Posted on 02/27/2017 3:29:28 AM PST by Bull Snipe
the first of many thousands of Union prisoners of war arrived at Confederate Camp Sumpter, near Andersonville, GA
My great-great grandfather died in Andersonville as a POW. He was a member of an Indiana regiment.
Wife and i visited Andersonville last year.
My oh my what a horrible history the place has.
I will say the Union POW camps were no better.
Neither side would muster the funds needed to properly care for the other sides prisoners.
My great, great grandfather died a prisoner of war at Camp Douglas, IL. He’s buried in a mass grave with 6,000 others.
They didn’t have food enough to feed them. Pray they suffered not too badly.
as did nearly 13,000 other Union Army prisoners.
You are correct. The treatment of Union and Confederate prisoners of war was deplorable on both sides. In the case of the Confederacy, by 1864, all resources were becoming scarce. What resources were available went to support the fighting armies. The Union, with considerably more resources, simply mismanaged the entire prison issue. They were capable of providing adequate food, clothing, and facilities but failed to do so.
That is Sumter, there is no such name as SumPter.
I’d read that there was harsh debate in congress which refused funds for prisoner care too
Wife is from New Jersey and had not been aware of these places
My bad.
One of my ancestors (GGG-grandfather) also died at Camp Douglas.
Another bad thing: the inmates ran the camp and they were brutal to each other.
A documentary on TV years ago described an Illinois prison which was said to be much worse than the Confederate prisons. Some of what they described was like a horror movie.
> My great-great grandfather died in Andersonville as a POW. He was a member of an Indiana regiment.
My great-great uncle died in Elmira, NY as a POW.
My great-grandfather barely made it out of Point Lookout alive.
That was probably Camp Douglas in Chicago, ILL. It deserved it’s history as being the worst camp of all the Union POW camps.
Much of what happened to Union soldiers in Confederate prisons can be laid at the feet of Grant and Lincoln.
They were the ones who decided to end the practices of prisoner furloughs and prisoner exchanges.
They hoped to deny seasoned troops and officers to the Confederacy while overwhelming the prison system.
It worked, but many men on both sides died needlessly.
Same with two of my g-g-uncles (Co.F 47th NC). From what I have read Point Lookout was one of the less severe POW camps and it was still quite brutal.
To some extent true. However, one of the reasons for the decision to end prisoner exchange was that the Union insisted black Union soldiers be treated as any other Union soldier in the exchange system. The Confederate commissioners did not agree, they would not consider captured black soldiers as legitimate prisoners of war, subject to exchange. The impasse could not be resolved.
This was part of the United States Government’s consideration for ending prisoner exchange program with the Confederate Government together.
Grant and Lincoln were like the majority of northerners, they didn’t give a fig about the negroes be they slave or free.
New Yorkers rioted when Lincoln announced the draft. Negroes were hung in the streets and editorials were written denouncing Lincoln’s “Nigger War”. The US navy had to shell NYC so the Union army could restore order.
The idea that the US civil war was about slavery is hogwash.
Lincoln knew that the European immigrants in the north had come from countries with strong central governments. Those immigrants could be swayed into fighting to maintain what they knew: a strong central govt that seemed benign.
Grant knew he had one thing the south didn’t: overwhelming numbers. He intended to use them.
They both, Grant and Lincoln, knew the logistics problems in the south. They knew the south couldn’t provide for large numbers of prisoners and their own army.
The treatment of captured negro soldiers was an easy excuse for them to use to deny furloughs and exchanges. They knew the south would never agree.
There was nothing humanitarian about their demand. They simply demanded something they knew the south would never agree to.
So in the end men on both sides died that shouldn’t have because the Union leaders wanted to press their numbers advantage.
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