Seven Prisoners Make a Shadow

Wuld that I was an artist & had the material to pain this camp & all its horrors or the tongue of some eloquent Statesman and had the privleage of expressing my mind to our hon[orable] rulers at Washington, I should gloery to describe this hell on Earth where it takes 7 of its occupiants to make a shadow.
- Andersonville Prisoner, Sergeant David Kennedy,
9th Ohio Cavalry, Diary Excerpt, July 9th 1864

Handling prisoners of war was among the most difficult challenges to Civil War governments. Initially, both armies adopted an informal system of exchange. Then, in July 1862, Union Maj. General John A. Dix and Confederate General Daniel Hill drafted the first formal agreement specifying terms for the exchange of prisoners.

The Dix-Hill Cartel, as this agreement was called, was effective for only a few months. When news of the Emancipation Proclamation and the recruitment of black Union regiments reached Confederate ears, resistance was quick. The Confederate Congress passed a resolution that
:
(1) Any white officers captured in command of black troops were to be found guilty of inciting insurrection and put to death.
(2) Any black soldier captured was to be turned over to the states for punishment, or returned to their masters.

Union and Confederate positions could not be reconciled. Robert Ould, a Confederate agent, declared that the South "would die in the last ditch" before it would yield the right to return recaptured slaves to their masters. Ould was glad to exchange officers of equal rank, except for those commanding black units. Union negotiator Sullivan A. Meredith was unwilling to accept these terms. The prisoner exchange system ground to a halt. Suddenly, it became necessary for both Union and Confederate governments to begin housing and feeding large numbers of prisoners of war.

The Confederate government established the first southern prisoner of war camps in old warehouses and barns. As the number of prisoners grew, the government built camps in a number of locations, including Andersonville, Georgia. The camps were nothing more than open fields surrounded by stockades.

In the North, officials converted federal instruction camps like Camp Butler (Illinois) and Camp Chase (Ohio) into prison camps by surrounding them with heavy stockades. Confederate prisoners were also housed at Fort McHenry in Baltimore and at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
Prisoners in both North and South endured horrible conditions. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and malnutrition were common. The end of the war saved many of these prisoners from death, but it came too late for thousands of others. Of nearly 200,000 Union prisoners held in Confederate prison camps, some 30,000 died in confinement. Close to 28,000 of the 220,000 Confederate soldiers held by Union forces died as prisoners of war.

While negotiators in Washington and Richmond debated regarding prisoner exchange systems and conditions, the real effects were felt in flesh and bone by the men they discussed.

Andersonville, Confederate
POW Camp