Confederate Athens (review)

80CIVIL WAR HISTORY scanty resources of the Confederacy in 1864 and 1865 had far more to do with the tragic loss of life than administrative mismanagement. Buüt to hold no more than ten thousand prisoners on its twenty-six acres, the prison actually held more than three times that number. Since it was located in a remote rural community of less than twenty inhabitants, the prison had to be built and maintained by impressed labor. Though surrounded by forests, in the absence of construction tools the prison had no barracks, a circumstance which compeUed the prisoners to protect themselves from the elements through makeshift lean-tos and huts. A single shallow stream, paradoxicaUy named "Sweet Water Creek," was the sole source of drinking water as weU as the oudet for the camp's raw sewage. Without the means for effective policing or security, without an adequate hospital or sanitation system, with no facilities for recreation and exercise, without such a simple though basic necessity as soap, with incredible dirt and filth and stench from untreated and undisposed human excrement, with too little clothing and blankets available for the prisoners, with far too meager and uncertain food supplies, and with iU-trained and poorly disciplined guards (most of whom were reservists—old men or immature youths ranging in age from ten to seventy-five), it was litde wonder that thousands died from a host of causes ranging from murder and starvation to diarrhea, dysentery, scurvy, typhoid fever, malaria, and "hospital gangrene." UnwiUing to accept as valid the argument that the suffering and deaths of the thousands at AndersonviUe ought to be attributed to the stubborn unwiUingness of the North to exchange prisoners, the author concludes that "the breakdown of exchange in no way relieved the South of its obligation under the recognized rules of war to care properly for its prisoners. When a nation at war is no longer able to wage war, it is duty-bound to give up the struggle—as Robert E. Lee pointed out when urged to fight on with guerriUa tacts in April, 1865. If the Confederacy could no longer provide for its prisoners and was unwüling to surrender, it should have released them on parole—as both John Winder and HoweU Cobb belatedly proposed ." Though the History of AndersonviUe is not without its flaws, chief among them being its inattention to the scholarship of the past decade in the field of Civü War military prisons, it does constitute a significant contribution to Civü War history and deserves inclusion in libraries both professional and personal. Pun i.ip R. Shrtver Miami University Confederate Athens. By Kenneth Coleman. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1968. Pp. ix, 214. $6.00.) There are too few scholarly studies of southern cities during the CivU War, and Confederate Athens by Kenneth Coleman is a welcome addition to the historiography of the period. The author does not claim that this Georgia coUege town was typical, but the reader wiU conclude that it was more luce than unlike other Confederate communities. It was atypical, but not singularly so, in its isolation from invasion throughout the conflict, its less serious supply problems until late in the war, and its intellectual atmosphere created by several superior educational institutions. The author touches upon aU aspects of life in Athens, beginning with the residents ' varied reactions to the election of 1860, secession, outbreak of hostilities and mobüization, and continuing through the town's occupation by Federal troops in May, 1865. Wartime life in Athens was similar to that in other relatively safe areas, and local government functioned much as usual, modified somewhat by Georgia and Confederate laws. Despite their isolation, Athenians experienced many of the psychological effects of the war, including periodic insecurity, fear of what might occur, concern for and loss of loved ones at the front, and the inevitable suspicions, jealousies and rumors. The city had its problems with the poor, many of them fam- üies of servicemen, and it organized to alleviate the suffering of the indigent and BOOK REVIEWS81 to support the soldiers. Although the war had a leveling effect on the citizenry, the privüeged few were recipients of...