union prisoners and their daily rations was this man here, captain henry wurz, a swiss immigrant who was viewed as kind of the tyrant of the camp. all of the union soldiers, if they wrote accounts after the war, derided this man for his cruelty. part of his reason for being so strict with union prisoners was his paranoia that they were tunnelling their way out. he also attempted to punish the camp entirely for any minor infractions. whereas, you know, commandant sweet of camp douglas, he wanted to punish people individually. wurz, his challenge was to the entire camp to regulate itself. and if there was some infraction, the entire camp would bear the brunt of it, which meant half rations or a third rations for the rest of the week. rationing was the most difficult challenge of these union prisoners. because the way rations were issued is they were issued by a leading nco. either a corporal or a sergeant.

and they would be responsible for a group of 100 men. they were considered kind of the most responsible for each of these 100 sections. and that person got the ration and had to split it among everyone else. and again, try to imagine that, if i gave you -- let's say we gave nicole a loaf of bread. and she has to split it among 35 people. right? how are you going to split it? >> very carefully. >> very carefully indeed. because if you come up short, who doesn't get the ration? you do. so this is kind of the prickly situation here. the person who is responsible for issuing these rations has the most power. and also the ones who stand to suffer the most because if they issue these rations disproportionately, they're the ones that go without rations for that particular day. and incidentally, one of the things they also hated about wurz is that wurz had a series

of wagons that would come in every morning and they would pick up the dead. because every day there was about a pile of about a dozen dead men. and they would be taken out and buried outside the prison. well, the same wagon that took out the dead would also carry in their rations for the day. and it was absolutely a disgusting prospect to eat off of this wagon that had once carried your friends out to the dead house. but nevertheless, you know, they were hungry enough that they would do it. all right. so one of the things you had to be careful about, if you were a union prisoner, was stepping too close to the dead line. like point lookout, the stockade wall was surrounded by what were called pigeon roosts, these small little towers, where there would be one or two sentrys mop toring the situation in the camp. here's the stockade branch.

and you can see these pigeon roosts. they marked the stockade every few feet. and the guards had the authority to open fire anyone who stepped near the dead line. and if you wanted to commit suicide, if you wanted to get out, one way was walk through the dead line and out you go. one soldier from new york described one of the first of these shootings he saw. and he basically blamed the prison guards were being cruel. one of the things that he knew was that if a prison guard shot an inmate, they would get a furlough. and so there was kind of an incentive for taking down union inmates. this new york soldier said i saw many men shot while i was there. they were federal prisoners. the first man i saw shot was shortly after the dead line was established. i think it was in may.nearhe br the east side of the stockade. at the time there was no railing. there was simply posts struck along where they were going to

put the dead line. and this man, in crossing, simply stepped inside one of the posts, and the sentry shot him. he failed to kill him but wounded him. i don't know his name. i brook. army.d just come in. i think it was about the first part of july or the latter part of june. he had just come in and knew nothing about the dead line. there was no railing across the brook and nothing to show that there was any dead line there. he came into the stockade. and after he had been shown his place where he was to sleep, he went along the brook to get some water. it was very dark and a number of men were there. he went above the rest so as to get better water. he went beyond the dead line, and two men fired at him and both hit him. he was killed and fell right into the brook. i did not know the man's name. i saw other men shot. i do not know exactly how many. i saw several. it was a common occurrence. now, social life was regulated by two gangs of union prisoners in the stockade wall. the regulators and the raiders. the regulators were those that tried to enforce some sort of

sense of law and order in th they often protected those that had wells because if you owned a well in the prison, you were basically a king among these inmates. and those that kind of owned the well could find ways of getting stock in it by owning enough extra rations or enough extra lumber. essentially a capitalistic system emerged among these union prisoners with the regulators being the means of law enforcement. and the other gang was known as people who were the strongest among the prisoners that would raid other messmates and steal their provisions. and eventually the war between regulators and regulators got so severe that the regulators went to the commandant, captain wurz, asked him for batons. and he gave them batons, sent them in. and they regulated the system. they busted some heads. they captured a number of

raiders. and they even tried them. and in mid-july hanged six of them for crimes against their fellow prisoners. and this inmate sketch by sneadon is showing the six men hanging from a scaffolds. and wurz was fined with the execution of prisoners by fellow prisoners. here's an image of -- a photograph of the stockade. a few photographs of what andersonville looked like. here is the latrine in the stockade branch. and you're looking kind of north through the huge encampment. and this little section here is called the island. it was a big kind of swampy area. it's where the sickest of the union soldiers lived. those that were too ill to even move out of the flooding waste area. here's another image showing you the stockade wall in the background and the pigeon roosts.

and this shows you an image of the overcrowding. and, again, the prison camp was never expanded. it was continually packed with more union prisoners day by day. and the death rate skyrocketed. about 13,000 inmates died at andersonville or 29% of the population. or about 36 men per day. and to give you some comparison, the battle of gettysburg resulted in just about 10,000 dead, or 6% of those engaged. and it's probably unfair to compare the bloodiest battle of the civil war to a prison camp. but if you put this in some perspective, you are more likely to survive gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the civil war, than you were to survive andersonville. because 29% of the inmates died at that, while only 6% at gettysburg die from combat. and then this is a moving poem i

saw about andersonville written by a captive. this is the text here. and here's our translation. does anyone want to read this out loud? any volunteers? ann, go ahead. >> there are heart with hopes still beating in our northern homes waiting, watching for the footsteps that will never, never come. in southern prisons pining, weeker, tattered, pale and gone. growing weaker, weaker daily. from pinching cold and want, brothers, sons and husbands, hopeless captives lie. o ye who yet can save them, will you leave them here to die? from out our prison gate there is a graveyard near at hand. where lies 13,000 union men beneath the georgia sand. scores on scores are laid beside them as day succeeds to day. and thus it ever will be till they all shall pass away. and the last can say when dying with upturned and glazing eye. both love and faith are dead at home, and they have left us here to die.

>> okay. so you get a sense of the pessimism and fatalism that these union prisoners experienced at andersonville. and that a prison sentence was akin to a death sentence. this is an image of a survivor of andersonville. he's a living individual, all skin and bones. images like these were circulated about the north. and of course, they raised the anger in citizens that the confederacy would allow this to happen. and i'd like to read for you a few pieces of an enlisted man's diary. this is a pennsylvania soldier named samuel elliott who arrived in andersonville in may 1864. he was one of those captured at the battle of the wilderness. and he -- his account kind of describes several of the major incidents that occur in andersonville. and you get this kind of sense that he thinks he is going to

die very shortly. sunday, may 22nd. arrived at andersonville 60 miles from macon. the camp contains about 15,000 men. most of whom have been prisoners from about eight to ten months and were once strong, able-bodied men but are now nothing more than walking skeletons covered with filth and vermin and can hardly be recognized as white men. the horrible sights are almost enough to make us give up in despair. the ground is covered with filth and vermin can be seen crawling in the sand. the center of the camp is a stream of dirty water, so warm and greasy we can scarcely drink it. she's sights so filled me with horror that i can give an idea of this prison. monday, may 23. 23 years old today. a miserable place to celebrate one's birthday. wednesday, june 15th. a poor cripple shot for stepping inside the dead line.

he said he was so miserable he wished to die and took this means of having his wish gratified. thursday, june 16th. the small rations of such poor quality with the rainy weather is killing the men off at a terrible rate. there are now over 100 bodies at the gate to be carried to the dead house. friday, july 2nd. the majority of the camp drew fresh meat from which the rebel quartermaster calls beef. but he can't fool the old soldiers with his mule and horse flesh. it might have been pretty good had it been brought in within a week after its death where it would have given us a large enough piece to allow for the maggots. we were too hungry to consider long enough about eating it. so drew chicken feed and a small piece of wormy pork. quite a variety of one day. went out for wood. the first time i had been outside since i arrived here. what a relief to see the outside world and get a breath of fresh air.

wednesday, august 3rd. on different battlefields, i have witnessed many horrible sights. but none compare with what i saw today. a man lying on the bank of the stream being eaten to death by maggots. they were from his eyes and mouth. his body was eating raw in several places. we could do nothing with him but let him alone to die a miserable death. sunday, september 4th. attended a funeral who died during the night. it is terrible to see our regiment thinning out. every day brings the sad news of the death of one or more of our comrades. death, nothing but death throughout the prison. rations small, almost starved. now, one of the true heroes of the civil war for my mind is clara barton who arrived at andersonville after it closed. the prisoners were dispersed to other locations right before the end of the war. and she took pains to identify the dead.

and you can see the evidence of her work if you go down to andersonville today. the prison is just littered with rows of men. most of them are identified. and this is just a small section of this big sea of anguish that you would have seen at the national cemetery at that location. now, the citizens of the north wanted vengeance for what happened at andersonville. and captain wurz, the commandant of the prisoners, was tried for war crimes in november of 1865. and in that month they sentenced him to death. without a doubt, wurz did not receive justice. a lot of the prisoners were stacked against him. many of them had rehearsed their statements. and some of them probably weren't even prisoners from andersonville, but had just read about it. in any case, he was found guilty. he was hanged just outside of the capitol on november 10th, 1865. union soldiers applauded the fact that he was punished to the fullest extent of the law for his command of andersonville.

now, wurz's defense was that he could not have done any better than he did. they said, listen, i did the best with the material that i had. and if you mean to criticize me, you have to go higher up the command chain to the generals in charge and perhaps to the confederate war department. and the union people, after that conflict, listened to him. they indeed considered but did not execute the possibility of trying jefferson davis for the crimes at andersonville because they said ultimately, davis is responsible for the deaths at that prison. now, i'd like to sort of open it up here to some debate. should davis have been tried for war crimes? what do you think? was wurz's final plea somewhat correct? should union prosecutors have gone higher up the command chain? >> this one's kind of tricky because they're just -- i think

maybe the union was just trying to put blame on somebody, maybe, and that was the person that the soldiers went to the prisoners and were, like, that's the guy. to go and try jefferson davis for a war crime is just a whole another can of worms, maybe. i don't know. they just decided it was too difficult, maybe. didn't have enough evidence of it, you know. >> yeah. there's a whole host of reasons we'll talk about later in the course of why davis is not tried. because they have -- there's many things they want to try him for, including treason for leading the confederacy. but one of the things they add to this list that they never

bring charges against him is what happens to union prisoners? so do you think davis is culpable? >> i think yes and no just because you also had the south getting cut off and having lack of food and everything else for their citizens let alone soldiers, and the prisoners. because their supplies are getting short by the end of the war, and it's very hard. and they're trying to also ration them out for everyone. because at the same time, they don't want their soldiers to die or just their civilians to die, let alone they're trying to also keep the war crimes down and everything. it's really hard because with the supplies that they had, they were doing the best they can. but at the same time, they could have done a little bit better of, like, the river in the middle of the camp and trying to keep that a little cleaner and direct it somewhere else. so it's kind of a 50/50. >> yeah. i mean, it's a sticky problem. i mean, you can kind of see here where the northern public is coming from with this cartoon. they're showing kind of the

comparison of the union prisoners at andersonville compared to davis's incarceration when they say is fairly nice. it's kind of like a security prison. it wasn't quite so nice because there was a case mate cell at fort monroe just across the water. in any case, they say it was much better than what union prisoners had received. now, the one thing you say that doesn't quite satisfy me is this question of supply. because you're saying that the confederacy was suffering from a problem of keeping their own people supplied much less the union prisoners. now, here's a reason that doesn't satisfy me. because if we go on that idea, that means that confederate soldiers are dying at the exact same rate in their winter encampments. are they dying at the exact same

rate at their winter encampments? no. the atrocities on both sides, you can find them only in one area, the prison camps. that is where men are dying. and incidentally, does anyone know who are sort of the leaders of this effort to get davis hanged for war crimes? the prisoners are most certainly upset, but does anyone know who really leads the charge? >> abolitionists? >> ooh, a good guess. good guess, ryan, but actually not. >> maybe the sanitation people? >> you mean like clara barton? >> yeah, or people all concerned about those terrible conditions? >> mm-hmm. there are many humanitarians that are concerned about what happens. but i say the real leaders of this charge are northern women, mothers.

listen to this shocking letter. i mean, absolutely shocking. most historians say that, you know, women of the 19th century indulge in matters of the heart. i want you to see if there are any matters of the heart in this letter. it is written to president andrew johnson, the guy who takes over after lincoln is assassinated. dear sir. here is a picture of my dear son, joshua irving, company "g," 111th illinois volunteers who was captured in atlanta and taken to andersonville. he went from there to the caroline states and then starved and tortured to death. he died ten days after he reached baltimore from cruel treatment that the rebs gave him. and he is the only one among 10,000 that jeff davis willfully put to death. now, will you pardon him or give him his due? my dear joshua was my last son, the staff of my old age. and now it is nothing more than justice that jeff davis' money should support those widows, mothers and orphans that he has made destitute by his wickedness. i view lincoln as the second moses and jeff as the second pharaoh and you as a second

joshua. now, punish the rulers as they deserve. feed them as they fed our sons and husbands. give them a pint of cornmeal per day with a bran as that is the way they fed my dear son. made him mush or gruel for nine months, he died within a few days after he was paroled at baltimore, and i did not get to see him. oh, i am heartbroken. when they were moving their prisoners from andersonville, my son was sick, was bleeding at the lungs from exposure. he begged to ride, but they swore that he should walk, and they would run a bayonnette through him. he would have tried to have made his escape that night but thought he was too weak to keep out of the way of the blood hounds. so he suffered for nine months, had to build a hole in the ground to protect him from the cold wind. now, i do not know how he live sod long as he did, but god spared him to get him out of their hands. now you may give my best wishes to jeff. i wish it was in my power to deal out his punishment. i would let him live as long as he could in a cold, damp prison. if there were meat left on his bones, the crows might have that.

it might be that he would repent in that of his wickedness in that length of time. your friend, elizabeth ervin. imagine writing that to the president of the united states. to finish up, we have here some statistics of prison camps, some select ones from the north and the south showing you the mortality rate and the number of deaths. some are better than others. andersonville is the number one worst. but follows by el myra in the snort. and what explains this poor record? is it negligence?n. and what explains this poor record? is it negligenco. and what explains this poor record? is it negligencr. and what explains this poor record? is it negligencth. and what explains this poor record? is it negligence? or is it mercilessness? what do you think? stephanie? >> really didn't care that much about them. they just really -- they obviously didn't care. they were feeding them week-old meat that probably had

salmonella in it, who knows. if they would have took better care of them and showed more mercy, then maybe so many people wouldn't have died. mercy, then maybe so many people wouldn't have died. >> i think it could be the whole theory of the 19th century where death on the battlefield was more courageous. if you were caught it was a weak thing. they kind of maybe saw that and didn't really see him as a full soldier because here they had to surrender. now they're not really worthy of getting full rations as a fighting soldier or something like that because of that whole mentality of courage on the battlefield. >> yeah. possibility. it's difficult to say because, starting off, we have a whole wave of respect. i mean, they're treated kindly. new york soldiers had liquor. and then now they're starving. paul? >> isn't it also with the civil war, we had never seen pows on a scale of, like, this many. we never had a situation where

we had this many prisoners all at once. could it also just be because they didn't know how to handle this many people in the camps and that heavy of a prison population, they had to maintain their own soldiers and their prisoners as well so they just didn't have the supplies for them all to feed them? >> i'm not really satisfied by this question of supply, but one of the things you do bring up here is that it seems like each of the phases that they create just sort of pushes the problem to the side. and they're just postponing this real question of dealing with large numbers of prisoners of war, such that by the end of it, they've sort of drifted into this horrible situation where you have men dying every day in prison camps. yeah? >> i was going to say, obviously, the different phases, it just shows where they came from as they got more numbers, like what you said just a second ago but that, like, um, maybe, like, as they keep going and the problems keep getting worse, they just -- the war is just lasting longer than anybody ever anticipated. and they just, i think, probably got tired of it and those were

the people who suffered. just shoved them to the side. we're tired of fighting. we're tired of this. you tried to kill me last week, so, like, just push them to the side and keep going. >> right. >> getting tired of the war. >> nicole? >> also, the soldiers that are guarding the camps, they also feel that this is the only way that they're helping their side win, is by destroying these people who, if they're released, are going to go back and shoot at them again. so this is -- it's not really a revenge thing. it's more this is their way of fighting the opposite side, by not treating these prisoners well in order to kill them. >> right. i mean, certainly if we considered that explanation, that it's just sort of the animosity that comes out of the war, that fuels things like the fence-line shooting and the mall

nourishment. it changes our perspective on what we think the civil war was about. we've often called it the brothers war. there's no sense of brotherhood between the two sides here. it definitely is a serious event, and one that was going to leave a lasting animosity between the two sides, come reconstruction. so as we proceed on into that phase, as the war draws to an end and they want to punish those who led the confederacy, these notions of andersonville and libby prison and many others are going to be very firm in the memory of those who fought this -- this conflict. it was not all glory. all right. we're definitely out of time. i would like to thank our viewers out there on c-span and definitely thank you for an excellent lecture, guys. enjoy the rest of your day.

american history tv recently visited beaumont, texas, to explore the history and litry culture in the city where the oil industry in texas got its start. for more information on our tour of six south central cities this year, visit cspan.org/localcontent. >> this was the world war ii home front town where the home front industries created these new jobs and also create new tensions that in some cases resulted in race riots.

in june of 1943, there was this very sad tragic episode in beaumont, a race riot broke out here june 15, 1943. there was a story about a black man having raped a white woman. and when this story spread into the shipyard, several thousand of the shipyard workers, some say at least 2,000 shipyard workers came out of the shipyard and came downtown to this city police department and try to find the person who allegedly committed this crime. they found no one and from there, they broke up into groups and they roamed through blacks part of the town, including

forscythe street where we're standing here. this was a very vibrant black business community with lawyers and doctors and pharmacists and insurance agents, retail stores. there was a movie theatre here. so it was a vibrant black business community, and some of these men in the mob attacked this neighborhood. they attacked some of the people. they tore up some of the automobiles. and they attacked some of the businesses. there were three lives lost. two black people and one white person. so there were three deaths. and the beaumont police department energized itself quickly. they -- the national guard was mobilized. and texas rangers kwam to town also. so the worst of the violence was over within 24 hours.

and the town was butt under marshal law. and it was a brief ugly episode in a time for the town when it was doing very well and when many people had new jobs is and there was new money and new prosperity. it was a tragic time for bo month when there was a time of growth and development.