back into circulation, but ensures the protection of our own black soldiers who were taken in battle. and the results of this were immediate because now union soldiers understood that if you are caught in battle, you would be held permanently. so it was no easy process of getting back to your own army. which meant that if you're a union soldier and you did not want to spend time in a prisoner of war camp, it might be better to run from the enemy than to fight and perhaps face captivity. and one of the reasons we were kind of talking about for the struggle the union army had during the overland campaign made the argument that by the end of it, these armies were kind of in a really poor shape. one of the things the union soldiers were understanding was that if they surrendered, they would go to andersonville which is something they did not want to do. it was probably in their best interests if they wanted to survive to run if the battle did not look like it was going their way. now, for african-american

soldiers, the fort pillow massacre gives them a justifiable reason to retaliate. and when african-american troops go into battle, oftentimes they go in under this desire no the to take confederate prisoners for retaliation of what had been done to their race back in april 1864. so many african-american regiments had this cry. remember fort pillow. here was a regiment that is designed as battle flag based on vengeance. a black soldier bayonnetting a confedera confederate. this was the emblem they took into battle. try to think about this in 21st century terms. no american unit can have a vengeful insignia like this today. but back in the 19th century, this is very common. so this brings us to the third and final phase of the prison system. and that is the prisoner of war camp phase. and this will begin in august of 1863 and last until the end of

the war. they have prisoner of war camps before then, but they're, again, supposed to be temporary holding pens for prisoners before they are exchanged. but most of the war, if this phase is in operation and it's holding hundreds of thousands of prisoners on both sides, and they have to deal with the problems of being in such a system. and we're going to kind of go through several prisoner of war camps on both sides and give you a flavor for the problems that existed in each. this is an image of point lookout, maryland. one of the first of the prisoner of war camps designed to house confederates right after the breakdown of the dick's hill cartel. it exists in st. mary's county, maryland, right at the juncture of the potomac and the chesapeake bay. this is the potomac here. chesapeake bay. and it comes to a point. there used to be a little lighthouse. and then there was a huge hospital facility for salers and marines who would be serving on the blockading squadrons. but in august 1863, the union

prison system devised as a massive stock aid to hold about 5,000 confederate prisoners. and by the end of the war, nearly 50,000 inmates would be incarcerated there. and this section right here is the stock aid. it was a huge wooden barricade on the north side of the beach adjacent to the chesapeake bay. these positions here are the camps of the sentrys as a main road that kind of led in. and you can see one of the reasons this region was chosen is because it's on a peninsula. it is nearly impossible to break out. there was a huge creek called lookout creek which had two narrow causeways. and then there were forts at each of those causeways with artillery pieces that faced along them. so if there was a mass breakout, the leaders of that breakout would be blown to atoms by trying to cross into southern maryland. now, at first, the situation in this prison camp is fairly

peachy. that is because there is a decent relationship between the confederate inmates and their union guards. these are some of the union sentrys at point lookout, the members of the new hampshire brigade. there were three veteran new hampshire regiments sent to look out after these prisoners. and they treated the captives with respect. the prisoners were allowed outside the stockade at various points in the day to fish and to cut down lumber. they can grab crabs out of the bay. they can exercise. these are watercolor sketches done by a confederate inmate, a guy names jon jay ammanhouser. it's a great resource kept up in the maryland state archives that show confederate prison life. they're all kind of humorous, little one-act cartoons. but the images show us what confederate soldiers did. here they are eating watermelons they've grown. here they are grabbing blue

crabs out of the bay. this poor fellow here has been pinched because he didn't know what a crab was. and here they are fishing and bathing in the chesapeake bay. as a union soldier who served as a guard described, he said strict police and sanitary regulations were enforced. good food and pure water amply supplied and nothing for the health and comfort of the prisoners was wanting. they were all much better provided for than with their own army. and many of them better supplied than ever before in their lives. this treatment so different from that of our own starving comrades and prisoner pens of the south and so much better than expected by the rebels themselves soon made its impression and had a favorable effect upon the recipients. sectional prejudice and hatred engendered and intensified by the war soon softened into respect and even friendship and a great change of vision came over the vision of their dreams. and how great a change was it? you know, not all confederates

liked their guards. you know, they were guards. but nevertheless, about 1,000 or so confederate prisoners took an oath of allegiance while they were incarcerated at point lookout. and what this means is they are now taking an oath of allegiance, binding themselves to the union army in exchange for freedom. and two regiments were formed from prisoners of war at point lookout. the first and second u.s. volunteers. this is, again, an amazing image inside the tent of the post commonant. these confederate prisoners are now swearing on the bible that they will fight and serve the union and never the confederacy. and these regiments, of course, they were not sent back into the union army, but they were actually sent out west to fight the cheyenne and the sioux because they didn't trust confederate prisoners to hold to these oaths of allegiance. but nevertheless, this is the only prison camp where a massive amount of prisoners -- not

massive, but a significant amount of prisoners actually decided to join the other side, to galvanize as the term was known. it occurred at other prison camps, too, north or south, but this is the largest one. so at first it appears as if the situation of point lookout is a model one. and it is, for the first couple of months of operation, but then in november of 1863, things start to go sour. the first problem comes when these new hampshire regiments receive new recruits. and many of these recruits are substitutes and bounty jumpers. those individuals who have taken money in order to join the union army. they're induced by a pecuniary interest, not so much an attachment to the cause. and what do these bounty jumpers most want in their army service? what do you think they want to do? >> safety. >> they want safety. they want out of the union army. and they find they have some brethren in the confederate inmates because they want out of

point lookout. so the bounty jumpers in and the confederate inmates start to conspire. the union guards actually start giving them weapons and ammunition. they let them build boats. and there are all sorts of attempts at escaping point lookout. of course, you're probably wondering how in the world did they try to escape point lookout? well, you had to swim for it, right? because you have to basically build a boat on the chesapeake side of the point, sail around the lighthouse and across the potomac river. the river is very wide at that point. but nevertheless, many confederate inmates attempted it, and some succeeded. one of the most humorous incidents occurs where a confederate inmate fakes his own death. every day when they line up the dead at the dead house, you know, they just kind of pile them outside the stockade. and one confederate soldier, while he was outside, he just put himself prone, remained still for the entire evening,

and then grabbed a coffin and used the coffin as a boat to try to get across the potomac. kind of like -- what is that movie with the pirates. "pirates of the caribbean part 2." exactly like that one. now, what worsened the situation between the inmates and the guards was when the new hampshire soldiers left, they were replaced by the 36 u.s. colored infantry. a regiment of mostly north carolina slaves. and this angered the confederate inmates to no end. they could not stand the fact that black soldiers were now their guards. and these, again, are the images of the inmate ammanhauser as he shows some of the incidents between these black centuries and the inmates. you know, this one here shows the sentinel is asking this confederate soldier where he's going, who he is. and he says, well, i'm a friend. he says, look here, white man. don't you say friend again. you're a rebel and a prisoner.

and i'm here to watch you, and how do you like that? and so, you know, african-americans who were, again, felt that the confederates were disrespecting their own rights as prisoners were now going to sort of enforce a very strict situation at point lookout. and if you ever read any accounts of confederate prisoners, the thing that they are most angered about are facing these black guards. largely because the fact that the african-american troops understand the kind of revolutionary effect of the civil war. and this is one of my favorite images of the entire era, again, drawn by aumannhauser. what you see here is the stockade wall. and on top of the stockade wall, there was a platform. this is where the sentrys would patrol. they would walk around the prison camp and look down into the camp area to make sure no hijinks was going on.

incidentally, if any of you were in that area, you should go to point lookout because a section of the stockade wall has been reconstructed to you get a sense of what this prison camp looked like. but down on the floor here next to the deadline, and this is the arbitrary dividing line between the wall and the prison camp. and if you stepped over it, the guard could immediately shoot you. this confederate prisoner has approached the deadline. and this african-american soldier is taunting him. he says, get away from that there fence, white man, or i'll make old abe's gun smoke at you. i can hardly hold the ball back now. the bottom rail is on top. and just think about that phrase just for a second. the bottom rail is on top. if there is ever a piece of evidence from the shifl war to show its revolutionary nature, it is this. the african-american soldiers understand what this war has done. it has freed them and has placed them in command of their former masters. and so the confederates are kind

of shown that revolutionary change up front and their insolence at their new guards is noticeable. they try to break from the prison far more often there are far more fenceline shootings as they approached the deadline than they were under the new hampshire guards. so it seems that when you inject race into this question of the treatment of prisoners, atrocities tend to occur a lot more often. let's move to a different prisoner of war camp, one that housed confederate prisoners in chicago. this is camp douglas. camp douglas used to be a camp that was just for training soldiers, union soldiers that mobilized. they would go into temporary encampment before going off to the front. but after the capture of confederate prisoners at fort donaldson in february 1862, this camp now became sort of a

permanent home to confederate prisoners of war who either awaited exchange or by 1864 were there permanently. and again, not a pleasant place if you were a confederate prisoner because of the conditions you had to endure. many were kept in freezing cold conditions. and about 500 soldiers died within the first months of operation. one confederate inmate described the sickening conditions of those who were slowly starving or dying of disease. he said, in the latrine behind the barracks, i saw crowds of is being member who had fallen, prostrate from weakness, and given themselves holy to despair. while they cried or wallowed in their filth, they cursed and blass teamed as often as they groaned. at the end of the gaping ditches, there were many sick people who unable to leave rested there for hours and made their condition hopeless by breathing the stenchful atmosphere.

exhumed corpses could not have presented anything more hideous than dozens of these dead and alive men, oblivious to the weather, hung over the latrines, or lay extended upon the open sewer with only a few gasps intervening between them and death. such as were not too far gone prayed for death saying, good god, let me die. let me go, oh lord. and one insanely damned his vitals and his constitution because his agonies were so protracted. no self-respecting being could return from their vicinity without feeling bewildered by infinite suffering. this image here shows you the inside of camp douglas. you see the barracks that they lived in. they couldn't live outside, obviously, because the weather would be so cold. and you see one precaution the union guards have taken by elevating these buildings up off the ground to make sure the confederates weren't digging tunnels out. the situation was fairly bad. there was never any positive

synergy between the inmates and the guards largely because a lot of the guards tended to be wounded union soldiers who were there on light duty. and, of course, they would take any opportunity to punish confederate prisoners. probably the most rigorous of the leaders at camp douglas was the commandant colonel benjamin sweet who was wounded in 1862 at perriville. he had also sorts of infractions that he wished to punish. the confederates could not spit tobacco. the barracks had to be kept spotless. and guards could shoot anyone they pleased. even they could shoot into the barracks randomly if they heard a noise because a noin would mean that they could suspect a tunnelling attempt. and they could fire into it to keep the inmates quiet. under sweet's tenure, the guards could enforce individual punishments on people. some of which were humiliating and some of which nearly caused death. one of these punishments was

known as riding morgan's mule.s would be lifted about eight feet off the ground. and the punished inmate would have to stand on the sawhorse or sit on it and kind of grip it tightly and would be up there all day as the guards could watch him and, of course, the sawhorse would do its unfortunate work on his inner thigh. another was called reaching for grubb where a punished inmate would have to reach down and almost touch his toes and remain in that bent-over position for several hours until either he suffered from a nosebleed or passed out. now, one of the strange aspects of camp douglas was the fact that it was a camp where a lot of gawkers from chicago would go to visit confederate prisoners. and one of the things we talked about earlier in the class was the copperhead movement. there were those copperheads that expressed sympathy with the south. in chicago, there was a secret

club of anti-war activists known as the sons of liberty. the sons of liberty actually undertook a conspiracy in november 1864 to help release these confederate prisoners to find them a means of tunnelling out of the facility. when word of this got out, there was an overreaction in part of union commanders in chicago. they arrested more than 100 people, accusing them of this conspiracy to release confederate prisoners. and they also strip searched many of the confederate inmates in the snow. now, there was indeed a conspiracy afoot. some historians debate this. i believe there definitely was. all the historic evidence points to that fact. but many innocent prisoners died of exposure because of this effort to try to find any evidence that they were receiving intelligence from people outside. and i guess the last thing about this unfortunate prison camp was that it was very difficult to

get good meat if you were a prisoner there. so the confederates would resort to eating stray dogs. that was the thing that they were really good at, was attracting dogs to the stockade, grabbing them through and then eating them. and they found -- they got extreme pleasure out of eating the prison guard dogs if they could ever bring them over. and there was this one lieutenant that had a little dog. and the confederates hated that dog. they finally caught it, cooked it and ate it. and the lieutenant, he was upset that he lost his pet. and he put a $10 reward for anyone who had information on it. well, the very next day the confederates had graffitied the side of one of their barracks with a neat little poem that said, "for want of bread, the dog is dead. for want of meat, the dog is eat." all right. so let us turn to some prison camps in the south that were occupied by union inmates.

this is one that if you've ever driven through richmond, virginia, you've probably passed close to it is bell isle. this started out as again a temporary prison camp much like camp douglas. but it soon became a permanent place for union prisoners of war, usually enlisted men. it housed about 10,000 prisoners. but it was simply an island in the james river. and it was -- it had a large ridge on it where the confederate guards would be placed, and they'd have cannon pointing into the tents of these union inmates. and a terrible place to be. an estimated 15 to 25 men died there per day in 1863. it was lice infested. the prisoners were allowed to bathe in the james river, which was a terrible prospect because the speedy current could sweep them away. and the guards were allowed to shoot any they believed were attempting to make an escape attempt. they would shoot them at the

waterline, and their bodies would be flushed down the river. this is yet another prison camp you would have found in richmond. this is libby prison, designed for officers. a former tobacco warehouse. the second and third floor of this building was used to house prisoners mostly officers taken at gettysburg and chickmauga. there was actually an escape attempt in early 1864 that threw the citizens of richmond into a frenzy. and as a result, the commander of libby prison decided one of the things he needed to do was fill the basement with gunpowder. so in case there would be a mass breakout attempt of an even larger scale later on, the entire prison could be blown sky high, killing all the inmates with it. this image here gives you an idea of what it was like inside. very dark. very dungeonlike and rat infested. in fact, the breakout attempt

involved union officers tunnelling their way through a chimney down into the basement that they called rat hell because it was just a breeding ground for vermin. and they had to use rat hell which was never occupied as the means of tunnelling out. and more than 100 union prisoners got out of it, but many of them were recaptured. another prison camp we can profile here and one even more upsetting than libby was richland jail in columbia. and this was a prison camp reserved exclusively for officers of the two most hated of all union regiments. does anyone know what they were? of union regiments. >> would it be like usct? >> right. this is where officers of the usct go. all right? that's one really kind of hated group of officers in the union

army. does anyone know the other hated group? >> border officers. if you were from maryland or kentucky or even occupied tennessee, you were set aside from the others, drawn out to this prison camp, which was really just a building in the middle of columbia, south carolina, and that was where you would stay. again, it was very poorly saniti sanitized, filled with cockroaches, poor food and cruel citizens who came by outside to mock the prisoners in their cells. one of the kind of shocking things for the union officers who were kept there is that it was right across the street from city hall. and every day they could see the city politicians out there eating fanciful meals out on the front lawn of the city building while they themselves were starving. one of those who was incarcerated was a lieutenant named freeman boley.

we've discussed this man earlier this class. he was the white union officers who surrendered at the battle of the crater. he was nearly lynched by the citizens of petersburg when he was drawn in a parade through the city. boley described the conditions as follows. he said, the cornmeal was sour. and much of it had ground cob. as a result of such food, much sickness resulted. and scurvy soon prevailed among us. i was one of the first attacked. and my flesh rapidly wasted away. my eyes were yellow. my skin dry and feverish and sores broke out. my feet greatly swollen, teeth loosened and my gums would bleed among the slightest pressure. if you ever read boley's amazing account of prison life, he describes how he nearly dies in this facility. this shows you one of the rooms, one of the cells these officers would have stayed in. it would have been a room probably about half the size of the room we are in this morning. and i like to analyze pictures.

and the best way, if you're a student of history to analyze a picture is to read it like a book. you go top to bottom all the way down until you find something interesting. and i always find this little thing right here interesting. a bucket in the window. what is the bucket for? right. that is for human waste. all right? so imagine these diuretic union officers there. and there are about 30 of them. and again, in a room half this size. so imagine like if we all lived in this room half this size every day in the hottest part of the summer here in norfolk. and, you know, you were all suffering from bowel issues. and you had a bucket. how do you empty the bucket? throw it out the window. all right. that is exactly what you do. you can't go to the guard, right? because the guard -- you're going to give -- as a confederate guard, you're going to take the waste of yankee officers. no, no. so one of you brave souls has to

go to the window and dump it out into the street. what's the problem if you do that? >> you might get shot. >> you are going to get shot. because that's where the sentrys are. they guard the street. if they see anyone looking out the window, they have the authority to shoot. so imagine going out that way. you're going out, dumping out the human waste. but it has to be done. who is the brave soul that can't take the smell anymore? all right. one of our last -- one of our very last prison camps we will look at today is that of andersonville, the most notorious of prison camps, is established in february of 1864 when it opens for business. it's a wooden stockade kind of in south central georgia meant to hold 1,000 union prisoners of war all enlisted men. no officers were meant to be held here. but it held far more than that. during the summer of 1864, the prison population topped 26,000.

over twice its size. about 45,000 different inmates were quartered there during the 14 months of this prison's operation. it closed shortly before the end of the civil war. and you can see andersonville right at the end of its service. it was a wooden stockade wall that surrounded the encampment. this is the east side, west and the north. and you can see a second stockade wall around it. this is to prevent tunnelling out. but this stockade wall was not around for much of its history. it was kind of a late war addition. the same can be said of these barracks. these barracks were made for the sick. but they did not exist for much of its operation. these are the confederate encampments, some confederate forts to prevent prisoners from escaping. because if they escaped, it was a severe health risk to the people of georgia as well as a roving army of starving men that would be going from farm to farm trying to look for food. the main confederate encampment

was over here near the rail line. and this here is probably one of the most important structures of the entire prison camp, and that is the natural stream that flowed under the stockade wall and into the camp. and it was down river from the confederate encampment. so the confederates would use the head waters of this branch and became known as the stockade branch for their water supply and also for their animal waste and their own human waste. and it would flow into the prison camp. and then settle right about here. and so essentially this was a cess pit right in the middle. and union prisoners on both sides. here's some other images of the camp. here you are looking west towards the train depot. and if you're a union prisoner taken during the overland campaign, you would arrive here at this depot, be marched by your squad up to the gate house here. this is the main gate. this is known as south gate.

there were two big thoroughfares through the prison camp known as south street and broadway named as such by the union soldiers. and so you enter in through here and you entered into this big campground where these union soldiers were kind of waiting out in the hot georgia sun for the war to end. and this is the little area where the water flowed in which brought in all the confederate waste from this encampment here. and this is a close-up of one of the gates, the main gate. now, the union prisoners lived in little hovels that they created for themselves. they would try to scrounge together all the material they had, canvas for roof. they would try to cut down any trees in the area. and simz the confederate guards would let them outside to bring in lumber so they could fortify their little homes which they dug in the dirt. there's lots of digging of wells because the prisoners knew you couldn't drink the water from the stockade branch. because if you did, you would

get a disease and perish quickly. so the only way you could get water was either by waiting for it to rain and soak it into your clothes and then wring it out, or you would try to dig a well deep enough that you could actually extract water from the ground, which was a difficult thing to do because the georgia clay was not conducive to good digging. and actually some union prisoners died digging wells. the well collapsed and they were buried alive. and this sketch is from an inmate. this is a guy named william knox sneadman, a new york man who was captured in 1863 and spent much of his time in andersonville. so he had -- he has a nice set of watercolor sketches of the civil war showing prison life. andersonville was commanded by a general named winder. but winder commanded the entire area. the man responsible for the union prisoners and their daily rations was this man here, captain henry wurz, a swiss immit