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013 - Appendix B - Responsibility for Prison Treatment · Prison Life in Andersonville

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  Speaker 1: Appendix B of prison Life in Andersonville by John Levi Miley.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Smith, New Orleans, Louisiana. Responsibility for prison treatment. It
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  Speaker 1: is difficult, even after the lapse of years, not a few,
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  Speaker 1: to consider dispassionately the treatment accorded by the Confederacy to
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  Speaker 1: her prisoners. War had fanned to aflame, the fire of
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  Speaker 1: sectional animosity, and a spirit of retaliation was awakened. It
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  Speaker 1: is true the South was comparatively a poor country and
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  Speaker 1: the hand of war had stripped her bare. The mighty
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  Speaker 1: armies of both sides carried on their vast operations on
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  Speaker 1: Southern soil, the one as an army of offense, the
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  Speaker 1: other as an army of invasion. In the movements of
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  Speaker 1: strategy and battle, many combatants were taken prisoners. These were
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  Speaker 1: sent to the rear for safe keeping and maintenance with
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  Speaker 1: practically unlimited resources. This additional burden was scarcely felt at
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  Speaker 1: the North. At the South the case was different. The
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  Speaker 1: extended territory occupied by the armies was practically unproductive for
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  Speaker 1: the people. It was therefore inevitable that the prisoners of
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  Speaker 1: war share the general limitation. As their numbers increased, it
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  Speaker 1: was necessary that they be conveyed to localities beyond the
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  Speaker 1: reach of rescue. Their increasing hosts could not wait upon
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  Speaker 1: the size of the stockades built for their confinement, when
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  Speaker 1: the limited forces that could be spared for their safe
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  Speaker 1: keeping must in some way hold them closely in hand. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: unfriendly prejudices were increasing by the very fact of invasion,
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  Speaker 1: and as the North was held responsible for the war,
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  Speaker 1: the prisoners were the object of bitter hatred. In numerous
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  Speaker 1: minor particulars, such as ample supply of water, of shelter,
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  Speaker 1: and of food and fuel. The obligations of the Southern
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  Speaker 1: military authorities were criminally negligent, yet many of the features
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  Speaker 1: of the prison circumstances were probably unavoidable. The situation in
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  Speaker 1: the South is summed up in the following extract from
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  Speaker 1: A History of the American People by Woodrow Wilson, pH d. Litt. Ti.
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  Speaker 1: Volume four, pages three six, three oh seven. One of
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  Speaker 1: the most distressing evidences of the straits to which the
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  Speaker 1: South had been brought was seen in the state of
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  Speaker 1: the prisons in which she was forced to keep the
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  Speaker 1: thousands of prisoners who fell into the hands of her armies.
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  Speaker 1: More than two hundred thousand first and last were taken,
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  Speaker 1: and only some sixteen thousand of these were paroled upon
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  Speaker 1: the field. Not until the war seemed turning toward its
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  Speaker 1: end could an exchange of prisoners be arranged. The federal
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  Speaker 1: authorities knew their superiority in fighting population and did not
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  Speaker 1: care to lose by returning fighting men to the South.
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  Speaker 1: If her soldiers died in Southern prisons, they were dying
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  Speaker 1: for their country. There, General Grant said, as truly as
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  Speaker 1: if they lost their lives in battle. In the South,
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  Speaker 1: men could not be spared from the field to guard
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  Speaker 1: the prisons. There were not guards enough, there was not
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  Speaker 1: food enough, and many thousands were crowded together under a
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  Speaker 1: handful of men. Proper sanitary precautions were, in the circumstances impossible.
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  Speaker 1: The armies themselves lacked food and went without every comfort,
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  Speaker 1: and the prisoners could fare no better. Inevitably fared worse
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  Speaker 1: because they were pinned within a narrow space and lacked
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  Speaker 1: the free air of the camp. A subtle demoralization touched
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  Speaker 1: the government of the Confederacy itself as the war went
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  Speaker 1: its desperate course, and those who kept the prisons felt
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  Speaker 1: that demoralis a with the rest one recollection has burned
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  Speaker 1: itself into memory. At Andersonville, there was a standing offer
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  Speaker 1: of immediate release to any prisoner of average strength who
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  Speaker 1: would take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and
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  Speaker 1: engage in non combatant service. Officers who entered the prison
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  Speaker 1: with these proposals were shunned by our men. I recall
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  Speaker 1: a recently naturalized federal prisoner who thus enlisted. When he
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  Speaker 1: re entered the prison in Confederate uniform as a recruiting officer,
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  Speaker 1: his reception was such that he fled to the gate
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  Speaker 1: for his life, shouting to the guard to protect him
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  Speaker 1: for flag and country. Our boys could uncomplainingly dial lingering death,
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  Speaker 1: but they could not turn traitor. End of Appendix B