit to the prison camp:
Another word or phrase that comes down to us from the Civil War, one that
most if not all of us are familiar with, is
"The whole shabang." Journals, diaries and other written sources from the
period indicate that the phase was first used by a union prisoner confined
at Andersonville when showing off his home, which was nothing more than a
few sticks and some tattered cloth. Apparently when asked if that was all he
had, he said,
"this is it, the whole shabang."
Sometime after the close of the Civil War the Commandant at Andersonville Prison, Captain Wirz was tried and convicted of several capitol crimes. One of the 150 eyewitnesses who testified at Wirz trial was a young man name Billy Bates, only fifteen years old when he arrived at Andersonville. With a healthy and possitive attitude toward survival Billy Bates and his friend Dick King began plotting their course for living and escaping:
Before their plans for escape could be carried out an informer notified Wirz of the Boy's plan. To teach Billy Bates a lesson Wirz tied his thumbs together and hung the boy from a beam over the gateway in plain view of everyone in the camp. A compassionate fellow prisoner gave Billy some water from an old slop pan and was immediately shot dead by an angry Wirz, who then turned to billy and shot him twice in the left thigh and leg. Pissed off prisoners began to gather and the guards ran the commandant off to safety. The prisoners cut the boy down and took care of him the best they could. His friend Dick King shared his rations with him and nursed him back to health. Keeping his wounds wet day and night to prevent the onset of gangrene. After Billy had recovered the two boys spent eight months digging an 18x24 inch tunnel that reached past the prison wall. It was barely large enough to crawl through. On the night of March 2, 1864--thirteen months after the prison door slammed closed behind them--the two boys escaped. They traveled at night, hid durung the day and foraged for food, assisted by some ex-slaves. Three weeks later they reachd the Union lines near Bridgeport, Alabama. Billy Bates weighed sixty pounds and his friend Dick weighed sixty-four pounds hen they were received by resident Lincoln at the White House on April 28, 1864. They told him all they new about the horrors at Andersonville. When they had finished the President sprang to his feet and Exclaimed,
Another teenage prisoner was not as lucky when he tried to escape. One of his fellow prisoners, Thomas W. Way, testified at the Wirz trial:
Soon after Wirz was conviced of numerous capitol crimes his execution followed where he was hanged by the neck until dead.
| "The
dead there are not to be pitied as much as some of the living that have come
from there -- if they can be called living." Walt Whitman |
Andersonville Civil War Prison - Historical Background
Eye witness drawing [93.6K]
In November of 1863, Confederate Captain W. Sidney Winder was sent to the
village of Andersonville in Sumter County, Georgia, to assess the potential
of building a prison for captured Union soldiers. The deep south location,
the availability of fresh water, and its proximity to the Southwestern
Railroad, made Andersonville a favorable prison location. In addition,
Andersonville had a population of less than 20 persons, and was, therefore,
politically unable to resist the building of such an unpopular facility. So
Andersonville was chosen as the site for a prison that would later become
infamous in the North for the thousands of prisoners that would die there
before the war ended.
After the prison site was selected, Captain Richard B. Winder was sent to
Andersonville to construct a prison. Arriving in late December of 1863,
Captain Winder adopted a prison design that encompassed roughly 16.5 acres
which he felt was large enough to hold 10,000 prisoners. The prison was to
be rectangular in shape with a small creek flowing roughly through the center
of the compound. The prison was given the name Camp Sumter.
In January of 1864, slaves from local farms were impressed to fell trees and
dig ditches for construction of the prison stockade. The stockade enclosure
was approximately 1010 feet long and 780 feet wide. The walls of the stockade
were constructed of pine logs cut on site, hewn square, and set vertically in
a wall trench dug roughly five feet deep. According to historical accounts,
the poles were hewn to a thickness of eight to 12 inches and "matched so well
on the inner line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world"
(Hamlin 1866:48-49). A light fence known as the deadline was erected
approximately 19-25 feet inside the stockade wall to demarkate a no-man's
land keeping the prisoners away from the stockade wall. Anyone crossing this
line was immediately shot by sentries posted at intervals around the stockade
wall.
Included in the construction of the stockade were two gates positioned along
the west stockade line. The gates were described in historic accounts as
"small
stockade pens, about 30 feet square, built of massive timbers, with heavy
doors, opening into the prison on one side and the outside on the other"
(Bearss 1970:25). Each gate contained wickets (door-sized entryways).
Prisoners began arriving at the prison in late February of 1864 and by early
June the prison population had climbed to 20,000. Consequently, it was decided
that a larger prison was necessary, and by mid-June work was begun to enlarge
the prison. The prison's walls were extended 610 feet to the north,
encompassing an area of roughly 10 acres, bringing the total prison area to
26.5 acres. The extension was built by a crew of Union prisoners consisting
of 100 whites and 30 African Americans in about 14 days. On July 1, the
northern extension was opened to the prisoners who subsequently tore down
the original north stockade wall, then used the timbers for fuel and building
materials. By August, over 33,000 Union prisoners were held in the 26.5 acre
prison.
Due to the threat of Union raids (Sherman's troops were marching on Atlanta),
General Winder ordered the building of defensive earthworks and a middle and
outer stockade around the prison. Construction of the earthworks began July
20th. These earthworks consisted of Star Fort located southwest of the prison,
a redoubt located northwest of the north gate, and six redans.
The middle and outer stockades were hastily constructed of unhewn pine logs
set vertically in wall trenches that were about four feet deep. The middle
stockade posts projected roughly 12 feet above the ground surface and
encircled the inner prison stockade as well as the corner redans. The outer
stockade, which was never completed, was meant to encompass the entire complex
of earthworks and stockades. The posts of the outer stockade extended about
five feet above the ground surface.
By early September, Sherman's troops had occupied Atlanta and the threat of
Union raids on Andersonville prompted the transfer of most of the Union
prisoners to other camps in Georgia and South Carolina. By mid-November, all
but about 1500 prisoners had been shipped out of Andersonville, and only a
few guards remained to police them. Transfers to Andersonville in late
December increased the numbers of prisoners once again, but even then the
prison population totalled only about 5000 persons. The number of prisoners
at the prison would remain this low until the war ended in April of 1865.
During the 15 months during which Andersonville was operated, almost 13,000
Union prisoners died there of malnutrition, exposure, and disease;
Andersonville became synonymous with the attrocities which both North and
South soldiers experienced as prisoners of war.
After the war ended, the plot of ground near the prison where nearly 13,000
Union soldiers had been buried was administered by the United States government
as a National Cemetery. The prison reverted to private hands and was planted
n cotton and other crops until the land was acquired by the Grand Army of the
Republic of George in 1891. During their administration, stone monuments were
constructed to mark various portions of the prison including the four corners
of the inner stockade and the North and South Gates.
Further reading on American Civil War prisoner-of-war policy and conditions:
Andersonville: The Last Depot, by William Marvel, University of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1994.
Captives Immortal: The Story of Six Hundred Confederate Officers and the
United States Prisoner of War Policy, by Mauriel Phillips Joslyn, White Mane
Publishing Co., Inc., Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, 1996. [View image of
prisoners burying dead comrad at Fort Pulaski, 1864-1865.]
