A. Plan of investigation
The ethics and rules of war have been a fiercely debated topic for centuries. One facet of war that is particularly divisive is the treatment of prisoners of war. This investigation compares the treatment of prisoners of war in the Andersonville and Rock Island prison camps during the American Civil War. Andersonville and Rock Island are widely regarded as the harshest prison camps of the Confederate and Union armies, respectively. The conditions of each camp will be examined and compared using factors such as nutrition, living arrangements, habits of camp leaders, and death rates.
The main source used in this investigation is Life and Death in Civil War Prisons by J. Michael Martinez. Through interpretation and evaluation of several books, primary sources, and court cases, the treatment of Confederate prisoners and Union prisoners will be compared.
B. Summary of evidence
In order to understand the significance of the prison conditions and some of the reasons underlying why those conditions existed, it was necessary to become familiar with the events surrounding the creation and use of the prisons. Andersonville and Rock Island were prisons belonging to the armies of two opposing nations, the Confederate States of America and the United States of America. The CSA was composed of states that had recently seceded from the USA, which sparked the beginning of what is known as the United States Civil War. The war broke out for numerous reasons, including slavery, differing economic interests, and the recent election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860. Lincoln’s election was a particularly divisive issue, as he promised to contain slavery in the South and prevent its spread (Goodwin). This division is evi...
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Gillispie, James Massie. Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners. Denton, TX: U of North Texas, 2008. Print.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Print.
Martinez, J. Michael. Life and Death in Civil War Prisons: The Parallel Torments of Corporal John Wesley Minnich, C.S.A. and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss, U.S.A. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill, 2004. Print.
Ransom, John. "Prisoner at Andersonville, 1864." DISCovering U.S. History. Detroit: Gale, 2003.Student Resources in Context. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1997. Print.
Woodworth, Steven E., and Kenneth J. Winkle. Atlas of the Civil War. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
The American Civil War is one of the biggest turning points in American history. It marks a point of major separation in beliefs from the North and the South and yet somehow ends in a major unification that is now called the United States of America. It still to date remains the bloodiest war in American History. The book “This Republic of Suffering, death and the American Civil War” by Drew Gilpin Faust better explains the change in thought from the American people that developed from the unexpected mass loss in soldiers that devastated the American people. Throughout this review the reader will better understand the methods and theory of this book, the sources used, the main argument of the book, the major supporting arguments, and what the
What The South Intends. THE CHRISTIAN RECORDERS August 12, 1865, Print. James, Edward, Janet James, and Paul Boyer.
McPherson, James M.; The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan: 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY. 1994.
In James McPherson’s novel, What They Fought For, a variety of Civil War soldier documents are examined to show the diverse personal beliefs and motives for being involved in the war. McPherson’s sample, “is biased toward genuine fighting soldiers” (McPherson, 17) meaning he discusses what the ordinary soldier fought for. The Confederacy was often viewed as the favorable side because their life style relied on the war; Confederates surrounded their lives with practices like slavery and agriculture, and these practices were at stake during the war. On the other hand, Northerners fought to keep the country together. Although the Civil War was brutal, McPherson presents his research to show the dedication and patriotism of the soldiers that fought and died for a cause.
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
Andersonville Prison has not always been know as Andersonville Prison. When it was being constructed, it was officially known as Fort Sumter, after the railroad station where it was built (Davis 1). It was built on ten acres of land (Andersonville 1). There were three different location options that were considered for the building of Andersonville Prison. It was chosen because of its remote location and the fact that it was so far inland that it would not have to worry about attacks made from the ocean. This was completely opposite than the original location of camps which was in Virginia (Futch 35). Because it was located in the southern portion of the United States, much of it was built by African-Americans, who were either freed or enslaved. Andersonville Prison was protected with large logs and Confederate soldiers in posts to shoot anybody trying to break the rules. The amount of prisoners that it was made to hold was ten thousand prisoners. At the peak of its running, it had more than forty-five thousand prisoners (Davis 1)! Because there were so many prisoners, at night, the men would sleep standing up because there definitely was not enough room to lay down. Many prisoners would die of disease because a creek, Stockade Branch, ran through the middle. The creek was a glorious breeding ground for mosquitos. Dysenter...
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Gresham M. Sykes describes the society of captives from the inmates’ point of view. Sykes acknowledges the fact that his observations are generalizations but he feels that most inmates can agree on feelings of deprivation and frustration. As he sketches the development of physical punishment towards psychological punishment, Sykes follows that both have an enormous effect on the inmate and do not differ greatly in their cruelty.
The 1970s in the United States was a time of incredible change, doubt, as well as reform. The many issues happening throughout the country helped to lead to the discomfort in many prisoners that eventually lead to their e...
Perman Michael, Amy Murrell Taylor. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.
An American resolution: The history of prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877 by Matthew Meskell. Stanford Law Review.
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
After the effects of sensory deprivation among POWs were brought to the attention of both media and researchers, there began a large controversy regarding methods of the correctional system and their aftereffects. For example, confessions
This horrifying ordeal shows an all too common fate after the invasion of troops during The Thirty Years War. No one felt safe, and each day was filled with constant anxiety of being forced to live through what some may call a living hell.