The Gates of Hell

The Disgraceful History of Civil War POW Camps

Almost 13,000 Union prisoners of war died in Confederate custody at a Confederate POW camp near Andersonville, Georgia, during the last 14 months of the war in 1864 and 1865. That was about 29 percent of the total of 45,000 Union prisoners held there during the war.  The exact number according to actual records was 12,919. That was more than half of the 22, 576 total Union deaths in Confederate POW camps. This represents 8.4 percent of the 270,000 Union prisoners held in POW camps during the Civil War. 

Although this tragic number of deaths was made into a continuous blizzard of anti-Southern propaganda in Northern political campaigns after the war, the Andersonville prisoners were not mistreated by Confederate authorities or Confederate guards at the camp. The Confederate guards died at the same rate as the prisoners. The principal causes of death at Andersonville were dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, smallpox, scurvy, and hospital gangrene. About half the prisoners suffered from scurvy. Malnutrition had greatly increased the vulnerability of men to these diseases and made wound recovery less likely. Many of the men were so emaciated that photos enraged the Northern public.

During the last months of the war, General William T. Sherman’s policy of total war against civilians included burning Southern crops and either killing or confiscating their livestock. Both Southern civilians and Confederate soldiers were suffering high rates of malnutrition. Confederate authorities realized they could not continue to sustain a high number of POWs and pleaded for a prisoner exchange,  but this was rejected by Union Secretary of War Edmund Stanton. The Confederates even offered to give up their Andersonville prisoners without exchange, if only Union ships would pick them up. They also pleaded for Union medical supplies to be used for the prisoners only.  Stanton’s answer in August 1864 was:

“We will not exchange able-bodied men for skeletons…We do not propose to reinforce the rebel army by exchanging prisoners.”

James Madison Page of the 6^th Michigan Cavalry, who was interned at Andersonville until transferred to Millen, Georgia, in September 1864, in his book, The True Story of Andersonville Prison, lamented,

“As bad as was the physical condition of the prisoners, their mental depression was worse and more fatal.”

In November 1865, the Confederate Commandant at Andersonville, Major Henry Wirtz, was tried by a Union Army tribunal and hanged, based on perjured testimony and outrageous violations of due process, including the dismissal of exculpatory testimonies of 68 former prisoners and a Catholic priest.  Wirtz’s scapegoating conviction and execution as a war criminal ranks as one of the most shameful miscarriages of legal justice in American history. Wirtz was pressured to save his own life by implicating Confederate President Jefferson Davis but refused to lie to save his own life.  Wirtz’s last words on the gallows were:

“I go before my God, the Almighty God. He will judge between us. I am innocent, and I will die like a man.”

Contrary to Union political propaganda after the war, Confederates died a much higher rates overall in Union POW camps than Union prisoners in Confederate camps. Of the 220,000 Confederate POWs held in Union POW camps, 26,246, died, a rate of 11.9 percent.

They died of much the same causes as Union prisoners: diarrhea, dysentery, influenza, extreme upper respiratory infections, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, scurvy, mumps, malaria, cholera, yellow fever, and hospital gangrene. Only at several Union POW camps there was deliberate torture, dietary deprivation, and cruelty to Confederate prisoners.

My great grandfather, John Berry Scruggs, and his brother James, were POWs at Camp Douglas, just south of Chicago, from August 1863 until the end of the war. They enlisted in John Hunt Morgan’s 2^nd Kentucky Confederate Cavalry in Blountsville, Alabama, in May 1862 and had been captured on Morgan’s raid into Indiana and Ohio as they tried to cross  back over the Ohio River into Kentucky in July 1863. Berry Scruggs had been wounded and was first taken to Camp Morton in Indiana before being transferred to Camp Douglas. Of as many as 24,000 Confederate soldiers held at Camp Douglas, sometime during the war, the official count of Confederate dead was at least 4, 454, but there are close to 6,000 graves there that the Sons of Confederate Veterans believe to be Confederate prisoners, a death rate of 19 to 25 percent.   

By early 1863, the mortality rate at Camp Douglas had climbed to over 10 percent per month, more than would be reached in any other prison, Union or Confederate. The U.S. Sanitary Commission (now the Red Cross) pointed out that at that rate, the prison would be emptied within 320 days. One official called it an “extermination camp.” The fall and winter of 1862-63 were very wet, cold, and windy. The majority of deaths were from typhoid fever and pneumonia as a result of filth, bad weather, poor diet, lack of heat, and inadequate clothing. Other diseases included measles, mumps, catarrh (severe sinus and throat infection), and chronic diarrhea.

As punishment for about 100 of Morgan’s Cavalry having escaped, the whole camp was punished by reducing  vegetable rations.  A reduction of rations and removal of the few barracks’ stoves were ordered from Washington. Eventually all vegetables were cut off. This resulted in an epidemic of scurvy described by R. T. Bean of the 8^th Kentucky Cavalry:

“Lips were eaten away, jaws became diseased, and teeth fell out.” Before authorities could correct the situation, many succumbed to the disease. In addition, an epidemic of smallpox raged through the camp. Lice were everywhere. Many prisoners had to supplement their diet by catching, cooking, and eating the all too abundant rats.”

Henry Morton Stanley, of the 6^th Arkansas, who later in his illustrious career as an African explorer and journalist uttered the famous words, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume,” later wrote of his experiences at  Camp Douglas:

“Our prison pen was like a cattle-yard. We were soon in a fair state of rotting while yet alive.” He later remarked that some of his comrades “looked worse than exhumed corpses.” 

On an absolute numbers basis, Camp Douglas was first in the list of infamy. Other names topping this dismal list were Point Lookout, Maryland  with 3,584 deaths; Elmira, New York, with 2,933 deaths; Fort Delaware, Delaware, 2,466 deaths,  Rock Island, Illinois,  1,960; Camp Morton, Indiana, 1,763, ; and Gratiot Street in St. Louis, Missouri, with, 1,140 deaths.  Elmira, dubbed “Hellmira” by the POWs,  was the most deliberately cruel with a death rate of 25 percent over just 12 months, ending in July 1865.

Historian, Thomas Cartwright, has described Camp Douglas as “a testimony to cruelty and barbarism.” Because of its miserable living conditions and increasing degrees of deliberate cruelty toward Confederate prisoners of war, the camp gained the title, “Eighty Acres of Hell.”  “Prisoners were intentionally deprived of adequate rations, clothing, and heating as punitive measures. From September 1863 to the end of the war, many were subjected to brutal tortures that often resulted in permanent maiming and death “   

The first commander of Camp Douglas as a POW camp was Col. James Mulligan of the 23^rd (Irish) Illinois Infantry. The prisoners respected Mulligan, even though an enemy, because of his heroic war record and honesty.  He was a strict disciplinarian but always fair. With more prisoners pouring into Camp Douglas than could possibly be managed with efficiency,  he was glad to take his regiment back to the field in June 1862. His valor and leadership in battle soon won him a promotion to Brigadier General. Sadly,  he was killed in action at Winchester, Virginia, in July 1864.

Being commandant of a prisoner of war camp was not considered a desirable position by most Union officers. During its four-year history, the camp had eight commanders. Most of these were honorable men, who later proved their worth in battle and in peace. The punitive policies and directives to reduce prisoner rations and impose other deprivations had come from the War Department. Early in the war, President Lincoln and Secretary of War Edmund Stanton termed all captured Confederates as “traitors” and refused to recognize them as prisoners of war. Nevertheless, public pressure resulted in prisoner exchange programs in July 1862 and May 1863, just before Lincoln and Stanton seized the first opportunity to discontinue them. Prisoner exchanges were of more value to the badly outnumbered Confederates, and Lincoln and Stanton hoped by eliminating them to exhaust Southern manpower. This decision later resulted in much suffering for both Confederate and Union prisoners, most notably at Andersonville

On August 18, 1863, Col. Charles DeLand was made commander at Camp Douglas, In reprisal for escape attempts and other infractions and as a method of interrogation, he introduced several forms of torture, including hanging men by their thumbs for hours. Several died from this ordeal. He also introduced a torture called “riding the horse” or “riding Morgan’s mule.” Prisoners were forced to sit for many hours on the narrow and sharpened edge of a horizontal two by four and suspended by supports four to twelve feet high. Guards often hung weighty buckets of dirt and rock on their feet to increase the pain. This often caused permanent disabilities.

In March 1864, after a tour of duty at Camp Douglas distinguished by corruption and mismanagement as well as cruelty, DeLand and his regiment returned to the field. In May, during the Wilderness Campaign in Virginia, he was badly wounded and captured.  Ironically, he was given every courtesy as a prisoner of war by his Confederate captors.

In May 1864, Colonel Benjamin Sweet became Camp Douglas Commandant and the cruelties continued unabated, and rations were reduced even more. During the 1864 election campaign Sweet also managed to persuade Lincoln and the War Department to put Chicago, then a town of 110,000, under martial law, to prevent a prison uprising supported by Southern sympathizers in Chicago.  More than 100 civilians were arrested and jailed for criticizing Lincoln policies or on the mere suspicion of Southern sympathies without the benefit of hearing or trial. Twelve died in prison before the end of the war. The uprising threat was vastly exaggerated and largely fabricated, but Sweet was promoted to Brigadier General in December for saving Chicago.

Many people of Chicago and many Christian churches in the area offered relief to the prisoners at Camp Douglas.  Until the Union government put a stop to the practice, many prominent people and local churches gave time, financial aid, and medicines to assist the post surgeon in the care of sick and destitute prisoners. The famous evangelist D. L. Moody was brought in to preach on several occasions and was appreciated.  Some Confederate prisoners, however, complained of a high propaganda content in the sermons of other preachers.

At the end of the war, the Confederate prisoners were offered transportation home by train, if they signed the Union loyalty oath. Otherwise, they would have to walk home. Most of the prisoners at Camp Douglas elected to walk home. By July 1865, the last POW had left Camp Douglas. The disgraceful history of Camp Douglas has been largely forgotten. Nothing remains of the camp but a monument and 6,000 graves at nearby Oak Woods Cemetery.