Union Civil War Prison at Elmira, NY

The prison camp was only there for one year, yet it had the highest death rate, per capita, of any prison camp north or south, 24 percent. The following statistics are offered as published.

Elmira prison was located on a 30 acre site, (References 3 & 5 indicate the camp may have reach 40 acres), along the banks of the Chemung River. A one acre lagoon of water, called Foster's Pond, stood within the walls of the stockade. The pond was a backwash from the river and served as a latrine and garbage dump. Prison buildings were located on the high northern bank of the lagoon. The lower southern level, known to flood easily, later became a hospital area for hundreds of smallpox and diarrhea victims.

Outline Map with some explanations for references

A. Main entrance to prison camp. B. Officers' private entrance to camp. D. Dead House, where bodies were prepared for burial. E. Officer of the day and guard tending main gate. H. The six new hospital barracks P. Officers' tents. R. Commandant's office. S. Sutler's store. T. Mess house of the sixteen police sergeants. The three buildings on right are their sleeping quarters. X. Tunnel outlet from Hospital No. 1. Z. Unfinished tunnel under Hospital No. 2. 7. House for guards when off duty. 8. Officers' quarters 9. Colonel Moore's living quarters. 10. Officers' quarters. 13. Barracks of 16th V.R.C. Flagpoles, one inside camp, the other at the corner of Colonel Moore's quarters. Observatory seen on left, located on opposite side Water Street. The famous tunnel is shown near northeast corner of camp.

The prison was conceived on May 15th. 1864, when Adjutant General E. D. Townsend reported several empty barracks could be used to house a large number of "Rebels" recently captured.

• Hoffman wrote to to Eastman on 5/19 that he had HEARD the site would hold 10.000.
• Eastman then replied on 5/23 that the barracks "could hold 4,000, with plenty of room for another 1,000."
• Hoffman on 6/22 tells Eastman "to make the area, being enclosed by a fence, enough to accomodate, in barracks and tents, 10,000 prisoners."
• On June 30, 1864, Eastman wrote to Brigadaire-General L. Thomas that the camp was ready to receive prisoners, "as there will be about 50 compaines of 200 men each (10,000)...".

The camp bakery had adequate facilities for feeding 5,000 prisoners. No camp hospital existed, but tents were available for any men who might become ill. Preparations for 10,000 prisoners does not appear to have been made.

Hoffman's Photo Taken 1865
	Interesting Note: An internet browser informs me that Hoffman was captured by the Confederate Army and later paroled. MG Hoffman, then LTC Hoffman, was captured when stationed in Texas waiting to take command of the 6th Infantry. As a condition of parole he could not again bear arms against the Confederate Army. He was then appointed Commissary General of Prisoners.

Inside the fenced in area (know as "the pen") stood 35 two-story barracks, each of which measured 100 by 20 feet. Ceilings were barely high enough to accommodate two rows of crude bunks along the walls. Unsealed roofs characterized the wooden buildings. The floorings were of green lumber, without foundations, and had little resistance to wind and water. Behind the rows of barracks was a group of buildings converted into a dispensary, adjutant's office and guard rooms. To their rear, extending to the northern bank of Foster's Pond, were the cook houses and mess halls. The first group of prisoners to arrive at the prison quickly crowded the allotted barracks. Subsequent arrivals lived in "A" tents scattered around the prison area.

Camp Photo's Click on Photo's to view Enlarge

At the time of their arrival, most prisoners were unaware of one last and deadly factor. The prison was located in New York State, where for at least four months of the year, the weather was bitterly cold. One prisoner from Virginia wrote the compound was, "an excellent summer prison for southern soldiers, but an excellent place for them to find their graves in the winter."

The first contingent of prisoners arrived from New York by train. Prisoners were pleasantly surprised when sympathetic citizens, at many stops, distributed food and clothing to them. Yet, wrote one prisoner, "these agreeable incidents were occasionally diversified by the insults of some sleek non-combatant, whose valiant soul found congenial occupation in fearful threats of our indiscriminate massacre, if he could only lay hands on us."

The first group reached the prison at 6 a.m. on July 6th and numbered 399 men, one soldier escaped enroute. The second group arrived early in the morning of July 11th, followed by 502 Confederates the following day. Before departing their earlier prison camps, the prisoners received vaccinations for smallpox. The injections were of poor quality vaccines, and seen on many arms "were great sores, big enough, it seemed, to put your fist in."

On July 15th, an Erie Railroad train jammed with prisoners, collided with a freight train near the hamlet of Shohola. Forty-eight prisoners and seventeen guards were killed. 100 prisoners and eighteen guards were injured. PRISONERS OF WAR KILLED IN A RAILROAD ACCIDENT

By the end of July, 4, 424 prisoners were packed in the compound, with another 3,000 enroute. The total number leaped to 9,600 by mid-August. It took three hours to feed 10,000 men in shifts of 1,800 at a time. The camp commander complained of the over crowded conditions, and was told as long as the men got through their breakfast by 11 a.m. and dinner by 6 p.m. nothing more was necessary.

The runoff and sewage going into Foster's Pond was beginning to have effects on the prisoners. It was getting to be offensive to the nostrils and a danger to the health. One of the surgeons at the prison stated the case more pointedly. An average of 7,000 prisoners released daily over 2,600 gallons of urine-"highly loaded with nitrogenous material"-into Foster's Pond. Moreover, he noted, the pond received the contents of the sinks and garbage of the camp until it became so offensive that vaults were dug on the banks of the pond for sinks. Washington was notified as early as August 17; not until late October was permission received to use prisoner labor to dig drainage ditches to remove the water and it's rotting matter. By December the odor was gone, by then scores of prisoners were down with disease.

Housing was still a problem and getting worse. Less then a month after the camp opened, almost 10,000 Confederates were inside it's crowded compound... tents ran out on August 7; a new shipment arrived on August 12, but there wasn't enough of them. Hundreds of prisoners had to sleep in the open, many of them without blankets. Late in November, a medical inspector pronounced the barracks to be "of green lumber, which is cracking, splitting, and warping in every direction."

In a feeble effort to lessen the number of prisoners, late in September, Washington issued a directive that prisoners physically unfit would be exchanged. The order stated that no Confederates would be shipped southward that were "too feeble to endure the journey." The camp commander was ordered to "have a careful inspection of the prisoners made by medical officers to select those who shall be transferred."

• Captain Munger, in weekly inspection report of Oct. 16th, says: "... During the past week over 1200 invalid prisoners, 300 of whom were from the hospital, were paroled and sent South for exchange. ..."

The prisoners journey south was to be by train to Baltimore followed by steamer to City Point for exchange. On October 14, Washington surgeons examined the 1200 prisoners who arrived by train at Baltimore. Five had died in route; scores of others were reported by one doctor as being "unable to bear the journey." The physical condition of many of these men, he added, "was distressing in the extreme, and they should have never been permitted to leave Elmira.

• Letter to Surgeon J. Simpson, US Army, Medical Director, West's Building Hospital, Baltimore, Md. from A. Chapel, Surgeon, US Volunteers in charge," I went on board the steamer loaded with prisoners last evening..." "I found at least forty cases that should not have been sent.... but as my hospital had been more than filled by those sent by Surgeon Campbell, I thought it better NOT to remove them."

The episode became one of the major marks against the prison it's occupants had dubbed "Helmira."

In the mean time, life at prison had become routine and, in most instances, revolting. Prisoners not packed in the flimsy barracks swarmed around the yards and vied for space within the few ragged tents. The first troops designated as guards at the prison were Negroes who, one Georgia soldier sneered, "had been decoyed North and organized into companies and regiments to guard their former masters." units of the Veteran Reserve Corps, and New York State Troops later became the Provost guard.

Late in July the prisoners underwent a unique indignity. A group of townspeople erected two observation platforms immediately outside the prison walls. For the nominal sum of 15 cents, spectators could observe the prisoners as they endured life inside the compound.

Initially, one of the more pressing needs of the prisoners was for clothing. The cry for clothing brought an instantaneous response from Southern families and friends. Yet, Col. Eastman withheld issuance of the clothing until he could get permission for distribution from Col. Hoffman. The permission came in late August, but only clothing of gray could be issued. Piles of clothing of other colors were burned. All but a few coats, shirts and pairs of trousers were destroyed.

Winter struck early at the prison. Prisoners lacking blankets and clad in rags collapsed from exposure. By early December, 1,600 men "entirely destitute of blankets," stood ankle deep in snow to answer morning roll call.

In the second week of December, the Federal government issued clothing for 2,000 men to 8,400 Confederates then quartered at the prison. In January, Confederate authorities sent a shipment of cotton Northward under a flag of truce, the proceeds from the sale of the cotton went to purchase clothing for the prisoners.

On August 18, Col. Hoffman ordered prisoner rations restricted to bread and water. The results were, by late August, an epidemic of scurvy was in full force; on September 11, no less then 1,870 cases had been reported. In October the prisoners received a single small ration of fresh vegetables. Onions and potatoes, wrote a prison doctor, constituted three of every five rations for two weeks of that same month; then their distribution stopped. Not until December was the meager diet of bread and water supplemented with a meat ration. However, stated Captain Bennet Munger, a prison inspector, the meat was of such inferior quality that a quarter-beef weighing 92 pounds yielded but 45 1/2 pounds of meat, "when carefully taken off the bone." Men were dying of starvation at the rate of 25 a day.

Close on the heels of the scurvy epidemic came an even larger outbreak of diarrhea. Moreover, by November 1864, pneumonia had reached plague proportions. A month later dreaded smallpox came to Elmira and in it's first week struck 140 men and killed ten. Smallpox was ever-present thereafter. One prisoner wrote, "there is not a day that at least twenty men are taken out dead."

Medical treatment of prisoners from the outset was bad, and it just got worse as time went on. As early as July 11, 1864- five days after the arrival of the first group of prisoners, Surgeon Inspector C.T. Alexander reported,"I found the sick.... in no way suitably provided for except for shelter; diet not suitable; some without bedsacks; blankets scarce." On September 21, Ward Assistant Anthony Keiley wrote in his diary: "As I went over to the first hospital this morning early, there were 18 dead bodies lying naked on the bare earth. Eleven more were added to the list by half past eight o'clock." By November the death toll in the hospitals had reached 755 men. A large portion of mortalities stemmed from nearby Foster's Pond, which one observer described as being "green with putrescence, filling the air with it's messengers of disease and death." at the rate of sickness then present, a doctor informed Washington, "the entire command will be admitted to the hospital in less than a year and thirty-six percent will die."

Washington ignored or denied repeated requisitions for badly needed medicines. An urgent request for straw on which the sick could lay was ignored. Hoffman turned repeated request to complete the ceilings and roofs on the hospital buildings down without any reasons given. An official in the U.S. Sanitary Commission was turned down flat when he asked permission to attend to the sick and dying. By late December at least 70 men were lying on the hospital floors because of a lack of beds and straw; another 200 diseased and dying men lay in the regular prisoner quarters because there was no room for them in the wards. As one guard wrote, "Prisoners died as sheep with the rot." A Federal Inspector wrote in October, "The number of deaths this week is but 40."

The number of sick and dead rose sharply at the end of 1864, when prisoners, fighting disease, filth and starvation, could not weather the bitter cold of a New York winter. The winter was so severe, and clothing so scarce, that prisoners stood in deep snow with only rags tied around their frozen and swollen feet to answer morning roll calls. Late in December, after repeated urgent pleas, Washington sent a few stoves to the prison. There were two small stoves for each barracks, and a few for the men still housed in tents. Prisoners received small wood rations only at 8 a.m. and at 8 p.m. During the 12 hour intervals they had to get warm as best they could. Moreover, with an average of 200 men to a barracks, each stove therefore was the sole means of warmth for 100 men.

On the night of March 16, 1865, unusually hard rains caused the Chemung River to over run it's banks. Federals and Confederates alike hastily assembled crude rafts to evacuate prisoners from the Smallpox Hospital in the flats and they did succeed in floating most of the sick to safety. Other prisoners crowded the upper stories of the barracks as icy water rose halfway up the first level. The Camp's Col. Tracy reported that the transfer of prisoners to high ground resulted "with but slightly increased loss of life."

A month later General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appromattox, and the prisoners received much improved treatment, and were not guarded as closely. The paroling of prisoners began late in May. Except for those still confined to the hospitals, the prison camp was vacant by July 5th, and ready for demolition a month later. The last prisoner, named Kistler, did not leave the hospital and start home until September 27, 1865. The prison's death rate in March of 1865 was an average of sixteen Confederates a day. Of a total of 12,122 Confederate soldiers imprisoned at the prison, 2,933 died of sickness, exposure, and associated causes. Of the survivors from the stockade, an eyewitness made the observation; "I speak in all reverence when I say that I do not believe such a spectacle was seen before on earth...On they came, a ghastly tide, with skeleton bones and lusterless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of but one feeling, the thought of freedom, the love of home."

1. "The Elmira Prison Camp", A History of the Military Prison at Elmira, N. Y. July 6, 1864 to July 10, 1865; By: Clay W. Holmes, A.M.; G.P. Putman's Sons New York and London, The Knickerbocker press 1912.
2. "Civil War Prisons", Kent State University Press, edited by William B. Hesseltine.
3. "Photographic History of The Civil War", Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, edited by William C. Davis & Dell I. Wiley.
4. "The Blue and the Gray", published by Cresent Books, distributed by Random House Value Publishing, Inc., edited by Henry Steele Commager
5. "The Blue and the Gray" the story of the Civil War as told by participants, edited by Henry Steele Commager, 1995 edition is published by Cresent Books, distributed by Random House Value Publishing, Inc., 40 Engelhard Avenue, Avenel, New Jersey 07001. ISBN 0-517-06015-9. Chapter XIX, Prisons, North and South, Section 7, Titled: "The Privations of Life in Elmira Prison." is a narrative by a Tennessee prisoner, Marcus B. Toney, titled: "The privations of a Private", Nashville, Tenn.; Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1905. Pp. 93-104, passim."