Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Andersonville National Cemetery, June 2011. The cemetery is the final resting place for the Union prisoners who died while being held at Camp Sumter/Andersonville as POWs. The prisoners' burial ground at Camp Sumter has been made a national cemetery. It contains 13,714 graves, of which 921 are marked "unknown".
Camp Douglas, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville", was the largest Union POW Camp. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862 and is noteworthy due to its poor living conditions and a death rate of roughly 15%.
The death rate of prisoners at Camp Douglas was lower than at Andersonville and the conditions at Camp Douglas were better. [44] If any one camp could be called the "Andersonville of the North," it would more likely be Elmira Prison at Elmira, New York where the deaths per thousand prisoners were 241.0 versus 44.1 at Camp Douglas. [231] [232]
The Florence Stockade was built and became operational in September 1864, and was in operation during the final fall and winter of the war. Overall in command was Lt. Col. John Iverson, of the 5th Georgia Infantry but the officer in charge of the stockade (a position comparable to that of Henry Wirz at Andersonville Prison) was Lt. James Barrett, also of the 5th Georgia. [2]
Of the 45,000 Union prisoners of war confined in Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia, 13,000 (28%) died. [29] At Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, 10% of its Confederate prisoners died during one cold winter month; and Elmira Prison in New York state, with a death rate of 25% (2,963), nearly equalled that of Andersonville. [30]
Henry Wirz. Henry Wirz (born Hartmann Heinrich Wirz; November 25, 1823 – November 10, 1865) was a Swiss-American convicted war criminal who served as a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War. [1] He was the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 ...
Mortality rates were high in 1863 and 1864, aggravated by Confederate shortages of food and supplies. Because of the high death toll, Libby Prison is generally regarded as second only in notoriety to Andersonville Prison in Georgia. In 1863, The New York Times published a description of "the Libby" from a purported prisoner diary entry. [4]
The propaganda was so powerful that the belief that the Elmira prison camp was a humane alternative to Andersonville still prevailed in some circles of thought years later. In a meeting in 1892, John T. Davidson, a captain of the guard detail at the prison, blamed the high mortality rate on the changing weather, water, and manner of living.