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Andersonville Prison Camp
Andersonville Prison Camp
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The prison camps, Andersonville and Elmira were the absolutely worst prison camps to be held captive in during the time of the Civil War. One of the reasons that these are the worst prison camp to be a part of is because they were treated horribly, hardly fed, and there wasn’t the best medical support. Surrounding these camps was a nineteen foot tall fence. It is said that if any Union solider got anywhere close to this fence that they would get shot with no reason, and no question. If you got lucky, you would maybe be able to survive. Those who did survive through the life in the prison camps were said to look like skeletons because they would be starved. When soldiers died in the prison camps, they were buried in what were called mass graves. …show more content…
It was located near Andersonville, Georgia. In June of the same year, the prison had become 26.5 acres. There were so many soldiers held captive and such little room that many of them suffered with all kinds of different dieses. Also the water sources that they had there were polluted so people got sick from that, too. The Elmira Prison was made for the Confederate soldiers that have been captured. It was located in New York. It had 30 acres of land; they also suffered with poor health conditions. In the beginning, it was more of a death camp than a prison, but slowly changed over time. They did not have a stable hospital which also caused many problems. The people there lived in tents during the seasons including winter because they didn’t have any prison cells due to not having the proper materials. The Andersonville prisons were so overcrowded that it was nearly 3 times the capacity that it was supposed to hold! There was very little shelter and most people slept out door. Things became more dangerous at the Andersonville prison as the war went on. Many prisoners starved to death mostly later on in the war because the Confederates had a serious problem with their supplies. This included supplies like bullets and food, they became very
There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
Earley notes that, “The design of the cellhouse contributes to the misery” acting as a greenhouse almost, this is how Leavenworth earned itself the nickname of the Hot House. According to an article published in Grist Magazine in 2014, federal judge Brian A Jackson ruled that the inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola had been subject to cruel and unusual punishment when nothing was done to save them from the heat, which reached 195 degrees in their cells. Kansas is also known for some exceedingly hot summers, and while Earley does not mention the exact temperature C cellblock could reach, if the entire place is known as the Hot House then it is likely just as harsh on these prisoners in the 90’s as it was for those in
The Confederacy established Andersonville, that most infamous of Civil War prisons, in late February, 1864. It built a stockade in west central Georgia to accommodate approximately 10,000 prisoners of war. As the fighting moved ever deeper into the South in the last year of the war, the expanded stockade at one point held nearly 33,000 Union soldiers. The termination by the North of the prisoner of war exchanges which had existed previously and the continually depleting resources of the Confederacy left these prisoners stranded in miserable conditions.
The conditions of prisons were a bit dreadful. In some prisons, prisoners had their feet fasten together by iron bars and had chains around their necks. Most prisoner cells had very little furniture and bedding, prisoners had to sleep on the floor or unless had their friends supply them with furniture and bedding. Most cells did not have a toilet, prisoners were given buckets. A prisoner was giving a small loaf of bread unless they had money to buy more food but that was a bit expensive. Even children were allowed in prisons. Some prison...
Overcrowding is one of the predominate reasons that Western prisons are viewed as inhumane. Chapman’s article has factual information showing that some prisons have as many as three times the amount of prisoners as allowed by maximum space standards. Prison cells are packed with four to five prisoners in a limited six-foot-by-six-foot space, which then, leads to unsanitary conditions. Prisons with overcrowding are exposed to outbreaks of infectious diseases such as, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
...from stories of the time. While many sources say that they argue with the wild perpetuation in their first paragraph they then maintain an indefinite description of the prison and attempt not to give a detailed look at the components and history of the prison before it lost life when shutting down aside from those stories describing how wild the west was. With this I was also not able to talk to any true experts of the prison, nor visit the prison or those surviving the ones who lived there on either side of the law causing my knowledge and research to be limited to the web, which as before mentioned is limited by lack of fresh or widely varied information. Had there been more sources that went into detail about the prisons other features aside from its capacity I would have been able to give more than an educated, generalized guess on how the some of the prison was.
In the early hours of February 2, 1864, fifty-three North Carolina men were captured by Confederate forces under the command of Major General Pickett. Within four months of their capture, most would be dead. Most would fall victim to the diseases acquired in Southern P.O.W camps in Richmond, Virginia, and Andersonville, Georgia. However, twenty-two were publicly hanged in Kinston, North Carolina. The wives, neighbors, friends, and former brothers in arms in the Confederate army were forced to watch the executions. From the Confederacies point of view, the executed men were Union soldiers because they deserted. Once captured, they deserved to be treated as prisoners of war. President Abraham Lincoln mentioned this on July 31, 1863. He ordered retaliation on the enemy prisoners in the North’s possession. His response was to kill a Southern P.O.W for every P.O.W the Confederacy killed. The Confederates argued that the men were simply deserters and therefore execution was a legitimate punishment for them.
It was 1864 when Horatio Kirkland Foote was taken to a prison camp. Horatio was taken to Andersonville which is located in south-west Georgia where within the 14 months that the prison was open over 45,000 other people were taken as well. Andersonville was the largest prison camp out of more than 150 recorded camps between both sides. When Horatio was at Andersonville, the conditions were vile along with all prison camps of the Civil War. If you were in one of the prisons you could expect to be deprived of clothing, nutrition, and stable living conditions. It is said that Horatio ''bunked'' (they were got actually given rooms or romates but Horatio shared blankets so they would stay warm better) with three others. As was said earlier living conditions were unstable Horatio and his three ''roommates'' were using few blankets to make a haven for the duration that they were together. Later Horatio was sent on a train from Andersonville to Charleston which is located in South Carolina. When they first arrived he was so debilitated that he was barley able to stand on his own due to an illness he acquired on the train. Fortunately unlike many others, Horatio was able to fight off the illness and become as virile as a person could get in a place of such conditions. He became equipped with better clothes and a blanket to keep warm from a boy who gave them to Horatio just before he passed away.
Just merely reading about Andersonville Prison Camp only give you a fraction what of the understanding of what happen at Andersonville, and its only by being able to visit Andersonville and looking around can you finally get the whole picture of the horror of one of the worst prison camps under the
Even though usually these people from the sounds of it were usually just swept under a rug, or that the camp would clean its act up when the state or others came to check on it isn’t. From the way that the book put it sounds like no one really started to question the methods of the camp until they were brought to light by the civil rights movement. Even then it took someone who knew someone there or someone who spent time there, for them to even hear about it. When it did make the headlines in was used to break the “Restless Race-Mixers” who wanted to put an end to segregation laws. This came as a shock to me and to think that our country put basically innocent people in facility that had for decades had been used on criminal that had committed murdered, rape, and other crimes, not protesting. Then for them to be stripped of all their dignity a face punish that was meant to break them. While yes, this punish didn’t match that, that was used on the convicts and no hands per se were laid upon them; they still face a form of torture. This was wrong and to think that this didn’t make the government question these methods, is a flaw from our past that we have to deal
The men who played the role of prisoner, like the guards, were selected at random. The harassment they endured, while all voluntary, was by any means less than humane. They were treated with very little respect, and denied basic rights, such as use of the restroom, and were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors for many nights as a form of punishment. When they arrived to the prison, they were stripped down, and given a change of clothes, but the “change of clothes”, was anything but what they expected to receive. They were actually dresses. The dresses were meant to emasculate the men even more than what they had been already. Rendered powerless, with lack of control of their environment, what other choice did they have than to accept what
Life for a slave in the antebellum South and a prisoner in Camp 14 was unbearable. The people in both situations had bad living conditions, food sources, and education. None of these people deserved to be treated like this but yet if they refused the punishments they had horrible consequences. In the South they got beaten with whips, raped, or sold to another slave owner. In Camp 14 they had a torchure building that they took people and torchured with fire and beaten, sometimes killed.
Several were killed by military guards posted for resisting order of their command. Their cultural and economic growth was ruined within a blink of an eye. They were only allowed to bring one luggage to wherever they were going and leave the rest behind for someone else to sell or take over. I was one of the many children interned at Heart Mountain camp in September 1942. After being interned first at Santa Anita racetrack — yes, the horse racing track in Arcadia —-I was removed by train to Heart Mountain. I still remember the soldiers with fixed bayonets standing between each car to discourage prisoners from moving from car to car. (Debra
The first place our sound guide took us to was the guard towers. They were about fifty feet tall and held enough room for maybe two guards. The towers looked too old for anybody to get into these days, but they had a view of a good portion of that side of the prison and a good section of the ocean. There were towers stationed the entire way around the prison with maybe 100 yards in between them. The towers were protected with bulletproof glass 360 degrees round. After viewing the towers Sean and I wanted to go see the prison cells. So we turned off our guide tapes for awhile and started heading up to the prison house. Everywhere Sean and I looked, it seemed like the entire place was just eroded. Some places were fenced off because they were not safe enough for spectators like ourselves to get close enough to look at.
In the 1700’s the first prison systems were the Hospice of San Michele (Rome) and the Mason De Force(Ghent, Belgium) they were famous because they were considered to be the ideal models of the prison