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To: Shimmer1
AFAIK, some Union POW camps were worse than Andersonville. Other commentators here are correct about that. I'm not even sure that Andersonville qualifies as "depraved" - the worst of it was far more neglect, perhaps even unavoidable neglect, than intentional. The earlier post about the staff of some Union POW camps being outright sadistic, while the officers deliberately ignored this, is correct.

The CSA had some excuses for poor conditions in its POW camps. The North had none. And the North treated black refugees fleeing slavery with savage indifference, and overt hostility, bordering on genocide. Those here who decry the deliberate devastation policies in the Shenandoah Valleys and elsewhere wouldn't know real evil if it kissed them. Read:

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs.

http://www.amazon.com/Sick-Freedom-African-American-Suffering-Reconstruction/dp/0199758727/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

43 posted on 02/17/2013 10:30:51 AM PST by Thud
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To: Thud; Ditto; rockrr
The CSA had some excuses for poor conditions in its POW camps. The North had none.

Disease was rife in any large assembly of soldiers or prisoners. Medical knowledge wasn't what it is today. Doctors were needed at the front and in medical hospitals. Heating cost and sanitation much money at a time when the army was the top priority.

Even with good heating, those who weren't accustomed to Northern climates would suffer. So far as I know, though, you didn't see men reduced to ragged skeletons in Northern prisoner of war camps as they were at Andersonville.

And the North treated black refugees fleeing slavery with savage indifference, and overt hostility, bordering on genocide.

Compared to what? Compared to slavery? Providing for thousands of runaway slaves can't have been easy. Still, they were fed and housed and even taught to read and write. I'd go easy with the "genocide" if I were you.

44 posted on 02/17/2013 1:44:44 PM PST by x
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