The Civil War Concentration Camps

by Mark Weber

No aspect of the American Civil War left behind a greater legacy of bitterness and acrimony than the treatment of prisoners of war. "Andersonville" still conjures up images of horror unmatched in American History. And although Northern partisans still invoke the infamous Southern camp to defame the Confederacy, the Union had its share of equally horrific camps. Prison camps on both sides produced scenes of wretched, disease-ridden and emaciated prisoners as repulsive as any to come out of the Second World War.
Partisans in both the North and the South produced wildly exaggerated novels, reminiscences of prisoners, journalistic accounts and even official government reports which charged the enemy with wanton criminal policies of murderous intent. It took several decades for Revisionist historians to separate fact from propagandistic fancy and deliberate distortion from misunderstanding. Even today the bitter legacy of hate lingers on in widespread but often grossly distorted accounts from this tragic chapter of American history.
Neither side deliberately set out to maltreat prisoners. Arrangements were made hurriedly to deal with unexpected masses of men. As neither side expected the war to last long, these measures were only makeshifts undertaken with minimum expenditure. Management was bad on both sides, but worse in the South owing to poorer, more decentralized organization and more meager resources. Thus, prisoners held by the Union were somewhat better off.
In the first phase of the war, 1861-1862, the relatively small numbers of prisoners taken by both sides were well treated. Both sides agreed to a prisoner exchange arrangement which operated during the latter half of 1862. Under the cartel, captives remaining after the exchanges were paroled. But the agreement broke down, in part because of Northern refusal to recognize the Confederate authorities as anything other than "rebels," and in part over the Negro question. More