Andersonville essays

Andersonville essays Torture, screams, no food: These are the conditions of prisons during the Civil War. The lack of attention to prisoners led to many gruesome things such as eating live animals. The two most infamous prisons were Andersonville in the South and Elmira in the North. Both had terrible conditions that were largely caused by the psychology of the War: If the other side doesnt have men they cant fight and likewise with weak men. Both prisons were alike in that men died, but each is infamous in their own way of how the men died. Since the Confederacy was collapsing, the South had little food and medical supplies. It was suffering greatly and to stop this an exchange system for prisoners of equal rank went on for one and a half years. Also, men were paroled and released after signing a paper stating that would not bear arms until officially exchanged. Later the exchange system was stopped because the North realized that it was benefiting the Confederacy. After all, the North could afford to lose men as prisoners but the South couldnt afford to replace troops. The Union then could stop the Souths ability to carry on the War. As a result of this, the number and size of prisons increased. Crowding, inadequate provisions, and poor sanitation was then a consequence of the greater number of prisoners which caused 49,000 men out of 346,000 prisoners during the War to die. A public outcry over prison conditions made Abraham Lincoln send Professor Francis Lieber of Columbia to set rules for the treatment of p risoners during war. His set of rules were called the Lieber Code. Both prisons violated this code and that is what I am going to show through this report. Andersonville is probably the most well known of the prison camps. It was a Confederate camp in Georgia from 1864 on. Its main problem was the massive overcrowding. It was built for 10,000 but at one time held 33,000 men. It was built of a roughly h...