Prison Camps During The Civil War

War prisons run by the Union were inhuman

Civil War prison camps were horrible places for both north and south soldiers. Camps ran by the Union were also very inhuman. Most camps were overcrowded with little to no shelter. This proved to be an environment for diseases that ran rampant through the stockades and was responsible for the majority of the deaths. ‘ During about mid war the North and South took on more and more soldiers. The camps were only set up to hold so many people but they just kept coming. In the early stages the North and South had agreements to trade soldiers. They would trade soldier for soldier at an undisclosed area to keep the populations down. But soon the agreements broke down because the soldiers were being recycled
The Union believed that the war would not last very long, so the camps were thrown up in shambles and on considerable small amounts of thought and land. The North had a number of camps set up scattered through the northern half of the United States. The biggest ones: Elmira, New York; Rock Island, Iowa/Illinois; Camp Douglas, Illinois and Camp Morton in Indiana. Although there were many smaller camps these were the deadliest and most populated. These camps at most held close to 12,000 Confederate soldiers at one time. And the death rates reached nearly a quarter of the
It was set up to only hold 4,000 prisoners. But it soon skyrocketed to a population of 12,123 men at its most populated point. The soldiers here experienced very hard times. They had little to no clothing and food. The rations for a day would less then compared to one meal of someone today. They would receive only little cornmeal or bread with morsels of meat. The living conditions were little to non, the men relied on their own ingenuity to make inadequate shelters made of sticks and blankets and other materials. This was not enough to keep the men out of the harsh weather of New York. Due to the overcrowding and poor living conditions diseases and health problems grew. The men were malnourished and weathered and things like Small Pox, diarrhea, and Pneumonia ran through the camp like a wildfire. Camp Elmira had a rate of death close to 25 percent. One in seven men died at this camp. By september of 1865 3,000 plus men had perished in Camp Elmira.
Camp Douglas of Illinois was comparable to Camp Andersonville (Southern Camp). It was called “Andersonville of the North”. The Camp was originally for training Union soldiers but as the prisoner population grew it changed. Camp Douglas was especially brutal due to the pure disregard of the Union officers in charge. The living situations were so nasty that it would drive a dog mad. It was said that nothing but a fire could cleanse the camp. The Union officers purposely cut the rations and quality