Federal Prisoner of War Camps in the South

 

   Prisoners of war were an inconvenient reality of the war years. When the first batches arrived in Richmond following the battle of first Manassas, no one really knew what to do with them. Almost 1,300 Federal soldiers were brought to the Confederate capital. Brig. Gen. John H. Winder quickly impressed the John L. Ligon and Sons Tobacco Factory building and converted it into a prison. That was the beginning of the system of military prisons across the South.  

   There were at least 118 military prisons in the South. Many of them were opened for only a short amount of time. For example, the prisons in Alexandria, VA; Boerne, TN; Camp Groce, TX; Camp VanDorn, TX; Charlotte, NC; Dalton, GA; Galveston, TX; Greensboro, NC; Houston, TX; Huntsville, TX; Jackson, MS; Marietta, GA; Millen, GA; St. Augustine, FL; San Antonio Springs, TX; San Pedro Springs, TX; and, Savannah, GA were all open for a year or less, sometimes much less.

      No one is sure how many Union and Confederate soldiers were taken prisoner during the war. Numbers range from 400,000 to 674,000 men. One historian believes that 409,000 of these prisoners were captured Federal soldiers.  

   Major prisons of the South included Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia, with 39,899 prisoners; Camp Lawton in Millen, Georgia, with 10,000 prisoners, many of them transfers from Camp Sumter; Belle Island, Virginia, with 10,000 prisoners; 15,000 in other various Richmond establishments; Danville, Virginia, with 4,000 prisoners; Salisbury, NC, with 10,321 prisoners, Savannah, Georgia, with 6,000 prisoners.

Camp Sumter

   The prison system was a complex operation during the war, and it leads to many different topics for exploration: just how did the system grow during the war years? What types of prisoners were housed at different facilities? What types of soldiers constituted the guard units at prisons? How were prisoners transported between prisoner of war camps? How many escaped? Who were the men responsible for overseeing prisoner of war camps? Was Henry Wirz any more of a war criminal than Albin Francisco Schoepf? How did local churches work with the prisoners in their communities? Were some local citizens sympathetic with the prison population? How brutal were prisoners towards each other? How many Federal prisoners galvanized and joined Confederate regiments? What were the medical situations like not only for the prisoners, but for the guards as well? How did the exchange system break down? What became of the prison sites after the war?

   While there are books on various prisons, I feel the best overview to date is Lonnie R. Speer’s Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (1997). Over the course of the next few months, my plan is to try and explore many of the topics listed above. I actually have already started with this post a couple of weeks ago. Check out that post here.