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ELMIRA
PRISON, NEW YORK 1864 – 1865:
THE
SHAME OF THE UNION
Edited
by William B. Hesseltine
Elmira
was outside of New York City. It was only there for one year, yet it had the
highest death rate, per capita, of any prison camp North or South. It is a
shameful spot on American history. The vindictive U.S. commissary-general of
prisoners & the camp's Chief Medical Officer, Col. William Hoffman, bragged
in public, that he had killed more Confederate soldiers then any union soldier
in the field. When a soldier dies in the field, that's war. When he dies this
way, it's cold-blooded murder. After the war, the Yankees tried their best to
keep the whole incident hidden from the public. They gave the Chief Medical
Officer a promotion in rank and a medal for services rendered. Elmira had a
death rate of 24 percent. The mad doctor and everyone associated with Elmira
should have been tried for war Crimes.
Official
statistics for the worst six month period at Elmira:
Month
Prisoners
Sick Dead
September
9,480
563 385
October
9,441
640 276
November
8,258
666
207
December
8,401
758 269
January
8,602
1,015 285
February
8,996
1,398 426
Elmira
was on a 30-acre site, along the banks of the Chemung River. A one-acre lagoon
of stagnant water, called Foster's Pond, stood within the walls of the stockade.
The lagoon was a backwash from the river and served as a latrine and garbage
dump. Prison buildings were located on the high northern bank of the pond. The
lower southern level, known to flood easily, later became a hospital area for
hundreds of smallpox and diarrhea victims. Remember Foster's Pond, it will be
important later in the story. A more unsanitary spot could not have been chosen.
Elmira prison camp was established on May 15th, 1864, when Adjutant General E.
D. Townsend reported several empty barracks could be used to house a large
number of "rebels" recently captured. The buildings were to house as
many as 10,000 men.
Two
barracks, "built to comfortably accommodate 3,000 troops without over
crowding," had been set-aside for 4,000 prisoners.
An
additional 1,000 men could be quartered in tents on surrounding grounds. The
Camp Bakery had adequate facilities for feeding 5,000 prisoners. No camp
hospital existed, but tents were available for any men who might become ill. Not
until two weeks before the first contingent of confederate prisoners arrived did
Commissary General of Prisons William Hoffman point out again that as many as
10,000 prisoners might be sent to Elmira. Preparations were never made for more
than 5,000 men. On June 30, 1864, Elmira was said to be ready to receive
prisoners. Inside the fenced in area (known as "the pen") stood 35
two-story barracks, each of which measured 100 by 20 feet. Ceilings were barely
high enough to accommodate two rows of crude bunks along the walls. Unsealed
roofs characterized the wooden buildings. The floorings were of green lumber,
without foundations, and had little resistance to wind and water. Behind the
rows of barracks was a group of buildings converted into a dispensary,
adjutant's office and guardrooms. To their rear, extending to the northern bank
of Foster's Pond, were the cookhouses and mess halls. The first group of
prisoners to arrive at Elmira quickly crowded t allotted barracks. Subsequent
arrivals lived in "A" tents scattered around the prison area. At the
time of their arrival, most prisoners were unaware of one last and deadly
factor. Elmira was located in a region of New York State, where for at least
four months of the year, the weather was bitterly cold. One prisoner from
Virginia wrote the compound was, "An excellent summer prison for southern
soldiers, but an excellent place for them to find their graves in the
winter."
The
first contingent of prisoners arrived from New York by train. Prisoners were
pleasantly surprised when sympathetic citizens, at many stops, distributed food
and clothing to them. Yet, wrote one prisoner, "these agreeable incidents
were occasionally diversified by the insults of some sleek non-combatant, whose
valiant soul found congenial occupation in fearful threats of our indiscriminate
massacre, if he could only lay hands on us."
The
first group reached Elmira at 6 am on July 6th and numbered 399 men - one
soldier escaped enroute. The second group arrived early in the morning of July
11th, followed by 502 Confederates the following day. Before departing their
earlier prison camps, the prisoners received vaccinations for smallpox. The
injections were of poor quality vaccines, and seen on many arms "were great
sores, big enough, it seemed, to put your fist in."
On
July 15th, an Erie Railroad train jammed with prisoners, collided with a freight
train near the hamlet of Shohola. Forty-eight prisoners and seventeen guards
were killed. 100 prisoners and eighteen guards were injured. The injured
prisoners were put in wagons and transported to Elmira. Several days after the
accident the Confederate prisoners still lay on the floors of the makeshift
hospitals of Elmira, their wounds still untreated
and
clothing stuck fast to the dried blood of cuts and fractures.
By
the end of July, 4,424 prisoners were packed in the compound, with another 3,000
enroute. The total number leaped to 9,600 by mid-August. It took three hours to
feed 10,000 men in shifts of 1,800 at a time. The camp commander complained of
the over crowded conditions, and was told as long as the men got through their
breakfast by 11 a.m., and dinner by 6 p.m., nothing more was necessary.
The
runoff and sewage going into Foster's Pond was beginning to have its effects on
the prisoners. It was getting to be offensive to the nostrils and a danger to
the health. One of the surgeons at the prison stated the case more pointedly. An
average of 7,000 prisoners released daily over 2,600 gallons of urine -
"highly loaded with nitrogenous material"- into Foster's Pond.
Moreover, he noted, the pond received the contents of the sinks and garbage of
the camp until it became so offensive that vaults were dug on the banks of the
pond for sinks.
Washington
was notified as early as August 17; not until late October was permission
received to use prisoner labor to dig drainage ditches to remove the water and
it's rotting matter. By December the odor was gone, but by then scores of
prisoners were down with disease.
Housing
was still a problem and getting worse. Less then a month after the camp opened,
almost 10,000 Confederates were inside its crowded compound. Tents ran out on
August 7; a new shipment arrived on August 12, but there weren’t enough of
them. Hundreds of half-clothed prisoners had to sleep in the open, many of them
without blankets. Late in November, a Medical Inspector pronounced the barracks
to be "of green lumber, which is cracking, splitting, and warping in every
direction."
In
a feeble effort to lessen the number of prisoners at Elmira, late in September,
Washington issued a directive that prisoners physically unfit would be
exchanged. The order stated that no Confederates would be shipped southward that
were "too feeble to endure the journey." The Camp Commander was
ordered to
"have
a careful inspection of the prisoners made by Medical Officers to select those
who shall be transferred."
On
October 14, five Washington Surgeons examined the 1200 prisoners who arrived by
train at the Capitol. Five had died en route; scores of others were reported by
one doctor as being "unable to bear the journey." The physical
condition of many of these men, he added, "was distressing in the extreme,
and they should have never been permitted to leave Elmira." By the time the
train halted at the city point exchange base, forty men were reported dying and
another sixty were reported as being "totally unfit for travel."
Surgeon
C.F.H. Campbell wrote a strong letter to Col. Hoffman: "these men are
debilitated from long sickness to such a degree that it was necessary to carry
them in the arms of attendants from the cars to the ambulances, and one man died
in the act of being thus transferred." the spectacle, he concluded, was
"disgraceful to all concerned."
Despite
an outcry that the deed showed "the grossest indifference on the part of
the government" the Officers
responsible
for the prisoner transfer remained at their duties. The episode became one of
the major marks against the prison it's occupants had dubbed
"Hellmira."
In
the mean time, life at Elmira had become routine and, in most instances,
revolting. Prisoners not packed in the flimsy barracks swarmed around the yards
and vied for space within the few ragged tents. The first troops designated as
guards at Elmira were Negroes who, one Georgia soldier sneered, "had been
decoyed north and Organized into companies and regiments to guard their former
masters." Units of the Veteran Reserve Corps, and New York state troops
later became the provost guard. Late in July the prisoners underwent a unique
indignity. A group of townspeople erected two observation platforms immediately
outside the prison walls. For the nominal sum of 15 cents, spectators could
observe the prisoners as they endured life inside the compound.
Initially,
one of the more pressing needs of the prisoners was for clothing. The cry for
clothing brought an instantaneous response from southern families and friends.
Yet Col. Eastman withheld issuance of the clothing until he could get permission
for distribution from Col. Hoffman. The permission came in late August, but only
clothing of the color of gray could be issued. Piles of clothing of other colors
were burned. All but a few coats, shirts and pairs of trousers were destroyed.
Winter
struck early at Elmira. Prisoners lacking blankets and clad in rags collapsed in
droves from exposure. By early December, 1,600 half naked men "entirely
destitute of blankets," stood ankle-deep in snow to answer morning roll
call. In the second week of December, the federal government issued clothing for
2,000 men to 8,400 confederates then quartered at Elmira. In January,
Confederate authorities sent a shipment of cotton northward under a flag of
truce, the proceeds, from the sale of the cotton, went to purchase clothing for
the prisoners. If insufficient clothing, inadequate quarters, and the stench of
disease-laden Foster's Pond were trying ordeals for the men, other factors taxed
human endurance. High on the list were food rations. On August 18, in
retaliation for the conditions in Southern prison camps, Col. Hoffman ordered
prisoner rations restricted to bread and water. The results were, by late
August, an epidemic of scurvy was in full force; on September 11, no less then
1,870 cases had been reported. In October the prisoners received a single small
ration of fresh vegetables. Onions and potatoes, wrote a prison doctor,
constituted three of every five rations for two weeks of that same month; then
their distribution stopped. Not until December was the meager diet of bread and
water supplemented with a meat ration. However, stated Captain Bennet Munger, a
prison inspector, the meat was of such inferior quality that a quarter-beef
weighing 92 pounds yielded but 45 1/2 pounds of meat, "when carefully taken
off the bone." Men were dying of starvation at the rate of 25 a day. The
prisoners turned to a large rat population that inhabitated the banks of
Foster's Pond. Once, a small dog followed a wood cart into the compound. The dog
was captured and slaughtered, and its carcass was hidden in the barrack rafters
until dark. The prisoners were caught in the act of devouring their meal, and
arrested by guards.
Close
on the heels of the scurvy epidemic came an even larger outbreak of diarrhea.
Moreover, by November 1864, pneumonia had reached plague proportions. A month
later dreaded smallpox came to Elmira and in it's first week struck 140 men and
killed ten. Smallpox was ever-present thereafter. One prisoner wrote,
"there is not a day that at least twenty men are taken out dead."
Medical
treatment of prisoners from the outset was bad, and it just got worse as time
went on. As early as July 11, 1864 - five days after the arrival of the first
group of prisoners, Surgeon Inspector C.T. Alexander reported, "I found the
sick.... in no way suitably provided for except for shelter; diet not suitable;
some without bed sacks; blankets scarce." On September 21, Ward Assistant
Anthony Keiley wrote in his diary: "as I went over to the first hospital
this morning early, there were 18 dead bodies lying naked on the bare earth.
Eleven more were added to the list by half past eight o'clock." By November
the death toll in the hospitals had reached 755 men. A large portion of
mortalities stemmed from nearby Foster's Pond - which one observer described as
being "green with putrescence, filling the air with its messengers of
disease and death." At the rate of sickness then present, a Doctor informed
Washington, "the entire command will be admitted to the hospital in less
than a year and thirty-six percent will die."
Washington
ignored or denied repeated requisitions for badly needed medicines. An urgent
request for straw on which the sick could lay was ignored. Hoffman turned down
repeated requests to complete the ceilings and roofs on the hospital buildings
without any reasons given.
An
official in the U.S. Sanitary commission was turned down flat when he asked
permission to attend to the sick and dying. By late December at least 70 men
were lying on the hospital floors because of a lack of beds and straw; another
200 diseased and dying men lay in the regular prisoner quarters because there
was no room for them in the wards. As one guard wrote, "prisoners died as
sheep with the Rot." A federal inspector wrote in October with a sense of
relief, "The number of deaths this week is but 40."
The
number of sick and dead rose sharply at the end of 1864, when prisoners,
fighting disease, filth and starvation, could not weather the bitter cold of a
New York winter. The winter was so severe, and clothing so scarce, that
prisoners stood in deep snow with only rags tied around their frozen and swollen
feet to answer morning roll calls. Late in December, after repeated urgent
pleas, Washington sent a few stoves to Elmira. There were two small stoves for
each barracks, and a few for the men still housed in tents. Prisoners received
small wood rations only at 8 am and at 8 pm. During the 12-hour intervals they
had to get warm as best they could. Moreover, with an average of 200 men to a
barracks, each stove therefore was the sole means of warmth for 100 men.
Imagine, if you can, the weather 10 to 15 degrees below zero, 100 men trying to
keep warm by one small stove. Each morning the men crawl out of their bunks
(those that had bunks) shivering and half frozen to fight for a place by the
warm stove. The sick and weak were literally left out in the cold.
On
the night of March 16, 1865, unusually hard rains caused the Chemung River to
over run it's banks. Federals and Confederates alike hastily assembled crude
rafts to evacuate prisoners from the smallpox hospital in the flats, and they
did succeed in floating most of the sick to safety. Other prisoners crowded the
upper stories of the barracks as icy water rose halfway up the first level. The
camp's Col. Tracy reported jubilantly that the transfer of prisoners to high
ground resulted "with but slightly increased loss of life."
A
month later General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the prisoners received
much improved treatment, and were not guarded as closely.
The
paroling of Elmira's prisoners began late in May. Except for those still
confined to the hospitals, the prison camp was vacant on July 5th, and ready for
demolition a month later. The last prisoner, named Kistler, did not leave the
hospital and start home until September 27, 1865.
Elmira's
death rate in March of 1865 was an average of sixteen Confederates a day. Of a
total of 12,123 Confederate soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963 died of
sickness, exposure, and associated causes. Of the survivors who stumbled forth
from the stockade, an eyewitness made the observation; "I speak in all
reverence when I say that I do not believe such a spectacle was seen before on
earth... on they came, a ghastly tide, with skeleton bones and lusterless eyes,
and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of but one feeling - the
thought of freedom, the love of home."
Today
all that remains of Elmira is a well-kept cemetery.
[ Up ] [ CSA POW Elmira Story ] [ Elmira History ] [ Portals to Hell ] [ Elmira Diary ] [ Elmira Letter ] [ Ellis F. Davis ] [ Elmira Stats ] [ Escape ] [ John R. King Elmira POW ] [ Miles Sherrill ] [ Porter ]
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