Elmira: Death Camp of the North (review)

Known to the men incarcerated there as "Helmira," the prisoner of war camp at Elmira, New York, deservedly has been recognized as the worst military prison in the North. This first full study of the camp's history presents a thorough account of the prison from the arrival of the first Confederate prisoners on July 6, 1864, until the departure of the last men on July 11, 1865.

Elmira was a prosperous community in western New York that featured railroad and canal connections to other points in the country. The prisoner of war camp was placed on the site of the town's fairgrounds, which had been a Union army training camp in 1861. The Elmira Military Depot had seen more than twenty infantry regiments and at least ten cavalry and artillery companies mustered and drilled there during the first year of the Civil War. Authorities in Washington, D.C., selected the town as the location for a prison in May 1864. Lt. Col. Seth Eastman, a West Point graduate, became the camp's first commandant. In September 1864 Col. Benjamin F. Tracy replaced Eastman and held command until the prison was closed.

Although the Union commissary general of prisoners estimated that the camp would hold 8,000 to 10,000 men, the actual capacity was closer to 5,000 men. From the first, medical personnel reported that proper facilities were lacking and that a stagnant pond inside the prison walls presented the potential for serious sanitation problems. Union authorities refused to recognize or try to correct these limitations. Mess facilities were also inadequate and unsanitary. Even when higher authorities received belated reports on problems like these at the camp, they did not act promptly or at all to make changes. There was no reason for the shortage of foodstuffs because the area around Elmira produced an abundance of crops. Rations were reduced, prisoners were forbidden to purchase food from sutlers, and food sent by families in the South could only be delivered to sick men. To make matters worse, Eastman and Tracy made no attempts to obtain fruit to prevent scurvy from spreading through the prison.

Exchanges of prisoners of war resumed in February 1865, freeing more than 3,000 Confederates over the next two months, but leaving 5,000 men in the camp. The surrender of Confederate armies in April and May 1865 brought the war to an end, and Union officials began closing down the prison. During its existence, Elmira had held 12,122 prisoners, including civilians. The death toll amounted to 2,950 men, a death rate of 24.3 percent—the highest of any prison camp in the North. Horigan concludes, "Elmira . . . was irrefutably the worst camp in the North. One can argue that record is, in a sense, even worse than Andersonville's" (193). The author clearly shows that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton deliberately allowed Elmira to become a death camp as a means of retaliating against Confederates for perceived mistreatment of Union prisoners in the South. Horigan also shows that Hoffman was closely involved in this policy of retaliation and states "there is no documented objection to this idea from President Abraham Lincoln" (86).

Horigan did thorough research for this book and has presented his material in a style that readers will not only enjoy but find easy to follow. He might have done more to cover the civilians, including free blacks and slaves, held at Elmira to make it a more complete story, but that is a minor criticism. This book deserves attention from all professional and avocational Civil War historians.