With no pomp or ceremony, prison
cemeteries grew
rapidly as brave men were laid to rest
far from
their homes. In Sumter
County, Ga., Andersonville, the South's
notoriously
horrible prison, existed for only 14
months, but on
some days more
than 100 men were buried in trenches
there.
Andersonville was established as a
national cemetery
in 1865, and today
white stone markers in painfully long
rows mark the
almost 13,000 graves of prisoners who
died there,
joined by almost
3,000 newer graves of veterans. The
grounds also
house a museum honoring all American
prisoners of
war from all of the
nation's wars.
Assignment to Elmira Prison in New York
was a death
sentence for 2,917 Confederates. Ill
equipped for
the cold, many of
the prisoners stood barefoot in the
snow for roll
call. An ex-slave was paid to bury the
dead
prisoners in a 2.5 acre
cemetery. In 1877 the government bought
the land
for $1,500, named it "Woodlawn
Cemetery," and
replaced the wooden
headboards with stones.
Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio, was
another horrible
location for Southern prisoners. Its
cemetery, named
"The City of
the Dead," holds the remains of 2,260
Confederate
soldiers. After the war the cemetery sat
overgrown
and neglected until
1894, when Union colonel W.H. Knauss
took it upon
himself to clear the ground and plant
trees and
bushes; he also "marked
and kept green all the long neglected
graves he
could find largely at his own expense."
Others then
pitched in: an arch
inscribed "America" was erected over
the entrance
and decoration ceremonies were held to
honor the
dead.
In 1864, having decided the exchange of
prisoners benefited the Confederacy,
Union officials
stopped the program,
thereby bringing on overcrowding and
miserable
conditions for most prisoners of war.
Disease,
hunger, and overexposure
to the elements were more often the
rule than the
exception at prisons, and they took a
heavy toll. Of
the nearly
194,000 Union soldiers held prisoner,
22,576 died;
of about 214,000 Confederates in
Northern prisons,
26,436 died.