(Photo)
A stockade was built around an unused
Union army
training camp to create Elmira Prison in
June 1864.
The prison contained 35 barracks and
was intended
to house as many as 5,000 prisoners. On
July 6 the
first 400 arrived, and by the end of
the month
there were more than 4,400 prisoners,
with more on
the
way. By the end of August almost 10,000
men were
confined there, many of them sleeping in
the open in
tattered clothes and without
blankets.
On August 18, in retaliation for the
conditions in
Southern prison camps, Colonel Hoffman
ordered that
rations for the prisoners be reduced to
bread and
water. The overcrowded conditions
ensured that any
disease introduced to the malnourished
population
would spread rapidly. Without meat and
vegetables,
the prisoners quickly succumbed to
scurvy, with
1,870 cases reported by September 11.
The scurvy was
followed by an epidemic of diarrhea,
then pneumonia
and smallpox. By the end of the year,
1,264
prisoners had died, and survivors had
nicknamed the
prison "Helmira". The winter was
bitterly cold, but
when Southern families sent clothes for
the
prisoners, Hoffman would allow only
items that were
gray to
be distributed. Clothes in other colors
were burned
while the sons and husbands for whom
they were
intended literally froze to death. By
the end of
the war, 2,963 Elmira prisoners were
dead.
Almost 25 percent of the 12,123
Confederate soldiers
who entered the 40 acre prisoner of war
camp at
Elmira, N.Y., died. This death rate was
more than
double the average death rate in other
Northern
prison camps, and only 2 percent less
than the
death rate at the Southern prison at
Andersonville,
Ga.
The deaths at Elmira were caused by
diseases
brought on by terrible living conditions
and
starvation,
conditions deliberately caused by the
vindictive
U.S. commissary-general of prisoners,
Col. William
Hoffman.