'Hell and rhe Devil': Andersonviile and rhe Trial of Captain Henry Wrz, C.S.A., 1861

• Pages: 03

Professor Lewis L. Laska and Ah. James II, Smith

1. ISTRODUCTIOS

Bv the late spring of 1865. the milirarr triumph of the Union was all bur complete. Peace had nor been fbrmall>- proclaimed; but deprived of leaders, without civil government. its economy sinking into a sea of worthless banknotes, and man? -of Its cities in ruins, the Confederacy was shattered.

The soldiers ot the Union armies had marched in grand view at Washington on 21 and 24 May, their boots kicking ;p the dust of Pennsylvania Avenue into great sunlit clouds, and thhn most of them had gone home. Bur many. especially from thr officer corps, re-mained in the capital to help with the work that was still to be done.

Even before the guns fell dent, President Lincoln had begun to plan far postwar restaranon, and the policies he conceived \ w e lenient toward the South. All that \+odd be asked of the former rebellious states mas that rheir citizens pledye not to rake up arms against the narional government, rhar their leeislarurei repudiate the Confederate debt and that they ratify the fourteenth amendment.

Then, mirh a single horrifying shot from Booth's revolver, the Presidenr was dead, and as the nens traieled across the Sarth. rhou-sands became convinced that rnagnanimq tonard the i

anquished

rebels was ahally inappropriate. Before Lincoln's murder, those who wanted to extract retribution from the South were principally the radical members of Congress. Son these fen viere joined by thousands who demanded that the South be punished for causing a mar rhar had drained both sides of so much blood and treasure. As rhe heat of summer sectled upon IVarhington, the demands for revenge greu more raucous with each passing day.

Thus, the scene was set for one of the most contmveriial state

trials in .lmerican history.

On rhe morning of !I .%upit 1863. nine officers of the United Stater Irmy. each In imrnacdare dress uniform and gleamme brass. and acting ar the order of the President of the Cnired States, filed into the chambers of the Court of Claims in the Capitol. They ranged m age from !I to 61 and in rank from Lieutenant Colonel to hlajar General. All had commanded troops under fire. Several would later serve in gorernorships. Congress, or rhe diplomatic corps. Bur coda? they mere assembling ro hear charger of con-spiracv and murder aaainst eighr former Confederates m connection with ;he horrors of :Andersomille pr~son.~

Anderionrille. Like Yprer and Guernica and Auschwitz. it is a name that has come to stand far human misery wrought by liar.

Between February 1864 and \lav 1865, 13.000 soldiers of the Union arms perished there in conditions of unspeakable rqua10r.~ After the South \vas overrun in the spring of 1861 and the gates of the prison were turned open another 2.000 men, rufferinp from festcrine mounds or broken health, a.ould die before the? could reach home.

\!any of those mho survived internment told their stones about life and death in .%ndersonrille. The chronicles of horror-journals, articles, memoirs. petitions far gal ernment assstance. and courtroom reitirnony-comprise a toluminous literature of infamy.P But

they are not unimpeachable; nor unambiguous, merely far being firsthand, nor do the!- tell us who. if anpone. was responsible for Andersanville, even if man>-, made bitter by the losses of the war, thought they did.

11. PRISOTERS, PRISOSS ASD ASDERSOSVILLE

From the first days of the Civil TVar, both sides rook a great number af prisoners. and as they began to accumulate both governments came under increasing pressure, principally from the press. to work out a system of prisoner exchange, following long-established military precedent. Finally. on ?? Julr 1862, a cartel. modeled on the one aereed upon by Enoland and the United Stater m the Revolutio&ry TVsr, wa6 ado& the cartel prorided that at frequent intervals the North and the South would exchange prisoners. Despite many difficulties-mutual distrust. problems of bookkeeping. an intricate system of values wherebv officers were worth a certain number of enhsted men-the cartel kept prisoner populations on both sides down to a manageable size.

In the summer of 1861. however, it began to collapse. There \+ere sereral reasons. Initially the South balked at releasing under the same terms as other prisoners former s h e s who had fled north and pined regro regiments in the Union Armv. The North responded by re-fusing to make any exchanges at ali. Furthermore, each arm, had arrested a great number of civilians, and their governments bickered endleirlv over wherher those people were cm ered bv the amcement on prisdners of uar. The last straw. in the eves of the Federals. was the restoration to duty, in plain violation af'the terms of the cartel, of same 35,000 Cnnfederate prisoners released on parole following the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July 1863.

Lieutenant General U. S. Grant, general-in-chief of the Sorth's forces, rook a coldly realistic view of the cessation of the exchange. By mid-1861 there aere more Confederate prisoners in the Torth

than Union prisoners in the South, and the South mas much more pressed for manpower than the North. Grant saw that the end of the carrel hurr the South and brought the dal- of Emon victory nearer.s As he wrote to General Butler. the Cmon agenr for exchange of prisoners, "It is hard an our men not to eschange them, bur I; IS humane to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. . . . If \+e hold these caught, they count for no more than dead men."'

\l.irh the breakdoun'of the cmcl, the population of the Conlcderate prisons around Richmond began to in ell. Because every Southern soldier was denperatel!- needed at the front, only a minimil farce w s detailed to guard the camps, and the c&nr of the vicinity, fearing an ourbreak. were clamoring for removal of the captiier from their midst. Furthermore, a site avay from the rhearre of war would be less likely to tempt raids from the enemy.

In Sorember 1661. Captain IT-. Sidney \Tinder was ordered by rhe Confederate Secrerary of \Tar, J a m s .A Seddon. to find a prison site in Georgia at "a healthr localitv, vith plenrv of pure. good water, a running srrearn. and if pa;iible. shade ;rea and ~n- the immediate neighborhood of cmst and saw mills."' The place \l inder erenrualiy chose was ar In&rron Starion, about 60 mdei south of Macon, amidst the low hills, marshes, and swamps of southnest Georgia.lTork on the new prison uas commenced m January 1864 under the command of Captain Richard \Tinder (3 cousin of Sidney). Using slave labor, tools. and teams impressed m the ncinit) under

the authority of the Confederate go\ernment. he directed that trenches be dug to enclose an area of 18 acres. (This was enlarged to 27 acres in July.) Every tree and scrub inside this boundary mas cut dawn, and the tall straight pines that were felled were trimmed into 20-foot leneths. These nere hewn inra logs eight to nv&e inches thick, ana the hewn timbers. pointed on top. were ret five feet deep into the earth, forming a a.all about 15 feet high.

On the autside of the stockade there v a s a series of platforms and sentry boxes apprasimdtelv I00 feet aparr. From these the guards had an unobstructed vi& of the interior of the prison. At a distance of 60 paces outside the main stockade. a second wall, about 12 feet high was built. The interiening space mas left unoccupied and serred as an additional safeguard against escape. Surrounding the whole mas a cordon of earthworks in which guns were placed, trained an the compound, and continuously manned.

On 25 February 1864, rhe firsr oroup of prisoners. 500 in number. were turned into the stockade e& though it stood unfinished and food and equipment were m short suppl!-. Before authorities could get the situation in hand and met the prison into proper order, they were swamped by an unceasini influx of prisoners, some 400 arriving every day.

By April 1 the stockade, designed for 10.000. held 7,160 prisoners. By the end of June over 25,000 men nere huddled together under the summer sun and rain, and by August 31,000 men were confined

at Andersonville.hlany prisoners arrived at Andersonville from other prisons already ill with chronic diarrhea, scurry, and contagious diseases which rapidly spread ihroughour the camp. IToefully lacking in medicine, the prison hospital. which was located inside the stockade and thus proiided another source of cantaeion. could do little to impede the epidemics and scores of prisanGa died soon after they arrived.

Hundreds af prisoners had no shelter.P Others had only patchwork tents or brush huts which did not keep them dry. The Confederacy,

unable to suppl>- its own soldiers, had no clothing for the prisoners, tatters 01 nothine at all to near. Thw also mm dietarv defici&iei: food v a s meagke and

I the conkkg facilities of Andersannlle prison the mounting prison papulation. Lntd some of the capni-es managed to dig their own wvells. the only source of water far the entire camp was a creek which ran through rhe center, but in a short time the creek bed and fully an acre of land bordering it became a purrid mass of corruption, polluted by nastes from rhc prison cookhouse. the hospital, and by human e\crement. no plan having been deiised at the outset for sexrage disposal.

The miicrahle condition of manv prisoners xhen thev arrived at Anderranrdle. the mrroducrion of 'disease into the camp. the pollution of the water suppl!-. the lacarinn of the hospital xithin the stockade. inadequate medical care, lack of shelter. absence of sanitar) regulations, short and defective rations. and ol-eicron.ding-al1 there contributed to the rerrifyp mortalit!- rate. which in .\upit reached 100 a d2y.O

There were other causes of death: at least 150 men here shot for allegedlv trespassing over the "dead line.'' a short fence formed by driving stakes into the !round and nailing strips of board on tap of them. Set about 20 feet inside the compound...