Upon the Altar of the Nation (52 page)

The foundation of the exchange was honor.
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Paroled officers would pledge: “We and each of us for himself severally pledge our words of honor as officers and gentlemen that we will not again take up arms against the United States nor serve in any military capacity whatsoever against them until regularly discharged according to the usages of war from this obligation.”
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Here, as in other places, the Civil War appears as the last romantic war, where honor was a category worthy of recognition.

But prisons changed dramatically in 1863 when Lincoln and Grant discontinued the exchange for moral and strategic reasons. On moral grounds, they canceled the exchange because Confederate authorities refused to recognize black prisoners as equal to whites and therefore equally eligible for parole. Although instances of Confederate authorities selling black prisoners into slavery are rare, they did prohibit black prisoners from the exchanges and allowed recaptured slaves to be returned to their masters.

In a letter to Robert Ould, Confederate agent for exchange, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Ludlow protested the Confederacy’s planned discrimination against black troops in the strongest terms, arguing “you have not a foot of ground to stand upon in making the proposed discrimination among our captured officers and men.” If the discrimination were implemented, Ludlow continued, the cartel would be endangered and “the United States Government will throw its protection around all its officers and men without regard to color, and will promptly retaliate for all cases violating the cartel or the laws and usages of war.”
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When the Confederacy refused to alter their policy, the inevitable breakdown occurred. As it continued, families of prisoners on both sides pleaded for resumption of exchange, but the Confederacy would not yield on the subject of returning recaptured slaves to their owners. In a letter written to Robert Ould on August 27, 1864, General Benjamin Butler, Union commissioner for exchange, again engaged the subject of “colored” prisoners of war. Given that prisoners on both sides were in extremis, Butler assured Ould that he would do anything to resume the exchange—anything, that is, “except to barter away the honor and faith of the Government of the United States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in its ranks.”

With that as a given, Butler sought to find a way to encourage the Confederacy to revise its policies on their own terms to win the release of black prisoners. Even if one assumed that slaves were merely property—the Southern definition of slaves—they still deserved to be returned because they had become the property of the United States who, by its sovereign right, determined to free them: “All are free men, being made so in such manner as we have chosen to dispose of our property in them which we acquire by capture.”

Then, with bitter irony, Butler continued: “Will you suffer your soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man? You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do upon your negro.”
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The Confederate response was predictable. Insofar as their entire society rested on the institution of slavery, and inasmuch as that institution considered slaves as property, there could be no proper exchange of a black soldier for a white soldier, a black human for a white human. For Confederate Agent of Exchange Robert Ould, this meant that the North pressed an “inadmissible claim” that “recaptured slaves shall be treated as prisoners of war.”
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Compounding the moral issue of race was the issue of honor. When Grant discovered that paroled Confederate soldiers from Vicksburg were fighting in Tennessee without mutual agreement, he viewed that as a loss of honor.

Strategic reasons existed as well as to why a refusal to exchange would work better for the North than for the South. In his letter to Ould, Butler pointed out that Confederates supporting the resumption of exchange were motivated “by the depleted condition of their armies, and a desire to get into the field ... the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the United States, in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your prisons.”
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While wrong about the “hale and hearty” Confederate prisoners, Butler was right about the Confederacy desperately wanting to bring prisoners back to serve in the army. Strategically, Grant also realized that he more easily than the Confederacy could afford the lost manpower of inactive prisoners. The prospects of a quicker victory and fewer lives lost in the field made the breakdown of “exchange” worthwhile and, in Grant’s eyes, even moral.

 

Living conditions in Confederate prisons were unarguably harsher than in Union prisons, but so were living conditions in the Confederate army and Confederate society in general. Most Northern camps, such as Elmira, Douglas, Morton, Butler, Johnson’s Island, and Alton, had barracks. Most Confederate prisons—especially prisons for enlisted soldiers—offered only partial shelter or mere tents.

If Yankee prisoners were fed and clothed less than prisoners held by the North, so were Confederate soldiers. Even as the women of Richmond rioted for lack of bread, so Federal prisoners at Libby Prison and Belle Isle suffered food shortages and poor diet. Only the worst cases who were sent to the hospital received two meals a day, the rest only one of diminishing nutrition.

In a statement on conditions in Richmond prisons and hospitals, Thomas James, a hospital steward, described the suffering, in particular of the prisoners in Belle Isle, who lacked the shelter afforded Union officers in Libby Prison. One surgeon was a “brute” to the very ill prisoners sent to the hospital, but “others were very kind to the men and did all in their power, but the material to prescribe from was so limited they were unable to accomplish much good.” Diseases ran rampant: “The principal diseases were typhoid fever, typhoid pneumonia, chronic diarrhea, and dysentery, but the two last mentioned was the cause of death in the majority of cases.”
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Northern writers, cartoonists, and even General Grant assumed the North would never mistreat prisoners and that all were healthy and well fed. Nothing could have been farther from the facts. While certainly better supplied and maintained than their counterparts in the South, Northern prisons were also overcrowded and unsanitary death camps. Examination of the higher mortality rates in Confederate prisons, while important, must be weighed against the fact that “lower” mortality rates in the North were still astounding. Nothing could match the 29 percent mortality rate at Andersonville (thirteen thousand of forty-five thousand) except for Salisbury Prison in North Carolina, whose rate was even higher. But the overall mortality statistics—15.5 percent of Northern prisoners and 12 percent of Southern prisoners—were scandalous on both sides.
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Salisbury inmates were mostly political prisoners and Yankee deserters, with POWs added only after October 1864. From October 1864 to February 1865 (when exchanges were resumed), 3,479 of Salisbury’s 10,321 prisoners died—a higher rate than at Andersonville. In Northern prisons, the highest mortality rates for POWs occurred at Rock Island, Illinois (77 percent); Elmira, New York (32.5 percent); Alton, Illinois (21 percent); and Camp Butler, Illinois (20 percent).
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Clearly prisoner-of-war camps were a tragedy. But were they immoral, as the participants claimed? Insofar as morality refers to intent and not unintended consequences, it is hard to affix guilt on either nation for deliberately plotting to starve or murder innocent prisoners. The historian James M. McPherson rightly concludes that “the treatment of prisoners during the Civil War was something that neither side could be proud of.”
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No evidence exists, however, of a program of cruelty and extermination aimed at white soldiers on either side.

But if the macro world of prisons and prisoners was more victim than perpetrator of evil, micro stories exist that point to the moral consequences of inhuman enslavement, whether of slaves on the plantations or of prisoners in the camps. Most glaring was Confederate mistreatment of black prisoners. By an act of the Confederate Congress, black prisoners had to be named in local newspapers and their status as prisoners or recaptured slaves revealed for their owners to claim them. The majority who remained in prison suffered even harsher conditions than those endured by their white counterparts. While languishing behind Confederate lines, they were frequently employed like slaves in hard labor on Confederate railroads or fortifications around Mobile, Alabama.
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While wasting away in Andersonville, Union Private Robert Knox Sneden observed that “the Negroes do all the hardest work of course. They often get lashed by their masters or overseers, as we can hear their cries of pain plainly on still nights.”
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Related to the deliberate mistreatment and exploitation of black prisoners was the use of them as human shields. In July 1863, following the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and during the siege of Charleston, Colonel John L. Branch conceived the idea of placing enemy prisoners of war under fire of their own siege guns to discourage Federal bombardments. The plan was to include all Yankee prisoners, officers and enlisted men alike: “these prisoners to be exposed during our operations.”
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But black prisoners bore a disproportionate amount of the danger and hard labor. The same was true at Richmond, where black prisoners were placed on the city’s fortifications under direct Federal fire. The practice continued until Northern generals placed an equal number of Confederate prisoners at Union fortifications under fire.
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A more general moral issue developed around stealing from guards and from fellow prisoners. The rules of war recognized by both sides forbade stealing from the prisoners. But among both hungry Confederate prison guards and cold Federal guards, the pillage of prisoners was rife. Food, clothing, cash, and valuables of any sort were in play.

 

No good prisons existed in the South or North. In July 1864 Confederate prisoners were transferred from Point Lookout to vacant barracks at Elmira, New York. Familiar problems of sanitation and disease appeared, augmented by a rash of scurvy caused by no-vegetable diets. By the end of August, more than seven hundred cases of scurvy had been reported. In October word emerged from Camp Douglas of a rapid increase of fatalities, and Elmira health officials concluded that based on mortality rates in August and September, the entire prison would be depopulated within a year.
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The worst prison conditions of all existed at the infamous Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia. With the rapid rise of prisoners on both sides, and with Grant’s army marching on Richmond, Belle Isle could no longer hold the bulk of prisoners, and new facilities had to be constructed. In October 1863 Lee recommended moving prisoners away from Richmond to Danville, Virginia. But Danville proved inadequate, and in November, Andersonville, Georgia, was selected as the site for a new prison.

The site seemed ideally isolated from Confederate cities and invading armies. But tragically, no one recognized that those very advantages would prove disastrously disadvantageous for the prisoners. There were simply no real provisions to build a protected environment. Basic staples such as nails and rope could not be found to build shelters.
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Shortages of lumber meant no buildings and, by spring, no coffins.

The first prisoners began arriving at Andersonville from Richmond in February 1864 and continued at a rate of four hundred per day. Since shelter was not available, prisoners had to survive on their own, often with little more than a blanket to provide warmth or protection from the sun. The prison contained no cells, but all inmates had to live within the brutally enforced boundaries—the original “deadline”—with guards ordered to shoot any and all who crossed them.

Andersonville Prison, southwest view of the stockade showing the “deadline.” Close to thirteen thousand Union prisoners of war lost their lives there. Thousands more perished in other camps, both Federal and Confederate.

By May the bakery was completed and prisoners received the same rations as guards. But the only stream into the camp was polluted by refuse from the bakery. Already weakened from their stay in Richmond, prisoners died steadily from disease—especially bowel diseases like diarrhea and dysentery, combined with scurvy. Survival and recovery were hindered even more by the widespread presence of what psychologists today would term clinical depression. When Captain William Chauncey arrived as a prisoner at Andersonville on May 29, he wrote in his diary: “No shelter, or rations except corn meal. Water insufficient for the number confined here. No conveniences for washing or in fact for living at all. I can only think of hell upon earth.”
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