Funny you neoconfederates nevber mentioned Andersonville Actually, the andersonville food shortages were a result largely of shortages in food and supplies by the southern armies in general.
On the other side, yankees rarely if ever have much to say about their prison camp at Point Lookout in Maryland. Conditions as bad as if not worse than Andersonville were experienced by many there, and that while the yankees had plenty of supplies to feed them had they wanted to.
Can you give me a link I've never heard about that.
Lookout was a particularly nasty place, as one gathers from reading descriptions written by prisoners held there. The North had no good reason for implementing the harsh conditions there. For example, with the onset of winter, all "unecessary" clothing and blankets were confisacted, leaving the prisoners with only the barest coverings. Subsequently it was not unusual for three or four men to freezze to death every night in the winter. Food was minimal at best in the camp, and rats and other vermin were greedily hawked by starving inmates. The dead, which accumulated like so much firewood (which was also extremely scarce and alloted in minimal quantities, and never adequate) and dumped into common graves outside the camp.
And yet the North could have easily provided the inmates with much better conditions, as they were not under occupation, no one was raiding their crops, no one was cutting off their trade, nor seizing medicines.