A Stillness at Appomattox (135 page)

Admittedly,
Andersonville
had
a
record
which
even
today cannot
easily
be
read
without
horror
and
sick
disgust.
So
did most
of
the
other
prison
camps
in
the
Civil
War,
in
the
Confederacy
and
in
the
Union
as
well,
and
the
terrible
things which
happened
in
them
seem
to
have
taken
place
not
because
anyone
meant
it
so
but
simply
because
men
were clumsy
and
the
times
were
still
rude.

Even
when
they
were
camped
in
perfect
safety
behind their
own
lines,
getting
the
best
their
governments
had
to give,
the
soldiers
of
that
day
got
miserable
food
and
defective medical
attention,
so
that
simply
being
in
the
army
killed many
more
men
than
were
killed
in
battle.
Only
when
an army
commander
was
a
first-rate
military
administrator,
willing
and
able
to
devote
a
large
part
of
his
time
to
such
matters, did
the
lot
of
the
troops
become
anything
better
than
just barely
endurable.
Inevitably,
prisoners
of
war
fared
a
great deal
worse.
A
certain
combination
of
incompetence
and
indifference
can
cause
almost
as
much
suffering
as
the
most acute
malevolence.

One
does
not
need
to
read
wartime
propaganda
to
get
a full
indictment
of
the
prison
camps.
Each
side
indicted
itself, in
terms
no
propagandist
could
make
much
more
bitter.

A
Confederate
surgeon,
completing
an
inspection
of
Andersonville,
reported
to
his
superiors
at
Richmond
that
more than
10,000
prisoners
had
died
in
seven
months—nearly
one third
of
the
entire
number
confined
there.
More
than
5,000 were
seriously
ill.
Diarrhea,
dysentery,
scurvy,
and
hospital gangrene
were
the
chief
complaints,
and
there
were
from 90
to
130
deaths
every
day.
He
found
30,000
men
jammed together
on
twenty-seven
acres
of
land,
"with
little
or
no attention
to
hygiene,
with
festering
masses
of
filth
at
the very
doors
of
their
rude
dens
and
tents."
A
little
stream flowed
through
the
camp,
and
about
it
the
surgeon
found
"a filthy
quagmire"
which
was
so
infamous
that
a
man
who
got a
slight
scratch
on
his
skin,
or
even
an
insect
bite,
was
quite likely
to
die
of
blood
poisoning.
A
South
Carolina
woman, learning
about
similar
conditions
in
the
prison
camp
at
Florence,
wrote
to
the
governor
asking:
"In
the
name
of
all
that is
holy,
is
there
nothing
that
can
be
done
to
relieve
such dreadful
suffering?
If
such
things
are
allowed
to
continue they
will
surely
draw
down
some
awful
judgment
upon
our country."
⁶

Thus
in
the
South.
In
the
North,
an
army
surgeon
inspected the
camp
for
Rebel
prisoners
at
Elmira,
New
York,
and
said that
the
8,347
prisoners
there
exhibited
2,000
cases
of
scurvy., He
asserted
that
at
the
current
death
rates
"the
entire
command
will
be
admitted
to
hospital
in
less
than
a
year
and 36
per
cent
die."
Like
Andersonville,
the
Elmira
camp
contained
a
stream,
which
had
formed
a
dreadful
scummy
pond —"a
festering
mass
of
corruption,
impregnating
the
entire atmosphere
of
the
camp
with
the
pestilential
odors
.
.
.
the vaults
give
off
their
sickly
odors,
and
the
hospitals
are
crowded with
victims
for
the
grave."
The
camp
surgeon
had
made repeated
complaints
but
he
could
get
no
one
in
authority
to pay
any
attention
to
them,
and
his
requisitions
for
medicines had
been
entirely
ignored.
⁷

A
little
later,
when
the
rival
governments
worked
out
a deal
for
the
exchange
of
certain
prisoners
who
were
too
ill
to fight
but
not
too
sick
to
travel,
a
trainload
of
1,200
such
men was
made
up
at
Elmira
and
sent
down
to
Baltimore
to
take
a steamer
for
the
South.
Federal
doctors
who
met
this
pathetic convoy
at
the
dock
wrote
indignantly
that
many
of
the
men were
obviously
unfit
to
travel.
Five
had
died
on
the
train
and sixty
more
had
to
be
hurried
to
hospital
as
soon
as
they
reached Baltimore.
There
were
no
doctors,
orderlies,
or
nurses
on
the steamer,
and
the
whole
setup
indicated
"criminal
neglect
and inhumanity
on
the
part
of
the
medical
officers
in
making
the selection
of
men
to
be
transferred."
The
commander
at
El
mira,
meanwhile,
was
writing
that
he
had
hoped
that
getting rid
of
his
1,200
worst
cases
would
relieve
overcrowding
at the
camp
hospital
but
that
somehow
it
had
not.
Overcrowding
was
as
bad
as
ever,
and
"if
the
rate
of
mortality
for
the last
two
months
should
continue
for
a
year
you
can
easily calculate
the
number
of
prisoners
there
would
be
left
here for
exchange."
⁸