‘Andersonville of North’: a lie that refuses to die

It's surprising that the linked article says nothing about the fact that prisoner rations were cut in June 1864 and that this likely contributed to the deaths of at least 12 prisoners on Rock Island. The rations were cut by order of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Stanton's excuse for this action was that it was in response to conditions at Andersonville, but even historians like McPherson have long admitted that the Confederates simply didn't have enough food to feed the prisoners, not to mention that Confederate soldiers were already on a very meager diet themselves. Stanton surely knew this.

When Jefferson Davis sent a request to Lincoln to sell the CSA medicine for Union soldiers, and offered to pay in gold and offered to allow Union officers to escort the medicine to ensure it was used on Union POWs, Lincoln refused to even reply to the request.
 
As the linked article notes, Margaret Mitchell gave the notion that Rock Island was comparable to Andersonville a lot of traction in Gone with the Wind:

Ashley was not dead! He had been wounded and taken prisoner, and the records showed that he was at Rock Island, a prison camp in Illinois. In their first joy, they could think of nothing except that he was alive. But, when calmness began to return, they looked at one another and said ‘Rock Island!’ in the same voice they would have said ‘In Hell!’ For even as Andersonville was a name that stank in the North, so was Rock Island one to bring terror to the heart of any Southerner who had relatives imprisoned there.

Mitchell’s plot also underscores her shoddy research in this area: Rock Island was a camp for enlisted men only, and Ashley Wilkes was an officer.

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It's surprising that the linked article says nothing about the fact that prisoner rations were cut in June 1864 and that this likely contributed to the deaths of at least 12 prisoners on Rock Island. The rations were cut by order of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Stanton's excuse for this action was that it was in response to conditions at Andersonville, but even historians like McPherson have long admitted that the Confederates simply didn't have enough food to feed the prisoners, not to mention that Confederate soldiers were already on a very meager diet themselves. Stanton surely knew this.

When Jefferson Davis sent a request to Lincoln to sell the CSA medicine for Union soldiers, and offered to pay in gold and offered to allow Union officers to escort the medicine to ensure it was used on Union POWs, Lincoln refused to even reply to the request.
Confederate pow camps located in areas that hadn't seen Union troops were short of food? Really? Union troops passing thru those areas later had no problem at all finding food...
 
Confederate pow camps located in areas that hadn't seen Union troops were short of food? Really? Union troops passing thru those areas later had no problem at all finding food...

No, they could go out and forage. As at Camp Douglas, being located in an area with plenty didn't mean prisoners had access. And unless the citizens around those camps were willing to part with their provisions, that meant hunger. If I'd been around there, I'm not sure I would rather have given my food to prisoners from another army rather than my family....and once you start, there's no end.

We can sit here and trade nasty insults and ask barbed questions all you want. There is no prison camp any one of us would want to be in. The end of exchanges made it even worse. Period. End of sentence.
 
No, they could go out and forage. As at Camp Douglas, being located in an area with plenty didn't mean prisoners had access. And unless the citizens around those camps were willing to part with their provisions, that meant hunger. If I'd been around there, I'm not sure I would rather have given my food to prisoners from another army rather than my family....and once you start, there's no end.

We can sit here and trade nasty insults and ask barbed questions all you want. There is no prison camp any one of us would want to be in. The end of exchanges made it even worse. Period. End of sentence.
I was replying to the point that there was a scarcity of food for Confederates and thats why Union pows weren't given enough. Although the shortage might be true for the Confederate army at specific times thru out the war there certainly wasn't a shortage of food for Confederates staffing the camps in the middle of land that hadn't been touched by war yet..
 
Certainly appears a heck of a lot better than Andersonville-in fact no comparison at all.
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Has there been a comparison between the death and disease rates at various prison camps, Union and Confederate, and the armies in the field or in temporary cantonments? Public health in the 1860s was unknown and it didn't take much poor nutrition and disease to kill already weakened individuals. Joe Hooker tried measures in 1863 like changing straw in bedding and increased sanitary measures, but he seemed to be the first. That's not to excuse the maltreatment of prisoners even in collapsing economy, but there may be a wider context in the mortality rates.
 
The so-called scapegoat for starving prisoners is Lucius Northrop, the Confederate commissary-general, and we might also scapegoat him for the starving Confederate soldiers. Certainly he had handicaps other than the self-inflicted personal one that made him too disabled to be a field general, but he was also convinced the Yankees could eat grass. Again - a West Pointer and personal buddy of Davis. Again - Davis did not remove Northrop despite clear evidence of incompetence and possibly malfeasance. Northrop's final screw-up was Amelia Courthouse, when Lee's hungry army didn't get its food train. What is unforgivable with this man was he knew full well about Wirz's problems and other camps having immense difficulties, but his pure hatred of the Federals made him not give a rat's behind what happened to them. Edwin Stanton was not right in giving tit-for-tat - he supposed the maltreatment of Federal prisoners was deliberate. Most of it was not. But Northrop sure didn't break his neck helping solve the problem.
 
This is a really sorry state of affairs, for sure. But, when all was said and done, the mortality rates in Civil War prison camps were pretty close. It was slightly higher in the South, yes, but grotesque none the less on both sides.

While neither side covered itself in glory with regard to POW camps, death rates in Union prisons were below those of confederate prisons.

The average death rate in Union camps was 11.7% and the average death rate in confederate camps was 15.3%. [Michael Horigan, Elmira: Death Camp of the North, p. 180]

Death rate at Elmira, NY: 24.3% [Michael Horigan, Elmira: Death Camp of the North, p. 193]

Death rates in other major Union prison camps:
Alton, Illinois: 11.8%
Camp Chase, Ohio: 8.7%
Camp Douglas, Illinois: 12.4%
Camp Morton, Indiana: 10%
Fort Delaware, Delaware: 7.6%
Johnson's Island, Ohio: 2.7%
Point Lookout, Maryland: 5.6%
Rock Island, Illinois: 15.8%

[rates found in Michael Horigan, Elmira: Death Camp of the North, p. 222, note24]

As to the myth of deliberate starvation, "Until June 1864 Confederates in Northern prisons were to receive the standard Federal ration, which as has been pointed out, was quite generous if nutritionally sub-par. So generous were Federal rations that officials were getting reports that prisoners and soldiers were throwing significant portions of them away. To curb what seemed to Northern officials to be wasting money, money the government did not have to waste, rations were reduced for Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners [Italics in original] in June 1864. Federal soldiers' cuts were not all that significant, declining from roughly 4,600 calories to a little over 4,400 calories, while the cuts were deeper for prisoners because they were nowhere near as active as combat soldiers. ... Modern prisoners, beneficiaries of a slew of protective legislation and who are larger than their Civil War-era counterparts, receive between 2,500 and 2,700 calories per day." [James M. Gillespie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners, p. 99]

"According to The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, between February 1864 and June 1865 there were 439 cases of scurvy reported at the prison. That number accounts for 3.26% of the 13,453 diseases reported at Rock Island during that span of time and the fourteen deaths attributed to scurvy were less than 1% of the 1,589 disease fatalities. Given scurvy's relatively low numbers it seems that prisoners were not being systematically starved." [James M. Gillespie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners, p. 142]

"The Official Records and The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion both show that mortality among Southern prisoners clearly declined over time at Rock Island. Between February 1864 and June 1865, 1,589 prisoners died of some disease, many of them during the first months of the camp's existence. Between February and April 1864 the Official Records show that 770 prisoners died at Rock Island, which constitutes 48.45% of the 1,589 deaths enumerated in The Medical and Surgical History. From April 1864 through the end of the war disease mortality declined. It is significant to note that just at the time most writers argue that Union prison policies got significantly harsher, Confederate mortality at Rock Island declined. In fact, virtually the same number of prisoners died in the three-month period between February and April 1864 (before the retaliation program was officially discussed and implemented) as perished during the period between May 1864 and June 1865. The prison's population throughout its history remained fairly constant at between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners until it dropped to just below 3,000 in April 1865 for obvious reasons. ... Most of the mortality occurring at the depot was recorded in the first five or six months of operation. A lot of the deaths were attributable directly and indirectly to smallpox problems that erupted almost as soon as the gates opened. Records from February 1864 indicate that prisoners were transferred from the military prison in Louisville, Kentucky, who had the dreaded disease. The surgeon there, J. C. Welch, and his commanding officer, Captain Charles B. Pratt denied that prisoners were sent to Rock Island carrying smallpox--at least they were not sent there deliberately. No doubt they were telling the truth when they said that all prisoners were examined by the doctor before leaving Kentucky. The problem is that victims in the first phases of the disease, though highly contagious, often do not appear to have the disease at all." [James M. Gillespie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners, p. 145]
 
Has there been a comparison between the death and disease rates at various prison camps, Union and Confederate, and the armies in the field or in temporary cantonments? Public health in the 1860s was unknown and it didn't take much poor nutrition and disease to kill already weakened individuals. Joe Hooker tried measures in 1863 like changing straw in bedding and increased sanitary measures, but he seemed to be the first. That's not to excuse the maltreatment of prisoners even in collapsing economy, but there may be a wider context in the mortality rates.

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/uni...bad-as-andersonville.13338/page-2#post-155834

A confederate soldier was more likely to survive in a Union POW camp than if he was in the field with his own army.
 
Camp Douglas was actually one of the better camps until the last part of '64 and in 1865--when the number of prisoners flooding it seems to have coincided with several other things (notably a change in camp commanders with some rather evil ideas about discipline and saving money) to become the bottom of the barrel. Remember, both Union soldier and Confederate POWs had been housed there in the early days. Prisoners were even allowed outside camp gates, and city folks could come, gawk and sell various products. That ended by 1864 due to the number of escapes.
 
Camp Douglas was actually one of the better camps until the last part of '64 and in 1865--when the number of prisoners flooding it seems to have coincided with several other things (notably a change in camp commanders with some rather evil ideas about discipline and saving money) to become the bottom of the barrel. Remember, both Union soldier and Confederate POWs had been housed there in the early days. Prisoners were even allowed outside camp gates, and city folks could come, gawk and sell various products. That ended by 1864 due to the number of escapes.
Wasn't that true of a number of POW camps in the "far North? If memory serves Camp Johnson near Sandusky, Ohio was a bit laid back with the Rebs.
 
Several hundred of the initial prisoners sent to Rock Island came to the camp already infected with smallpox. The unexpected epidemic overwhelmed the camp officials and the government was rather slow in responding to it. The high death rate in the first few months of operation was due to smallpox. Once they got the epidemic under control the death rate dropped like a rock.
 
Several hundred of the initial prisoners sent to Rock Island came to the camp already infected with smallpox. The unexpected epidemic overwhelmed the camp officials and the government was rather slow in responding to it. The high death rate in the first few months of operation was due to smallpox. Once they got the epidemic under control the death rate dropped like a rock.

No pun intended, right?
 
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