end. and the final nail in the coffin is in april of '64 when a confederate force under general nathaniel forrest pictured here. his soldiers broke into the frenzy, killing those who threw up their arms. because the garrison was a mix of white and black soldiers. it's not exactly clear how many soldiers at this garrison were killed when they tried to surrender, but a massacre definitely occurred. about 170 african-american soldiers it is believed were killed in the act of surrendering. so when this news reached the war department later on that month, general ulysses grant who was the general-in-chief before all the union forces makes the decision to suspend the prisoner exchange system. he says, listen, if the confederates are not going to accept the surrender of plaque troops, we need to hold their prisoners of war indefinitely.

not only does it keep these confederate prisoners from going back into circulation, but ensures the protection of our own black soldiers who are taken in battle. and the results of this were immediate because now union soldiers understood that if you were 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 be -- to face captivity. one of the reasons we were kind of talking about for the struggle the union army had during the overland campaign, i made the argument that by the end of it, these armies were kind of in a poor shape, one of the things that the union soldiers were understanding if they surrendered they ee'd go t andersonville. it was in their best interest to

run, if the battle was not going that their way. the ft. pillow massacre gives them a justifiable reason to retaliate. when african-american troops go into battle, they go in under the desire not to take the confederate soldiers. many had this cry, remember ft. pillow. and here's a regiment, it's a black soldier bayonetting another one. talk about this in the 21th century terms. no one can have a vengeful insignia like this today, but back then it was quite common. this brings us to the third and final system of the prisoner of

camp war phase. this will last until the end of the war. they have prisoner of war camps before then, but they're supposed to be temporary holding pens for prisoners before they're exchanged. but most of the war, if these -- if this phase is in operation and it's holding hundreds of thousands of preisoners on both sides and they have to deal with the problems of being in such a system. we're going to kind of go through several prisoner of war camps and give you a flavor for the problems that existed in each. this is point lookout, maryland. one of the first of the prisoner of war camps designed to house confederates right after the breakdown of the dix-hill cartel. it exists in st. mary's county, maryland, right at the juncture of the potomac and the chesapeake bay. so this is the potomac here. chesapeake bay. there used to be a light house and then there was a huge hospital facility for sailors and marines who would be serving

on the blockading squadrons. in 1863, there's a massive stockade to hold about 5,000 confederate prisoners. nearly 50,000 inmates would be incarcerated there. this section right here is the stockade. it was a huge wooden barricade on the north side of the beach adjacent to the chesapeake bay. these images -- these positions here are the camps of the sentries. the main road kind of led in. you can see one of the reasons that this region was chosen, because it was on the peninsula and is nearly impossible to break out. there was a huge creek called lookout creek which had two narrow causeways. then there were forts and each of the causeways with artillery pieces that faced along them. so if there was a mass breakout, the leaders of that breakout would be blown to adams by trying to cross into southern maryland. now, at first, the situation in

this prison camp is fairly peachy. that is because there's a decent relationship between the confederate inmates and their union guards. these are some of the union sentries at point lookout. the members of the new hampshire by grade. there were three veteran new hampshire regiments sent out to look after the prisoners. 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 great resource kept up in the state maryland archives that kind of show confederate prison life. they're kind of humorous. like one-act cartoons. but the images show us what confederate soldiers did. here they are eating watermelons

they have grown. grabbing blue crabs out of the bay. this poor guy, proboss sis has been pinched. as a union soldier who serves 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 our prison pens and so much better than expected by the rebels themselves, soon made its impression. it had a favorable effect upon the recipients. sectional prejudice and hatred engendered and intensified in the war softened into respect and friendship. and how great a change was it?

well, you know, not all confederates liked their guards. they were guards, but nevertheless, about a thousand or so confederate prisoners took an oath of allegiance while they were incarcerated at point lookout. what this means is they're 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 -- of general james barnes. they're now swearing on the bible they'll now fight and serve the union and these regiments, of course they were not sent back into the union army, but sent out to fight in the west, to fight the cheyenne and the sioux. but nevertheless, this is the only prison camp where a massive amount of prisoners -- 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 and south. but this is the largest one. so at first it appears as if the situation of point lookout is a model one. 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 of 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. what do these bounty jumpers most want in their army service? what do you think they want to do? 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 and the confederate inmates start to conspire. the union guards actually start to give them weapons and ammunition. they let them build boats and they're all sorts of attempts at escaping point lookout. you're probably wondering how in the world did they try to escape point lookout? well, you had to swim for it. because you have to basically build a boat on the chesapeake side of the point, sail around the light house and then across the potomac river. nevertheless, many confederate inmates attempted it and some succeeded. one of the most humorous incidents occurs where a confed rat inmate fakes his own death. when they line up the dead at the dead house, you know, they just kind of pile them outside the stockade. one confederate soldier, he just put himself prone, remained

still for the entire evening and then grabbed a coffin. used the coffin as a boat to try to get it across the potomac. what is that movie with the pirates -- "pirates of the caribbean." part two. exactly like that one. 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 out and now they're guards. these again are the images of the inmate allmenhaaser as he describes what happens between the black sentries and the inmates. you know, this one here shows the sentinel is asking the confederate soldier 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 rebel and a prisoner and i've -- i'm put here to watch you. how do you like that? so, you know, african-americans who are again -- they felt that the confederates were disrespecting their own rights as prisoners were going to sort of enforce a very strict situation at point lookout. and if you ever read any accounts of confederate prisoners the thing they're most angered about are facing these black guards. largely because the fact that african-american troops understand the kind of revolutionary effect of the civil war. this is one of my favorite images of the entire era. again drawn by allmenhaaser. you see the stockade wall and on top there was a platform. this is where the sentries 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 are in the area, you should go to point lookout because a section of the stockade wall has been reconstructed so you get a sense of what this prison camp looked like. but down in the floor here, next to the deadline, this is the arbitrary dividing line between the wall and the prison camp. 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 said get away from the fence, white man. i can hardly hold the ball back now and the bottom rail is on top. think about that phrase for a second. the bottom rail is on top. if there's ever a piece of evidence from the civil war to show its revolutionary nature it is this. african-american soldiers understand what it's done for them. it's freed then and placed them in command of the former masters

so the confederates are showing that revolutionary change up front and their insew lens at the new guards, and there are far more fence-line shootings than 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. now, let's move to a different prisoner of war camp. one that housed confederate prisoners in chicago. now, 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 here before going off to the front. but after the capture of confederate prisoners 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. the -- at 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 sick men who had fallen, prostrate from weakness and given themselves to despair. they cursed and blasphemed as easily as they groaned. there were many sick people who made their condition hopeless by breathing the stenchful

atmosphere. exhumed bodies lay over with a few gasps intervening between them and death. such as were not too far gone, said good god let me go, o lord. one insanely dammed the constitution because the agonies were so protracted. no self-respecting being could return from there without suffering. this shows you the inside of camp douglas. they couldn't live outside because the weather would be so cold. you see one precaution the union guards have taken by elevating these buildings up off the ground to make sure that 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 sweet, who was wounded at perriville, and all sorts of infractions that he wished to punish. the confederates could not spit tobacco, the barracks had to be connect spotless and guards could shoot anyone they please. they could shoot into the barracks randomly if they heard a noise. a noise would mean they could suspect a tunnelling effect and they could fire in to keep the inmates quiet. under sweet's tenure, the guards could enforce individual punishments on people. some of which were hue

milluating and some -- humiliating and some of them causing death. there was a huge saw horse that would be lifted eight feet off the ground and the punished inmate would have to stand on the saw horse or sit on it and kind of grip it tightly. would be up there all day, as the guards could watch him and of course the saw horse would do its unfortunate work on the inner thigh. another was called reaching for grub where an inmate would have to reach down and touch his toes and remain in the bent over position for several hours. until he suffered from a nose bleed 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. one of the things we talked about earlier in the class was the copper head movement. those copper heads that actually

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 undertook a conspiracy in november 1864 to help release these confederate prisoners to find them 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 strip stretched many of the confederate inmates in the snow. now, there was a conspiracy afoot. some historians debate this. 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. i guess the last thing about this unfortunate prison camp, it

was very difficult to get good meat if you were a prisoner there. so they would resort to eating stray dogs. they were really good at. attracting dogs to the stockade, dragging them through and eating them. they found -- they got extreme pleasure out of eating the prison guard dogs if they could ever bring them over. there was this one lieutenant he had a little dog and they 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 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 if you have ever driven through richmond, virginia, you probably passed close to. it is bell isle. this started off as a temporary prison camp, much like camp douglas, but it 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 that -- and it was -- it had a large ridge on it where the confederate guards would be placed and they're pointing into the tents of these union inmates and a terrible place to be. an estimated 15 to 25 men died there per day at 1863. it was lice infested. the prisoners were allowed to bathe in the james river which is a terrible prospect because the is speedy current could sweep them away and the guards were allowed to shoot any they

believed were making an escape attempt. 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. there was actually an escape attempt from this prison early 1864 that through the citizens of richmond into a frenzy. as a result, the commander of libby prison decided he needed to fill the basement with gunpowder. so in case there would be a mass breakout attempt of a larger scale later on, the entire prison could be blown sky high, killing all the inmates with it. this image gives you an idea of what it was like inside. very dark. very dungeon like 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. it was a breeding ground for vermin. they used rat hell which was never occupied as a means of tunnelling out. more than a hundred union prisoners got out of it, but many were recaptured. another prison camp we can profile here and one even more upsetting than libby was richland jail in columbia. this was a prison camp reserved exclusively for officers of the two most hated of all union regiments. does anyone know what they were? union regiments. >> would it be like the u.s. ct? >> right. this is where the officers of the u.s. ct go. one hated group.

and does anyone know the other hated group? border state officer. 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 is really just a building in the middle of columbia, south carolina. and that was where you would stay. again, it was very poorly sanitized. filled with cockroaches, poor food and cruel citizens who came by outside to mock the prisoners in their cells. one of kind of the 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 is incarcerated there was a lieutenant named

freeman boly. we discussed this man earlier in class. he surrendered at the battle of the crater. was nearly lynched by the citizens of petersburg when he was drawn in a parade through the city. he described the conditions as follows. the cornmeal was sour, much of it has ground cob and all. 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 all over me. my feet were greatly swollen. my teeth loosened and the gums would bleed upon the slightest pressure. and if you ever read boly'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 the officers would have stayed in. would have been a room. probably about half the size of

the room we're in this morning. i would 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. 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 union officers there and there are about 30 of them in a room half this size. imagine if we lived in this room half this size, every day, and in the hottest part of summer and you were suffering from bowel issues and you have 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 -- i

mean, is a confederate guard going to take the waste of yankee officers? no. one of you brave souls has to go to the window and dump it out in the street. what happens if you do that? you'll get shot. because the sentries guard the street. if they see anyone looking at the window they have the authority to shoot. imagine going out that way. you're going out dumping out the human waste. but it has to be done. so who's the brave soul that can't take the smell anymore? all right. one of our last -- the last prison camps we'll look at today is that of andersonville, the most notorious of prison camps. it's established in february of 1864. it's a wooden stockade, kind of in south central georgia, meant to hold 1,000 union prisoners of war, 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 recorded there during the 14 months of this prison's operation. it closed shortly before the end of the civil war. you can see andersonville, the end of its service. it was a wooden stockade wall that surrounded the encampment. this is the east side, west and north. you can see the second stockade around it. this is to prevent tunnelling out. it was kind of a late war addition. the same can be said of the barracks. they were made for the sick, but they did not exist for much of the operation. these are the confederate encampments. some forts to prevent them from escaping. if they escaped it was a severe health risk to the people of georgia, as well as a roving army of starving men going from

farm to farm looking for food. the main encampment was over here near the rail line. this here is probably one of the most important structures of the entire prison camp. that is the natural stream that flowed under the stockade wall into the camp. it was down river from the confederate encampment. so the confederates would use the head waters of the branch for their water supply and also for their animal waste and their own human waste and it would flow into the prison camp. then settle right about here. so essentially this was a sess pit right in the middle. 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 atlanta campaign or the overland campaign you arrive here at the campaign. you're marched by your squad up to the gate house here.

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. so you enter in through here and you enter into the big campground where they 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. 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. sometimes the confederate guards would let them outside into the georgia wilderness to bring in lumber so they can fortify their little homes which they dug into the dirt. there's lots of digging of wells because the prisoners knew you