Bodkins 1

The Unavoidable Atrocity of Civil War Prison Camps

The American Civil War not only saw massive amounts of death but also saw the rise of
huge prisoner of war camps. Both the Union and Confederate sides in the war had prison camps
and on both sides there existed conditions that would resemble the gigantic concentration camps
in Germany during the Second World War. One unfortunate and terrible aspect during the Civil
War is the treatment of prisoners in prison camps and while there were similarities between the
Union and Confederate sides, the worst conditions in Confederate prison camps were
unavoidable due to inexperience in running camps, interference from the Union, and the
dysfunctional Confederate government.
Andersonville is the most famous of the Civil War prisoner camps. Andersonville that
was located in Sumner county Georgia, which is located in the South of Georgia. Andersonville
was little more than an open field. Alfred H. Voorhees a Cavalry man from described the camp as
Hell on Earth and described how the heat was often too hot to bear in the very hot Georgian
camp. 1 Mr. Voorhees mentions the heat often in his diary, the heat and humidity in the south was
a deadly experience to Union soldiers not acclimated to the climate. Andersonville was also
terrible in the winter since there was not much shelter. He described his first night as, We slept
on felled trees and on the ground around our fires as we were cramped and tired out. Many kept
talking all night to our newfound companions in misery.2 There was not even enough shelter for
them to sleep inside on their first night in the camp. Shelter at Andersonville were minimal, and

1 Alfred H. Voorhees, The Andersonville Prison Diary

(http://localhistory.morrisville.edu/sites/letters/diary.html) par. 18.

2 Robert Knox, Sneden, Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey (New York: The Free Press,
2000), pg. 204

Bodkins 2
the shelter that was there was in poor condition. Voorhees would eventually die at Andersonville
from disease but he would just be one of many. Throughout the years Andersonville became
increasingly and naturally central in the public perception of Civil War prisons for several
reasons. Its casualties represented nearly one-fourth of all the prisoners who died in the Civil
War, and its 29-percent mortality rate made it the deadliest prison on a comparative basis as
well.3 Andersonville was a death machine. Andersonville was clearly an unlivable place and is
just one of the many Confederate prison camps in poor condition.
Andersonville was the model for poorly run Confederate prisoner of war camps. Ed Glennan
wrote, Yes, Everytime I receive a twinge of Pain & think to myself where did thats Come
From, the answer is Andersonville. Everytime I Have to Sit down from Weakness while walking
for Exercise & I wonder to my self what makes me So weak & again I Answer Andersonville.4
Glennan captures what made all of the Civil War prisoner of war camps so bad they were not just
in bad condition and caused people injury and death, but they also haunted those who survived
them. Andersonville is the prime example of how far the Confederacy could fail with regards to
prisoner of war camps.
Camp Lawton is another prison camp in Georgia, near Millen, which is further north than
Andersonville was. The conditions in Camp Lawton were very similar to those in Andersonville
even though Camp Lawton is not as well-known as Andersonville is today. The two biggest
problems at Camp Lawton were lack of food rations, and poor shelter. Corporal Thomas Aldrich
said that he would have too stew old beef bones to try and scrape and chew out any value that he
3 Benjamin Cloyd, Haunted By Atrocity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010),
pg. 164.

4 Ed Glennan, Surviving Andersonville: One Prisoners Recollections of the Civil Wars Most
Notorious Camp (Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), pg. 84.

Bodkins 3
could get out of them.5 He did this because he had just been transferred from Andersonville. The
fact that Andersonville and Camp Lawton were so close meant that prisoners would often be
transferred from Andersonville to Camp Lawton, and while Lawton seemed to be an
improvement over the bad conditions in Andersonville Lawton also had its challenges. The
initial improvement in both quantity and quality of ration at Camp Lawton did not last, though.
By 15 October, only three days after his arrival, Dennison was reporting a diminution in the
rations: We get small rations now. Aldrich remembered: The rations got very thin here, and I
suffered from hunger more than I ever had before. In fact, thought I should starve.6 These two
quotes show that the ration conditions in even the smaller known camps were still terrible. It was
not just the food rationing that was bad in Camp Lawton but also like Andersonville there was
not adequate shelter for the men. The huts were built in all manner of shapes, some had walls of
logs, with a covering of timber, and over these a good layer of sand. Some had walls of turf,
again other were cut into the ground perhaps two tee and then covered, sometimes with pine
slabs, sometimes with sand, and some were simply thatched with pine boughs, while other were
bare sheds. 7 This slightly long quote by an army Chaplain is important because while it shows
that there was more and possibly better shelter at Camp Lawton than existed at Andersonville the
5 John K. Derden, The Worlds Largest Prison: The Story of Camp Lawton (Macon Georgia:
Mercer University Press, 2012), pg. 76.

6 John K. Derden, The Worlds Largest Prison: The Story of Camp Lawton (Macon Georgia:
Mercer University Press, 2012), pg. 77.

7 John K. Derden, The Worlds Largest Prison: The Story of Camp Lawton (Macon Georgia:
Mercer University Press, 2012), pg. 57.

Bodkins 4
conditions were still not good enough to seem like they were livable. Camp Lawton is perhaps
the most important prison camp to study because it is not one of the most famous camps like
Andersonville or Camp Libby. Camp Lawton shows that even in the lesser known camps terrible
things were still happening. Camp Lawton helps to show that problems existed throughout all of
the Confederate prisoner of war camps.
The next famous camp was Camp Libby in the very heart of the Confederacy Richmond
Virginia. Libby was a camp that faced overcrowding and short supplies. Nothing but bread has,
as yet, been issued to us, half a loaf twice a day, per man. This must be washed down with James
River water, drawn from a hydrant over the wash-through. To-morrow, we are to be indulged
with the luxury of bacon-soup.8 This one quote by Lieutenant Colonel F. F. Cavada if taken out
of context would make it seem like prison camps were bad, but to show how bad prison camps,
in this case Libby to continue he writes later on, We have tasted the promised soup: it is boiled
water sprinkled with rice, and seasoned with the rank juices of stale bacon; we must shut our
eyes to eat it; the bacon, I have no doubt, might have walked into the pot of its own accord. It is
brought up to us in wooden buckets, and we eat it, in most cases without spoons, out of tincups.9 Seeing the rest of his quote puts into perspective how life must have been for these men.
Not only were they being underfed, they are also not receiving the basic vitamins and minerals
they need to function, and they are also eating bad tasting and spoiled food. Also an important
thing to note is that Libby started out being reserved for only Union officers so is poor treatment

8 F.F. Cavada, Libby Life: Experiences of A Prisoner Of War In Richmond, V.A. 1863-64,
(Lanham Maryland, 1985), pg. 27.

9 F.F. Cavada, Libby Life: Experiences of A Prisoner Of War In Richmond, V.A. 1863-64,
(Lanham Maryland, 1985), pg. 27.

Bodkins 5
was done to those men who seem to always be treated with more respect than normal soldiers, so
this should show just how bad conditions were.
The bad conditions in prison camps were not just limited to Virginia or Georgia, but they
also existed far from the heart of the Confederacy in Texas in places like Camp Ford. Camp Ford
faced the similar problems that seemed to plague all of the other Confederate prison camps
overcrowding, underfeeding, sickness, and poor shelter. The conditions were so bad that, Many
have been without a change of underclothing upward of half a year, complained one group of
prisoners, and a large part are without shoes, numbers are naked from the waist, and some have
nothing but their ragged blankets girt about them in place of trousers.10 This description again
sounds like WWII concentration camps. These men were living in filth and there was nothing
that they could do about it. Camp Ford like many other camps was also overcrowded due to more
soldiers being sent to the camp even though it had already reached its capacity.4 There were
unique problems at Camp Ford though, because not only did the prisoners have to deal with
diseases like scurvy due to the lack of variety in food they had, but also, It wasnt at all unusual
for the POWs confined there to be confronted with rattlesnakes and copperheads as well as
scorpion and tarantulas.11 This is a very big problem with having a prison camp in Texas because
a prisoner of war from a state like New York would of course have no idea whether or not a
copperhead or rattlesnake was venomous or not. Prisoners of war from the Union would also
have never had to deal with scorpions or giant tarantulas. Camp Ford shows that the prison camp

10 Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Mechanicsburg
Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1997), pg. 215.

11 Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Mechanicsburg
Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1997), pg. 216.

Bodkins 6
problem was not just a problem with prison camps in particular states but rather a wide spread
problem throughout the entirety of the confederacy.
It is often frowned upon generalize an entire group. But it safe to say that prison camps in
general were all bad. Andersonville, Libby, Camp Lawton, Camp Ford, and all of the other
prison camps on the confederate side seem to be as Mr. Voorhees said, Hell on Earth. The
similarities in all of these camps must mean that there has to be bigger underlying causes of these
conditions since the conditions are not just in one or two camps. These obstacles do not take
blame away from the confederacy for the conditions in these camps. These obstacles simply
show what the Confederacy was up against when trying to establish and run these camps and
how impossible it was to overcome all of these problems all at once.
So now knowing that the conditions in these camps were indeed awful in these camps has been
established, but the question is whether or not the bad conditions were avoidable or not. The
Confederacy may have been able to handle prison camps if there had not have been for so many
factors fighting against the Confederacy, such as Union interference.
The Unions main plan for destroying the Confederacy was to destroy the Confederacys
way of life. The Union wanted to cut off any way for the Confederacy to be able to supply itself
and function as a separate nation. In fact, Lincoln never believed the Confederacy to be a
legitimate secession, According to President Abraham Lincolns interpretation, secession from
the Union was theoretically impossible, a perspective that made all Confederates traitors and
their army an insurgent force. 12 So with this Lincoln wanted a quick in to war because the
longer the war the more legitimacy the Confederates gained, it also made the Confederacy look
more powerful. This is significant because it meant that Lincoln and the Union was going to be
faster and harsher with his war tactics to end the war sooner.
12 Benjamin Cloyd, Haunted By Atrocity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010),
pg. 5.

Bodkins 7
Union interference is one of the reasons that the conditions in prison camps became unavoidable
for the Confederacy. By far the most famous interference plan to come out from the Union is
Winfield Scotts Anaconda Plan. It was the plan to surround the Confederacy with blockades and
the Union army and squeeze the life out of the south. There is a famous picture describing the
plan. The picture shows the black snake that represents the Union Army and Navy slowly
wrapping around the south. This is when the first problem for the Confederacy comes about,
which is actually getting supplies to their own men much less the Union prisoners in their prison
camps. The Anaconda Plan was a way of ending the war quickly. With the Anaconda plan the
Confederacy would be like a flame in a glass jar, it would lose oxygen and put itself out quickly.
The problem is that as the Anaconda Plan worked it meant that the Confederacy had fewer ways
of maintaining itself. This meant that by hurting the Confederacy the Union was also going to
inadvertently hurt any captive Union Soldiers. The Confederacy did try and get around the Union
blockade with blockade runner ships but they did not have the capacity that the normal ships had
since they were made for speed. 13 International trade in for the Confederacy slowed down so
much after the Union blockades started. The blockade reduced the Souths seaborne trade to
less than a third of normal After the end of this embargo in 1862 the half- million bales
shipped through the blockade during the last three years of war compared rather poorly with the
ten million exported in the last three antebellum years.14 This was a huge blow to the Southern
economy which fully depended on the sale of cotton to overseas markets. This means that the
Union was partly at fault for the terrible camp conditions.

13 James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 382

14 James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 382

Bodkins 8
Another aspect that made it hard for the Confederacy to move supplies around besides the
Unions Anaconda plan was that the Confederacy did not have as much access to railroads. The
Union Had more than twice the density of railroads per square mile as the Confederacy, and
several times the mileage of canals and macadamized roads. The South could produce enough
food to feed itself, but the transport network, adequate at the beginning of the war to distribute
this food, soon began to deteriorate because of a lack of replacement capacity.15 This means that
the problem for the Confederate prison camps were not necessarily lack of food for the prisoners,
but the Confederacy had no way of transporting the food to where it needed to go. The
Confederacy did not have the railroad network that would have been required to feed the
prisoners, and the Unions Anaconda Plan blockades meant that the Confederacy would not be
able to use its ships to try and supply itself. The Anaconda Plan not only stopped the confederacy
from being able to trade with Great Britain and France, but it also stopped the Confederacy from
being able to feed itself and its prisoners adequately.
The final aspect that made it difficult for the Confederacy to move the supplies that they needed
to feed the Confederate troops and the Union prisoners of war is the fact that the Union at a
certain point into the war started to destroy the little infrastructure that the Confederacy had.
1863 is the year in the Civil War when the Union was on track to win. The summer of 1863
brought forth major Union victories at Gettysburg and Grants victory over Vicksburg on July
forth. The Union did have several victories there was still a lot of the South still in Confederate
control, which meant that there were still prisoners in Confederate prison camps waiting to be
freed. The Union needed to march across the South finishing off the rest of the Confederacy in
the Deep South. To accomplish this the Union sent General Sherman on a campaign of total war,
which is warfare where both military and civilian establishments are targeted and destroyed.
15James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 318.

Bodkins 9
Sherman practiced this strategy in Meridian Mississippi.16 Shermans army left fire and famine
in its track, one federal participant wrote of the Meridian campaign. The country was one lurid
blaze of fire; burning cotton gins and deserted buildings were seen on every hand. I regret to say
it but oft times habitations were burned down over the heads of occupants.17 This strategy of
total war may be good for winning war but it is not a good strategy for helping prisoners of war,
because it ultimately cut the few supply routes that the Confederacy used for their soldiers and
their prisoners of war. Robert Sneden who was moved from Andersonville to Camp Lawton
wrote, The captain says he would give us more [rations] if he had them, and supplies have been
prevented from coming to the station because the Yankees have destroyed the railroad.18
Shermans campaign therefore both helped and hurt the Union. This quote also shows that the
Confederacy was not trying to make the conditions in the camps bad, but rather the camp
conditions were a product of the Civil War and how it was being waged. The Union of course did
not know that they were causing harm to their captured fellow soldiers. The soldiers
Thanksgiving Day feast there was interrupted by the arrival of several prisoners who had escaped
from Andersonville. Hollow-cheeked, emaciated, with nothing but rags on their backs, these men
wept uncontrollably at the sight of food and the American flag. This experience sickened and
16 Ben Wynne, Mississippis Civil War: A Narrative History (Macon Georgia: Mercer University
Press, 2006), pg. 151.

17 Ben Wynne, Mississippis Civil War: A Narrative History (Macon Georgia: Mercer University
Press, 2006), pg. 151.

18Robert Knox, Sneden, Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey (New York: The Free Press,
2000), pg. 204

Bodkins 10
infuriated Shermans soldiers who thought of the tens of thousands of their imprisoned
comrades, slowly perishing with hunger in the midst of barns bursting with grain and food to
feed a dozen armies19 This quote completely sums up the biggest argument as to why prison
camps were unavoidably terrible. The problem was not that the Confederacy did not have food,
or that the Confederacy out of spite was withholding food from Union prisoners of war. The
Confederacy simply did not have a good enough way to get the food that they had to the soldiers
and prisoners that needed it. This problem was made even worse by the Unions military tactics
of the Anaconda Plan and Shermans total war. This was the hardest obstacle that the
Confederacy faced and could not overcome to make prison camp conditions better. The south
had to somehow deal with the Unions interference with their limited supply lines and at the
same time fight a war, it is easy to see how this would make it hard for the Confederacy to
successfully run prisoner camps.
The next reason that the Confederate prisoner of war camp conditions were unavoidably bad is
the fact that the Confederacy had never tried to run prison camps before. In fact neither the
Union nor Confederacy had any experience with massive long term prisoner of war camps.
Before prisoners of war were exchanged for other prisoners of war, grade for grade, and man
for man.20 What would happen is that a private would be exchanged for a private and so on.
Using this system meant that prisoner of war camps would not have been as necessary as they
were in the Civil War. Prisoner of war camps would be small and the prisoners would only need
to be taken care of for the amount of time that it took to make the exchange of prisoners. This

19 James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 810.

20 William Best Hessseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1971) pg. 2.

Bodkins 11
system of prisoner exchanges work fine for all of the wars that the United States had been
engaged with previous to the Civil War, but the Civil War was larger and bloodier than any
previous American war. The Civil War began and the exchanges did take place but eventually
broke down. The war department instructed Halleck in Missouri to obtain the release of the
Texas prisoners in such a way as not to commit the United States. Halleck was unable to
understand this limitation until it was explained that he was not to recognize that there was a
Confederate government.21 Once again Lincoln and the Union did not recognize that there was a
Confederate government which just meant for more problems for the Union. Their lack of
recognition meant that people like Halleck had a harder time negotiating for the exchange. This
meant less prisoners would be leaving the prison camps but with battles continuing to be fought
more and more prisoners would be taken captive by the Confederacy. This meant that eventually
the Union and Confederacy had to create and manage long term and large scale prisoner of war
camps with no experience how to do so. This happened with the breakdown of the cartel, the
agreement to exchange prisoners, in 1863. With the collapse of the cartel in 1863, POWs again
began accumulating in the facilities at an alarming rate.22 The Confederacy had to make
makeshift which were just giant stockades like animals would be held in because the confederacy
did not know what else to do with what they had.23 Not really understanding how to run prison
camps meant that mistakes that seem obvious to some were made. Alonzo Cooper had this to say
about Andersonville, I have often heard it said, even here in the North, that our men who were
21 William Best Hessseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1971) pg. 18.

22 Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Mechanicsburg
Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1997), pg.13.

Bodkins 12
prisoners, were cared for as well as the limited means of the Confederacy would admit; but the
falsity of this is seen when you remember that Andersonville is situated in a densely wooded
country, and that much of the suffering endured was for the want of fuel with which to cook their
scanty rations, and for the want of shelter, which they would have cheerfully constructed had
been afforded them.24 While this seemed like a good idea to Cooper, a prisoner, the guards and
officials of the camp would have necessarily thought in the same way. Solutions to problems
often are obvious to everyone except for the person experiencing the problem. The fact is also
true that the Confederate soldiers did not know how the Union prisoners would react given tools
to cut down timber for fuel. The Confederacy with this additional obstacle now had to figure out
how to organize and manage massive long term prison camps, while at the same time fighting a
war, with limited supply lines that were constantly being destroyed by the Union. This again
does not take blame away from the Confederacy but it does show how seemingly impossible the
task of running efficient and well-conditioned camps would have been for the Confederate
government.
The final obstacle that the Confederacy faced was that of the dysfunctional Confederate
government. The second Continental Congress had deliberated fourteen months before
declaring American independence in 1776. To produce the United States Constitution and put the
new government into operation required nearly two years. In contrast, the Confederate States of
America organized itself, drafted a constitution, and set up shop in Montgomery, Alabama,

23 William Best Hessseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1971) pg. 18.

24 Alonzo Cooper, In And Out of Rebel Prisons (Oswego New York: R.J. Oliphant, Job Printer,
bookbinder and Stationer, 1983), pg. 4.

Bodkins 13
within three months of Lincolns election.25 It is important to note just how quickly the
Confederate government moved. However the Confederate government did take many things for
the founding fathers problems with creating the government, and the Confederate constitution is
very similar to the United States Constitution. The entirety of the Confederacy only lasted the
five years of the war. There was never any time for the Confederacy to slowly figure out how to
run itself. There are many aspects of running a new nation that take trial and error to figure out.
Within its creation the Confederacy was actively going to war with the rest of the United States.
There was never a time for slow and thought and debate like there was during the creation of the
United States Constitution. From the moment of its inception the government of the Confederate
States was destined to be dysfunctional. The Confederate government was so dysfunctional in
the beginning of the Confederacy that during early battles the Confederate armies did not have a
standard uniform and some of the uniforms they did have were so similar to the enemy uniform
that soldiers did not know who exactly the enemy was.26 This ties in with the second point in the
fact that because the government was dysfunctional there was never any point were the
government could have taken the time to figure out how to run the prisoner of war camps,
because the government was too busy trying to figure its self out. The new nations bureaucracy
lacked everything form adequately trained administrators to paper and ink.27 The Confederate
States could not have been asked to adequately run a massive system of prisoner of war camps
25 James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 235.

26 James McPherson, Battle Cry Of Freedom (New York: Ballantine Book, 1988), pg. 323.

27 Robert Scott Davis, Andersonville Civil War Prison (Charleston: The History Press, 2010),
pg. 53.

Bodkins 14
across the entirety of the Confederacy if they could not adequately train their bureaucrats or have
basic supplies.
The first issue that arrived that crippled the Confederate Government is the issue of money and
money policy. Money is also the biggest issue because it is impossible for a government to
function regularly or win a war if there is not any money to do so with. As mentioned before in
the south cotton was king. Cotton was where most of the money for the south came from, but
thanks to the Union blockade cotton because a king without a nation. Cotton was worthless to the
Confederacy if they could not sell it to anyone. The Confederacy was poor in another sense that
characterizes contemporary poor countries: the source and quantity of its revenue was
uncertain.28 The fact that the Confederate government could not reasonably say how much
money they would be getting and where it was coming from meant that there was no way that
they could plan for things like thousands of prisoners in prison camps throughout the newly
formed country. The money that did come it would have to of course go mainly to the war effort
if the Confederacy had any hopes of winning the war. This shows how the Confederate
government was predestined to unsuccessfully run the camps if they could not even successfully
finance their own government or predict how much revenue they would be receiving from the
ever slowing cotton trade.
The next point to show that the Confederacy could not adequately run their government also
deals with money, but deal with the inflated price of goods in the Confederacy. Inflation is very
often a side effect of war. During the war the food supply routes of course had to be diverted to
the troops on the battlefields. Supply lines that were prime targets for the Union army. With this
came food shortages and inflation. Eventually food riots began to spring up all over the

28 Carl Vernon Patton, Budgeting under Crisis: The Confederacy as a Poor Country
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 1975), pg. 356.

Bodkins 15
Confederacy created by those rural mothers and wives that could no longer feed their families
with what little food that they could produce themselves.29 Food in stores had simply become too
expensive. These food riots would not only be demoralizing to the Confederate government and
any troops that may have found out about them, but were signs of dysfunction. These riots were a
sign that things in the Confederacy were going extremely wrong. The depth of dysfunction is
seen in how violent some of these attacks were, they were not mere peaceful protests. The riots
were spectacular and numerous. Mobs of women numbering from a dozen to 300and more,
armed the Navy revolvers, pistols, repeaters, bowie knives and hatchets, carried out at least 12
violent attacks (there are rumors of more) on stores, government warehouses, army convoys,
railroad depots, salt works and granaries. The attacks occurred in broad daylight.30 This quote
about how severe and violent the attack were is important because it shows just how desperate
these women were and how much the Confederate Government had failed. These southern
women, who are often stereotyped as noble and gentle, were so desperate for food that they were
willing to go to the extremes to get it. These riots prove that the Confederate government was too
dysfunctional to both fight and try to win the war and do the basic functions that every
government needs to do for its citizens. When the Confederacy could not feed its own women
and children then expecting it to be able to function well enough to take care of Union prisoners
of war is a seemingly impossible task. The food that was available to women to purchase was far
too expensive to purchase due to inflation. A little later, one gold dollar purchased sixty-one
Confederate dollars.31 Confederate money was so inflated that it became almost valueless.
Prices in Confederate money steadily increased until at Richmond in February, 1865 it took one
29 Stephanie McCurry, Bread or Blood! (Civil War Times 50 no 3:36, 2011), par 2.

30 Stephanie McCurry, Bread or Blood! (Civil War Times 50 no 3:36, 2011), par 5.

Bodkins 16
hundred dollars to buy a bushel of potatoes and eighty-eight dollars to purchase a barrel of
flour.32 Prices that even by todays standards, with the massive amounts of inflation that have
accumulated over the past one hundred and fifty years, are still far too expensive for any regular
working person to afford. Which meant the food was only going to the extremely wealthy and
not to the middle or lower classes. This overpriced food most certainly was not going to the
Union prisoners of war.
This was the final problem that the Confederacy obviously could not overcome. The
Confederacy government simply could work well enough in the limited time it had from its
inception to the start of the war. The Confederacy had no time to figure out its plans on how to
create an infrastructure good enough to make food supply lines that would be able to support its
people. With the inability to create food supply lines for its people the Confederacy was also
unfortunately not building supply lines that would be able to support the Union prisoners of war
they would soon be responsible for. This shows that from the beginning of the Confederacy the
conditions in prisoner of war camps were going to be nothing but awful.
After the war had ended and the population had found out about what had happened at
the camps there were many reactions. Many from the Union blamed the Confederates for the
conditions in the prisoner camps since the Confederacy was in charge of the camps, and there
was probably not as much talk about the conditions of Union camps. With all of the negative
attention that Confederate prisoner of war camps from the Union and historians the South wrote
papers to try to respond and defend themselves. The South wanted to argue that certain aspects of
31 Charles H. Wesley, The Collapse of the Confederacy (Columbia South Carolina: University of
South Carolina Press, 2001), pg. 18.

32 Charles H. Wesley, The Collapse of the Confederacy (Columbia South Carolina: University of
South Carolina Press, 2001), pg. 18.

Bodkins 17
the prisoner camps were out of their hand and they could not have made the conditions any
better. These papers were collected and published in the Southern Historical Society Papers. For
example one writer wrote in response to criticism about the lack of food and prisoners being
forced to eat course cornbread in Andersonville. It is well know now that the South depends
very largely, and with shame I confess it, on the West for her bread and bacon, and the cotton belt
proper makes but little pretension of raising wheat,33 In this quote the author is saying that the
South was simply not prepared to be its own country at the time of the secession and the Civil
War. He is saying that the Confederacy was not prepared for what the leaders decided with
leaving the Union. He goes on to write, The region round about Andersonville, being in the very
heart of the cotton-growing section of Georgia, such a thing as feeding prisoners on flour was
simply impossible, and the little flour that was obtained as tithes was devoted entirely to the
use of the hospitals. Not only was this true of the territory immediately surrounding
Andersonville, but the whole South. Our own armies were unsupplied with flour.34 This shows
that the bad conditions in prison camps were not a product or tactic of the confederacy but rather
an unfortunate side effect of the Confederate States rashly seceding from the United States. The
Southern Historical Society Papers are important because they show how the South reacted after
the Civil War, and how the South wanted to show that although they understand and want people
to understand that some of the poor conditions were due to things that they could not control.

33 Southern Historical Society Papers Vol I Why The Prisoners Were Fed On Corn Bread
(Richmond Virginia: Johns & Goolsby Printers, 1876), pg. 166.

34 Southern Historical Society Papers Vol I Why The Prisoners Were Fed On Corn Bread
(Richmond Virginia: Johns & Goolsby Printers, 1876), pg. 166

Bodkins 18
The conditions in Confederate prisoner of war camps were unarguably awful. The lack of
food meant that many Union soldiers would starve and die. The lack of shelter meant that many
would die from exposure. Diseases such as dysentery and scurvy would kill many others. Those
who did survive would always remember and be haunted by the terrible things that happened in
the camps. The Confederacy clearly is responsible in part for allowing conditions to become so
bad, but given the facts that: The Unions military tactics largely involved attacking the
Confederacys supply lines whether it was with the Navy and the Anaconda plan, or with the
Army destroying railroads and using Total War strategy, the fact that neither the Union nor
Confederacy understood how to run a long term massive prisoner of war camps, and finally that
the Confederacy could not run its own government and take care of its own people much less
enemy prisoners of war. All of these factors show that there was little the Confederacy could do
to overcome all of the obstacles that faced them during the Civil War. The combination of these
events meant that the Confederacy would have had to stop fighting the war to be able to
efficiently run the prisoner of war camps. The war is ultimately the thing responsible for the
prisoner of war camps, without it thousands and thousands of men would not have died, but the
war did happen and prisoner of war camps became and unfortunate and unavoidable side effect.

Works Cited.
Primary Sources

Bodkins 19
Cavada, F.F. Libby Life: Experiences of A Prisoner Of War In Richmond, V. A. 1863-64. Lanham
Maryland: University Press of America, 1985.
Cooper, Alonzo. In And Out of Rebel Prisons. Oswego New York: R.J. Oliphant, Job Printer,
Bookbinder and Stationer, 1983.
Glennan, Ed. Surviving Andersonville: One Prisoners Recollections of the Civil Wars Most
Notorious Camp. Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013.
Sneden, Robert Knox. Eye of the Storm. New York: The Free Press, 2000.
Southern Historical Society Papers Vol I Why The Prisoners Were Fed On Corn Bread.
Richmond Virginia: Johns & Goolsby Printers, 1876.
Voorhees, Alfred H. The Andersonville Prison Diary:
http:///Localhistory.morrisville.edu/sites/letters/diary.html.
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Cloyd, Benjamin. Haunted By Atrocity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.
Davis, Robert Scott. Andersonville Civil War Prison. Charleston South Carolina: The History
Press, 2010.
Derden, John K. The Worlds Largest Prison: The Story of Camp Lawton. Macon Georgia:
Mercer University Press, 2012.
Hesseltine, William Best. Civil War Prison A Stud in War Psychology. New York: Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co., 1971.
McCurry, Stephanie. Bread or Blood. Civil War Times 50 no. 3:36, 2011.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry Of Freedom. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.
Patton, Carl Vernon. Budgeting under Crisis: The Confederacy as a Poor Country.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 1975.
Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg
Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1997.
Wesley, Charles H. The Collapse of the Confederacy. Columbia South Carolina: University of
South Carolina Press, 2001.
Wynne, Ben. Mississippis Civil War: A Narrative History. Macon Georgia: Mercer University
press, 2006.