thea_447
Cadet
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- The Deep South, Alabama
Elmira: ..."G. T. Taylor of the 1st Alabama wrote, "Elmira was nearer Hades than I thought any place could be made by human cruelty.". Taylor's observation reflected the prisoners' sobriquet for the camp, "Helmira."
Federal Policy: Starvation of Prisoners
By Aug. 26, 1864, 793 POWs were reported suffering from scurvy, a form of malnutrition due to a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet. While not in itself fatal, scurvy contributes to severe physical enervation which renders the body prone to opportunistic disease and infections that are mortal. The prisoners suffered from ulcerative colitis (an often fatal infection of the intestinal tract), amoebic dysentery and renal infection; among other serious illnesses. That summer the local newspapers reported bumper crops of apples, pears, peaches, and a variety of fresh vegetables including corn. Death in the month of August claimed 115 Elmira prisoners. On Sept. 1 the camp's census was 9,480;
The U.S. government purchased a half acre of Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery for the burial of Confederate prisoners of war. A carpentry shop was established in the middle of the camp for the express purpose of making pine coffins.
The stockade's well water, thoroughly contaminated by the diseased pond, was beginning to take a terrible toll. The authorities in Washington D.C. repeatedly refused to order the pond drained: "The failure of the commissary general to launch a work project in the good weather of late summer is puzzling. It now appeared, in the eyes of some, that a tactic of deliberate delay was beginning to come into being."
Seventy-five years later, Elmira prison camp survivor James Huffman would recall that the "well water looked pure and good but was deadly poison to our men."
In addition to all of the perils the Southern troops had to contend with in Elmira, it appears that the camp's chief medical officer, Maj. Sanger, may have been ordering the poisoning of Confederate hospital patients with arsenic.
Former prisoner Walter D. Addison was an orderly in the camp's ramshackle hospital. Addison testified in his memoirs that Sanger ordered another medical officer, Dr. Van Ness, to administer, "Fowler's solution of arsenic. He wrote (prescribed) forty-five (drops) and the patients in a very short time breathed their last. No investigation ensued...Dr. Van Ness continued his position."
Author Michael Horigan observes, "There was, according to Addison, a desire on the part of Union officers to kill Confederate prisoners." By way of corroboration, Horigan unearthed a confidential letter from Major Sanger to Brig. Gen. John L. Hodsdon confessing to the murder of hundreds of helpless Confederate prisoners in Elmira. Hodsdon concealed the letter's contents and they were not divulged outside U.S. government circles during Sanger's lifetime. Writing in mid-October,1864, Sanger told Hodsdon, "I now have charge of 10,000 rebels, a very worthy occupation for a patriot, particularly adapted to elevate himself in his own estimation, but I think I have done my duty having relieved 386 of them of all earthly sorrow... ,"
In September of 1864 Union officer Bennett F.. Munger informed Elmira's Commandant Tracy that starvation was stalking the Confederate prisoners, that "during the past week there have been 112 deaths, reaching one day 29. There seems little doubt numbers have died both in quarters and hospital from want of proper food."
Elmira's death toll for September was 385. The half-acre cemetery for the prisoners was now full. The Federal government acquired an additional two acres, a macabre quadrupling of the original burial grounds. In an Oct. 1, 1864 letter to his wife, a ranking Union officer at Elmira wrote, "The rebs are dying quite fast, from 8 to 30 per day."
In an editorial in the Oct. 2, 1864 edition of the New York Times the Federal government was advised "that rebel prisoners should no longer live in luxury ..." The Elmira Daily Advertiser cheerfully informed its readers that the Confederate prisoners were contented, healthy and in good condition. The circus...like observation deck was closed to the public. It was now used by army sentries exclusively.
On Oct. 3, Commandant Tracy issued Special Order No. 336 cutting back on the supply of food accorded the prisoners. Horigan writes: "Special Order No. 336 immediately became a factor in the camp's excessive death rate...No possible 'good' came from this order Tracy erred in blind allegiance...to a power structure in Washington bent on revenge. Starvation, manifested in stages, would become visibly evident inside the prison camp."
The "blind allegiance" the author alludes to is a reference to a series of murderous orders from Lincoln's high command ordering a reduction in the malnourished Confederate prisoners' rations throughout the POW camps of the North. The Commissary General, Col. Hoffman, is on record as early as April 29, 1864 advocating half-rations for Confederate prisoners on Johnson's Island. Stanton presented a similar proposal to Lincoln on May 5, 1864, which Lincoln apparently approved, because on June I, 1864 the Union high command officially ordered a 20% reduction in the rations of Confederate prisoners which had been inadequate to begin with. The situation was further exacerbated by the army's Circular No.4 of Aug. 10, 1864 forbidding the purchase of food by prisoners from the camp "sutler" (authorized civilian grocer).
There is no question that Hoffman intentionally withheld the--at that time-huge sum of $1,845,125 worth of food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies budgeted for Confederate prisoners.
Elmira prison camp survivor Anthony Keiley, a former Southern newspaper editor, wrote in 1866, "In a nation whose boast is that they do not feel the war...and supplies of all sorts wonderfully abundant, it is simply infamous to starve the sick as they did at Elmira." Unlike the situation at Andersonville, this was starvation amidst plenty.
http://www.rense.com/general32/confed.htm
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Federal Policy: Starvation of Prisoners
By Aug. 26, 1864, 793 POWs were reported suffering from scurvy, a form of malnutrition due to a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet. While not in itself fatal, scurvy contributes to severe physical enervation which renders the body prone to opportunistic disease and infections that are mortal. The prisoners suffered from ulcerative colitis (an often fatal infection of the intestinal tract), amoebic dysentery and renal infection; among other serious illnesses. That summer the local newspapers reported bumper crops of apples, pears, peaches, and a variety of fresh vegetables including corn. Death in the month of August claimed 115 Elmira prisoners. On Sept. 1 the camp's census was 9,480;
The U.S. government purchased a half acre of Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery for the burial of Confederate prisoners of war. A carpentry shop was established in the middle of the camp for the express purpose of making pine coffins.
The stockade's well water, thoroughly contaminated by the diseased pond, was beginning to take a terrible toll. The authorities in Washington D.C. repeatedly refused to order the pond drained: "The failure of the commissary general to launch a work project in the good weather of late summer is puzzling. It now appeared, in the eyes of some, that a tactic of deliberate delay was beginning to come into being."
Seventy-five years later, Elmira prison camp survivor James Huffman would recall that the "well water looked pure and good but was deadly poison to our men."
In addition to all of the perils the Southern troops had to contend with in Elmira, it appears that the camp's chief medical officer, Maj. Sanger, may have been ordering the poisoning of Confederate hospital patients with arsenic.
Former prisoner Walter D. Addison was an orderly in the camp's ramshackle hospital. Addison testified in his memoirs that Sanger ordered another medical officer, Dr. Van Ness, to administer, "Fowler's solution of arsenic. He wrote (prescribed) forty-five (drops) and the patients in a very short time breathed their last. No investigation ensued...Dr. Van Ness continued his position."
Author Michael Horigan observes, "There was, according to Addison, a desire on the part of Union officers to kill Confederate prisoners." By way of corroboration, Horigan unearthed a confidential letter from Major Sanger to Brig. Gen. John L. Hodsdon confessing to the murder of hundreds of helpless Confederate prisoners in Elmira. Hodsdon concealed the letter's contents and they were not divulged outside U.S. government circles during Sanger's lifetime. Writing in mid-October,1864, Sanger told Hodsdon, "I now have charge of 10,000 rebels, a very worthy occupation for a patriot, particularly adapted to elevate himself in his own estimation, but I think I have done my duty having relieved 386 of them of all earthly sorrow... ,"
In September of 1864 Union officer Bennett F.. Munger informed Elmira's Commandant Tracy that starvation was stalking the Confederate prisoners, that "during the past week there have been 112 deaths, reaching one day 29. There seems little doubt numbers have died both in quarters and hospital from want of proper food."
Elmira's death toll for September was 385. The half-acre cemetery for the prisoners was now full. The Federal government acquired an additional two acres, a macabre quadrupling of the original burial grounds. In an Oct. 1, 1864 letter to his wife, a ranking Union officer at Elmira wrote, "The rebs are dying quite fast, from 8 to 30 per day."
In an editorial in the Oct. 2, 1864 edition of the New York Times the Federal government was advised "that rebel prisoners should no longer live in luxury ..." The Elmira Daily Advertiser cheerfully informed its readers that the Confederate prisoners were contented, healthy and in good condition. The circus...like observation deck was closed to the public. It was now used by army sentries exclusively.
On Oct. 3, Commandant Tracy issued Special Order No. 336 cutting back on the supply of food accorded the prisoners. Horigan writes: "Special Order No. 336 immediately became a factor in the camp's excessive death rate...No possible 'good' came from this order Tracy erred in blind allegiance...to a power structure in Washington bent on revenge. Starvation, manifested in stages, would become visibly evident inside the prison camp."
The "blind allegiance" the author alludes to is a reference to a series of murderous orders from Lincoln's high command ordering a reduction in the malnourished Confederate prisoners' rations throughout the POW camps of the North. The Commissary General, Col. Hoffman, is on record as early as April 29, 1864 advocating half-rations for Confederate prisoners on Johnson's Island. Stanton presented a similar proposal to Lincoln on May 5, 1864, which Lincoln apparently approved, because on June I, 1864 the Union high command officially ordered a 20% reduction in the rations of Confederate prisoners which had been inadequate to begin with. The situation was further exacerbated by the army's Circular No.4 of Aug. 10, 1864 forbidding the purchase of food by prisoners from the camp "sutler" (authorized civilian grocer).
There is no question that Hoffman intentionally withheld the--at that time-huge sum of $1,845,125 worth of food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies budgeted for Confederate prisoners.
Elmira prison camp survivor Anthony Keiley, a former Southern newspaper editor, wrote in 1866, "In a nation whose boast is that they do not feel the war...and supplies of all sorts wonderfully abundant, it is simply infamous to starve the sick as they did at Elmira." Unlike the situation at Andersonville, this was starvation amidst plenty.
http://www.rense.com/general32/confed.htm
Expired Image Removed