The Hardships of War –

Civil War Prison Camps

Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Why so much death?
• The Technology of
weapons was
ahead of the
tactics
• The medical care
was crude and
basic
• Many soldiers
died in the squalid
living conditions
in prison camps
 What were Prisoner Camps?
• Captured enemies were held in Prisoner
Camps
• Both the North and the South had camps
• An estimated 56,000 Americans died
while in camps
• There were over 150 of these camps
across the north and the south
 What were some of the most
important camps?
• Andersonville -
A southern
camp in
Virginia.
– 55k men held at
its peak
– Almost 29% of
all people in
that camp died
 What were some of the most
important camps?

• Elmira - A northern camp in New York

– 25% mortality rate
 How bad was life in the camps?
• Prison diets consisted
of pickled beef, salt
pork, corn meal, rice,
or bean soup.
• The lack of fruits or
vegetables often led to
outbreaks of scurvy.
 How bad was life in the camps?
• In northern prisons, hungry inmates
hunted rats, sometimes making a sport of
it.
• Starvation and poor sanitation inflamed
outbreaks of diseases like smallpox,
typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and malaria.
• Sores, left untreated, led to gangrene—a
disease curable only by amputation.