Prisoner of War Camps

19Th-Century Wars

During the American Revolution, both the British and Continental armies made use of existing jails, prisons, and guardrooms in nearby forts as well as converted warehouses to confine prisoners of war. British military commanders also employed prison hulks (decommissioned warships adapted to hold civil prisoners) that were moored in New York, Charleston, and Savannah harbors and impressment (captured American seamen were routinely given the choice between serving in the Royal Navy or going into captivity aboard a prison hulk). Nearly 11,000 of the estimated 13,000 prisoners died because of beatings, starvation, and disease.

Less than 40 years after the Revolutionary War, the United States and Britain again found themselves in battle. Prisoners taken during the War of 1812 were held under much better conditions of confinement. As in the earlier conflict, guardrooms at existing forts and civilian jails and prisons were used to confine those prisoners of war who were not paroled or exchanged. Unlike during the Revolutionary War, neither side employed prison hulks.

Guardrooms at or near existing military forts were first used to hold prisoners of war during the American Civil War. When these facilities proved inadequate to hold the increasing numbers, civilian [Page 756]jails and prisons were pressed into service, but they, too, later proved inadequate to meet the demand for holding space. By the end of the conflict, five classes of facilities held prisoners of war, namely: (1) fortifications like the existing military fortifications at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, and Fort Pickney, South Carolina; (2) converted warehouse buildings such as Libby Prison, Virginia, and Gratiot State Prison, Missouri; (3) tent cities like those found at Point Lookout, Maryland, and Belle Isle, Michigan; (4) stockades such as Andersonville, Georgia, and Salisbury, North Carolina; and (5) converted jails and prisons like Elmira, New York. The operation of these five types of facilities also gave rise to a new term: “soldier prisons.”

The confinement conditions in the approximately 150 Civil War prisoner of war camps varied between the North and South and between camps on both sides. Elmira in the North and Anderson-ville in the South stand out from the camps that were operated by both sides during the war. Andersonville was a stockade enclosure whose prisoners were forced to dig holes in the ground for shelter and forage for scraps of wood or other materials from which to construct small, above-ground shelters known as “shebangs,” while Elmira consisted of numerous poorly heated wooden barracks and tents with few amenities.

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