Civil War Prisons—: Introduction

CIVIL WAR PRISONSINTRODUCTION William B. Hesseltine The American Civil War left behind it a long list of controversies. For decades after Appomattox old soldiers defended their personal honor and did verbal battle in repelling asperities upon the valor of their regiments . Officers sought reversals of decisions of courts martial, begged redress from Congress, or carried their demands for vindication to the sovereign people assembled at polling places. The right of secession, the military competence of George B. McClellan and Braxton Bragg, the behavior of Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, at Bermuda Hundred and Wilmington, Dahlgren's Raid and Fort Pillow, the personal judgment and the administrative wisdom ofJefferson Davis, all received full airing and enlisted bitter partisans and valiant foemen. Even after a century, some of the ancient controversies stir emotions and provoke debate. Yet no controversy ever evoked such emotions as themutual recriminations between Northern and Southern partisans over the treatment of prisoners of war. Hardly had the war begun when the first prisoners alleged that their captors mistreated them. Throughout the war the complaints , the charges and counter-charges, and the assertions of criminal intent fed the raging fires of propaganda. To the end of their lives exprisoners wrote books or letters-to-the-editor, told their stories to country -store gatherings, appeared before congressional committees, or addressed conventions of veterans to recount their adversities and to point accusing fingers at their cruel and conspiratorial enemy. Eventually quick-change journalists reprinted the alleged reminiscences of prisoners ; novelists of varying repute found gory and pornographic material in the prisons; and neophyte historians wrote extended term-papers, dripping with footnotes, to support one or another contender in the undying quarrel. The serious student who would assay the evidence on the administration of prisons and the treatment of prisoners of war faces serious critical William B. Hesseltine, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin , is one of the most respected scholars in the Civil War field. Among his many volumes on Lincoln and the era of the 1860's is Civil War Prisons, published in 1930. Civil War History is deeply proud to have him as guest editor for this special issue. 117 118WILLIAMB. HESSELTINE problems. The facts are not always clear, and even the figures do not always mean whatthey seem toprove. That soldiers unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the enemy suffered and died admits of no doubt. The records are inadequate, but the estimates which Adjutant General F. C. Ainsworth gave to James Ford Rhodes in 1903 seem reasonable. General Ainsworth counted 193,743 Northerners and 214,865 Southerners captured and confined. Over 30,000 Union and nearly 26,000 Confederate prisoners died in captivity. Rhodes concluded that over 12 per cent of the captives died in Northern prisons and 15.5 per cent died in the South. In Rhodes' opinion, the superior hospitals, physicians, medicines, and foods of the North should have produced a greater disparity in favor of the Union. Rhodes' mention of hospitals caused Professor Edward Channing to comment that the proportion of deaths in Confederate prison camps was "not far from that of the soldiers in the Union army from disease." He added the suggestion that the prisoners in Andersonville probably had contracted hookworm. The suggestion could open other speculations. Were the number of wounded prisoners known, or the number of soldiers suffering from camp diseases and battle fatigue at the time of their capture, the picture of suffering and death in prisons might become clearer. Certain it is that the prisoners sent to Andersonville were weak and disease-ridden as a result of their long confinement on Belle Isle in the James River, and that many were sick when they were captured. Most of the deaths in Andersonville came in the months after the serious overcrowding had been relieved by sending all prisoners fit to travel to other prisons. In fact, the prison was, for most of its existence, a vast, poorly organized, and inadequate hospital. A second factor of which any critical reader needs to be aware is related to the truism that no prisoner loves his jailer. Rarely, indeed, and then only briefly and under special...