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Feature Article on Civil War Prison
Camps. Topic: CIVIL WAR
Written by Rich Wallace in
January, 1996
SEVERAL LOCAL CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS DIED IN SOUTHERN PRISON
CAMPS...Pg 2 |
| What untold suffering did
these men experience? We will never know. Their lips are now sealed. Letters from only one
of the men are known to exist. Alfred Swanders wrote to his sister Savilla, who lived on
the family farm south of Anna, on two occasions. On November 20, 1863, Alfred sent a
letter asking for "a shirt, a pair of socks, no. 11 shoes, 20 lbs. of crackers,"
along with paper and stamps. It was not mailed until December 9th, and he died three weeks
later. One comrade in arms, Joseph Wilkinson, did survive. Many years after the war,
Wilkinson talked to a biographer working for R. Sutton and Co. His story paints a grim
reminder about the tragedies of war and man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
Wilkinson was the youngest of six
brothers. When he enlisted in August of 1862, he was 18. Before the war was concluded, his
parents would grieve over the loss of two sons. William was killed on the battlefield at
Chickamauga on the same day Joseph was captured. George, who was also in company C of the
99th with Joseph, had died earlier at Nashville, Tennessee.
While tending to a wounded comrade,
Joseph was surrounded and captured. After spending a short time in Libby prison, he was
transferred with 5,000 others to Danville and kept throughout the winter in tobacco barns.
Smallpox broke out, and spread in a quick but deadly fashion. Wilkinson contracted it but
recovered. Out of the 22 prisoners from his regiment, 19 died. He remembered: "I
acted as nurse for several weeks in what they called a 'hospital.' It did not deserve the
name, for we had no medicines whatsoever except for red pepper pods, which we boiled and
administered as tea to the sick."
In April of 1864, the survivors were
loaded in box cars and transported 700 miles to the newly opened prison in Andersonville,
Georgia. The trip took 7 days. "None of us were permitted to leave the cars for
any purpose. When we reached Andersonville, a number of dead were found in each car."
When asked about it later, Wilkinson would only state, "My experience at
Andersonville is too horrid to relate, and is almost beyond belief." A few
details from the military record will suffice.
Run by Swiss emigrant Henry Wirz,
the prison and its conditions were the cause of the deaths of 13,000 union soldiers in
only 14 months. The prisoners had an average of 6 square feet per person. Death by
starvation and all manner of disease was a daily occurrence. Wirz once boasted that he was
"...destroying more Yankee soldiers than General Lee was killing."
One southern lady was allowed to
climb a guard tower and overlook the prison. Her prophetic, yet chilling comment: My
heart aches for those poor wretches, Yankees though they are, and I am afraid God will
suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting such things happen. If the
Yankees should ever come to south-west Georgia and go to Anderson and see the graves
there, God have mercy on the land.
Wirz was later tried by a military
tribunal led by General Lew Wallace,
convicted, and executed in Washington on November 10, 1865.
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