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I have a question. Why didn’t Sherman liberate Andersonville when he had the chance? He was close after taking Atlanta and it would have been easy for him. Instead he went on destroying the crops and food that could have fed the prisoners.
Martin
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
Actually, Tommy, the difference is the opposite. There was about a 12% death rate for confederates in Union prisons and about a 15% death rate for Union soldiers in confederate prisons. This is confirmed by the numbers I posted out of Long's <u>Civil War Day by Day.</u> Martin has recommended Michael Horigan's book, <u>Elmira: Death Camp of the North.</u> If we use Horigan's figures, the average death rate for confederate prisoners in Northern prisons was 11.7% while the average death rate for Union prisoners in confederate prisons was 15.3%. [see pages 180 and 222]
As to food at Andersonville, where is the evidence of confederate guards starving the same way Union prisoners starved? If the prisoners were given the same food as the confederates, then the starvation rates ought to be close. Where's the evidence?
Your timeline is off. The confederates began moving prisoners out of Andersonville in early September of 1864. This was around the same time as Sherman took Atlanta. The prisoners were starving well prior to then. Sherman had sent Stoneman on a cavalry raid to liberate prisoners at Andersonville, but Stoneman and his men were captured. An attempt to move to Andersonville after taking Atlanta would have yielded very few prisoners and would have exposed his men to attack by Hood's troops. Sherman instead spent September trying to chase Hood down and bring him to battle. That was the militarily correct thing to do. By the time Hood went into Tennessee and Sherman let him go, the vast majority of prisoners had already been moved out of Andersonville into other prisons.
Cash, your time line is one that is wrong. Andersonville Civil War Prison, located in the village of Andersonville, Sumpter County, Georgia, became notorious for its overcrowding, starvation, disease, and cruelty. It was in operation from February 1864 to April 1865.
Martin http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_andersonville.html
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
Martin, if you'll check the actual operation closer, you'll see that the population of the camp went from 33,000 in August of 1864 to less than 5,000 by October of 1864, to about 1500 by the end of November of 1864. Around Christmas of 1864, when Sherman was taking Savannah, about 3500 prisoners were brought back to Andersonville. By that time Sherman was too far away to have any effect. While Sherman was in Atlanta the benefits of taking Andersonville were not worth the risk of detaching a force to do so, especially since he had tried it once already and had lost the entire command sent to raid the prison.
in his "War Between the States," declares that the escorts which have been made to "fix the odium of cruelty and barbarity" upon Mr. Davis and the Confederate authorities "constitute one of the boldest and baldest attempted outrages upon the truth of history which has ever been essayed." After briefly, but most conclusively, discussing the general question, Mr. Stevens continues as follows in reference to the Federal prisoners sent South:
Large numbers of them were taken to Southwestern Georgia in 1864, because it was a section most remote and secure from the invading Federal armies, and because, too, it was a country of all others then within the Confederate limits, not thus threatened with an invasion, most abundant with food, and all resources at command for the health and comfort of prisoners. They were put in one stockade for the want of men to guard more than one. The section of country moreover, was not regarded as more unhealthy, or more subject to malarious influences, than any in the central part of the State. The official order for the erection of the stockade enjoined that it should be in "a healthy locality, plenty of pure water, a running stream, and, if possible, shade trees, and in the immediate neighborhood of grist and saw mills." The very selection of the locality, so far from being, as you suppose made with cruel designs against the prisoners, was governed by the most humane considerations.
Your question might, with much more point, be retorted by asking why were Southern prisoners taken in the dead of winter with their thin clothing to Camp Douglas, Rock Island and Johnson's Island -- icy regions of the North where it is a notorious fact that many of them actually froze to death?
As far as mortuary returns afford evidence of the general treatment of prisoners on both sides, the figures show nothing to the disadvantage of the Confederates, notwithstanding their limited supplies of all kinds, and notwithstanding all that has been said of the horrible sacrifice of life at Andersonville.
It now appears that a larger number of Confederates died in Northern than of Federals in Southern prisons or stockades. The report of Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, on the 19th of July, 1866, exhibits the fact that, of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands during the war, only 22,576 died; while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 26,436 died. This report does not set forth the exact number of prisoners held by each side respectively. These facts were given more in detail in a subsequent report by Surgeon General Barnes, of the United States Army. His report I have not seen, but according to a statement editorially, in the National Intelligencer -- very high authority -- it appears from the Surgeon General's report, that the whole number of Federal prisoners captured by the Confederates and held in Southern prisons, from first to last during the war, was, in round numbers, 270,000; while the whole number of Confederates captured and held in prisons by the Federals was in like round numbers, only 220,000. From these two reports it appears that, with 50,000 more prisoners in Southern stockades, or other modes of confinement, the deaths were nearly 4,000 less! According to these figures, the per centum of Federal deaths in Southern prisons was under nine! while the per centum of Confederate deaths in Northern prisons was over twelve! These mortality statistics are of no small weight in determining on which side was the most neglect, cruelty and inhumanity!
But the question in this matter is, upon whom does this tremendous responsibility rest of all this sacrifice of human life, with all its indescribable miseries and sufferings? The facts, beyond question or doubt, show that it rests entirely upon the authorities at Washington! It is now well understood to have been a part of their settled policy in conducting the war not to exchange prisoners. The grounds upon which this extraordinary course was adopted were that it was humanity to the men in the field, on their side, to let their captured comrades perish in prison, rather than to let an equal number of Confederate soldiers be released on exchange to meet them in battle! Upon the Federal authorities, and upon them only, with this policy as their excuse, rests the whole of this responsibility. To avert the indignation which the open avowal of this policy by them at the time would have excited throughout the North, and throughout the civilized world, the false cry of cruelty towards prisoners was raised against the Confederates. This was but a pretext to cover their own violation of the usages of war in this respect among civilized nations.
Other monstrous violations of like usages were not attempted to be palliated by them, or even covered by a pretext. These were as you must admit, open, avowed and notorious! I refer only to the general sacking of private houses -- the pillaging of money, plate, jewels and other light articles of value, with the destruction of books, works of art, paintings, pictures, private manuscripts and family relics; but I allude, besides these things, especially to the hostile acts directly against property of all kinds, as well as outrages upon non combatants -- to the laying waste of whole sections of country; the attempted annihilation of all the necessaries of life; to the wanton killing, in many instances, of farm stock and domestic animals; the burning of mills, factories and barns, with their contents of grain and forage, not sparing orchards or growing crops, or the implements of husbandry; the mutilation of county and municipal records of great value; the extraordinary efforts made to stir up servile insurrections, involving the wide spread slaughter of women and children; the impious profanation of temples of worship, and even the brutish desecration of the sanctuaries of the dead!
All these enormities of a savage character against the very existence of civilized society, and so revolting to the natural sentiments of mankind, when not thoroughly infuriated by the worst of passions, and in open violation of modern usages in war -- were perpetrated by the Federal armies in many places throughout the conflict, as legitimate means in putting down the rebellion, so called! -- War Between the States, vol.2, pp. 507- 510.
Martin
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
"In their memoirs Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens maintained that the death rate at southern prisons was actually lower than at northern prisons. And the responsibility for "all this sacrifice of human life," asserted Stephens, "rests <u>entirely</u> on the Authorities at Washington" who refused to exchange prisoners. The state of Georgia has placed two historical markers near Andersonville declaring that wartime shortages caused the suffering there, which thus cannot be blamed on anybody, and that "deaths among the prison guards were as high as among the prisoners."
In truth the percentage of deaths among inmates at Andersonville was in fact five or six times higher than among guards. Davis and Stephens were also wide of the mark. Because of the loss or destruction of many Confederate records, the actual number of Union dead in all southern prisons can never be known. The best estimate based on existing records finds that 30, 218 (15.5 percent) of the 194, 743 northern inmates of southern prisons died there, compared with 25,976 (12 percent) of 214,865 southerners who died in northern prisons.
In any event, the treatment of prisoners during the Civil War was something that neither side could be proud of."
From the book, Battle Cry of Freedom, Chapter 26, pg. 802.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
(Message edited by Unionblue on June 16, 2004)
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Just from a morale point of view if people were so offended by what happened at Andersonville, why wasn't the commandant of Elmira hung? Why wasn't the commandant of Rock Island or Point Lookout hung? Better yet why wasn't the commandant of the Salisbury (Confederate) Prison hung? The crime was the same all around.Please guys don't give me that to the victor belongs the spoils stuff,it was the plain old time honored tradition of double standards.
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