The Conditions And Mismanagement Of Andersonville Prison

Throughout the history, when states were at war with each other, many soldiers were captured by the opposite side and put into war prisons. The captured soldiers were unable to grasp how their freedom was suddenly snatched away from them in the process of serving their country, and resulted in them becoming prisoners of war. During the bloody battles of the Civil War, numerous Union and Confederate soldiers were captured by the opposite sides and became prisoners of war. Approximately 194,000 Union soldiers were captured by the Confederacy, out of which 30,000 died during captivity. The ones who somehow managed to stay alive in the dreaded conditions of the Southern prisons suffered from lack of food and medical care. Many wished to be dead

The condition and mismanagement of Andersonville prison, also known as Camp Sumter, cause thousands of Union deaths. John L Ransom, an Union soldier in his twenties, was captured in 1863 by the Confederacy and sent to Andersonville prison. In his early days in the prison he started writing a diary in which he described his day-to-day life in Andersonville. He explained the food given to the prisoners got less in quantity and bad in quality. To avoid prisoners from escaping, any prisoner who lingered around the prison walls resulted in getting shot immediately. Oftentimes, when some prisoners lost hope, they purposely went near the wall to put an end to their lives. The extreme Southern weather proved to be disastrous for many captives as no shelter and clothing was provided for most of them, Ransom explained these conditions to be “Very cold and men suffer terribly with hardly any clothing on some of them”. Lack of shelter and strength also made them targets for ferocious animals such as vermins. Not only that, the prisoners had to go without food

Due to the treasonous image of the Confederacy in the war, many would think that Ransom’s writings were an exaggeration of the actual conditions, even though he never intended for it to be published. However, Ransom was not the only one who wrote about his experiences in Andersonville. Michael Dougherty, the writer of Prison Diary of Michael Dougherty explained Andersonville in a similar manner as Ransom. When he entered the Andersonville Prison for the first time, he saw guards with weapons standing on every side of the prison to prevent any prisoner from escaping. Several types of deadly instruments like “stocks, thumb-screws, barbed iron collars, shackles, ball and chain” were used to torture and discipline the prisoners. The dead were buried “in trenches without boxes, coffins or clothes, and but a scanty covering of earth”. He described his fellow mates in the following manner, “their flesh was wasted away, leaving the chaffy, weather beaten skin drawn tight over the bones, the hip bones and shoulders standing out”. Lack of nourishment deteriorated the health of the prisoners- muscles were lost, and the bones seemed to be protruding from their bodies.