Untitled Document

'Helmira'

by Al Benson, Jr.

Over the years, when dealing with the subject of prison camps during the War of Northern Aggression, the only name that seems to emerge among the politically correct excuses for 'historians' is Andersonville, or Camp Sumter. If you were to judge by the amount of Yankee propaganda you see polluting the riverbed of history, you would think that Andersonville was the only 'Civil War' prison camp that ever existed, or at least the only bad one. Union prison camps are hardly ever mentioned at all, or if they are, we are led to believe that they were something on the order of 19th century versions of Motel 6.

About five years ago, Ted Turner put out a television movie called Andersonville on one Sunday evening. I watched the thing, expecting the usual propaganda. I wasn't disappointed, sorry to say.

Now, no one who has read history can deny that Andersonville was a pretty horrible place to have to be. There were all manner of problems there: overcrowding, lack of proper food, problems with sanitation, and the list could go on. However, many have claimed that the Confederacy let Andersonville be that way on purpose - just so they could abuse Northern prisoners. Needless to say, objective research has proved that this charge is blatantly untrue. Andersonville was the way it was because the South had too many Northern prisoners to care for and lacked the resources to properly care for them. They had attempted to get the North to take her own captured soldiers back, simply on humanitarian grounds, because the realized they could not properly take care of them. The North refused - that great 'humanitarian' Lincoln preferred to let his own soldiers suffer in order to further cripple the Confederate war effort, and butchers like Sherman and Grant concurred.

After watching Turner's debacle about Andersonville, I wrote and self-published a small booklet entitled P O W Paradise - Life as a Guest of the Yankees. In it I gave bried descriptions of four Union prison camps; Fort Delaware, Point Lookout, Camp Douglas in Chicago, and Elmira, 'affectionately referred to as 'Helmira' by Confederate prisoners of war. Although my little booklet never reached the millions that Turner's television flick did, I was frustrated enough that I felt I needed to do something in protest. And, if you are willing to dig a little, there is information about Northern prison camps out there, and it is far from pretty or reassuring.

George Levy, author of To Die in Chicago which is the story of Camp Douglas prison camp, has noted that, out of 12,123 Confederate prisoners at Elmira, [originally it was designed to hold a maximum of 5000,] 2063 died, almost one out of every six men. Levy noted that, in March of 1865, an average of sixteen prisoners a day expired at Elmira. Elmira Prison had a death rate of 24% in one year.

Chuck Rand, a member of the SCV from Louisiana, in an article on the Colour Guard web site, in 1996, noted the horrible conditions at Elmira. He wrote: "The prison water supply was furnished by a stagnant pond and it soon became polluted by human waste and garbage. In addition to the lack of water, the Confederate prisoners suffered terribly due to the harsh New York winters. The prisoners were furnished with neither enough clothing or fuel to keep warm...Medical treatment was poor and needed medicines and supplies were withheld by Washington even when requested by prison doctors." And there were never enough doctors! Mr. Rand has asked the obvious question: "Why were the prisoners at Elmira deprived of food, housing, medical care, fuel, and clothing when it was abundantly available in the North? It is unfortunate that these and many other facts have been neglected in the telling of history, and the Union government was never made to answer for the war crimes committed by its military and officials." Why, indeed?

Just recently, author Michael Horigan, a history teacher in Elmira, New York, has written a book called Elmira - Death Camp of the North. We have finally gotten a book that deals with the atrocities perpetuated at Elmira. Mr. Horigan did ten years of research. He believes that Elmira was a prison camp that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had targeted for 'retaliation' against Southerners. Mr. Horigan notes prison officials purposely reducing the amount of rations for the prisoners, their not allowing sutlers to sell food which would have helped to prolong life [fruits and vegatables] to the prisoners. Horigan also notes that many Confederate prisoners had to suffer through the bitter New York winter with little more clothing than they had during the summer months, and accusations were made against the War Department that they deliberately withheld blankets and warm clothing.

So, the question remains, why, with all the resources available to her, did the North treat her prisoners so badly? Union prisoners in Andersonville and other places in the South suffered because, in most instances, the South simply lacked the resources to care for them. Toward the end of the war the South could barely feed her soldiers in the field. What many don't know about Andersonville is that the guards there ate the same rations as the prisoners did - so it was never a case of deliberately starving the prisoners, there was just no more available. In the Northern prison camps, Elmira, Fort Delaware, and others, more was available and was withheld purposely. It is my humble opinion that these scarlet blotches on the dark underbelly of the Yankee Empire need to be exposed more, so that all who are willing to look may see that the Lincoln Administration was not composed of a group of individuals all filled with goodness and light, but was rather, in the main, a bunch of vindictive and spiteful men, bound and determined to make the South and her people suffer because they had the audacity to dare to defend their rights.