Visiting Elmira

Visiting Elmira

By a coincidence, I ended up staying at (near) Elmira for 4 days last week. I planned to take my daughter to Ithaca and looked for a suitable apartment when she started her studies in Cornell this Fall. With the buzzing summer activities around the Finger Lake region, Woodstock '99, the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction and the Bicycle Road Race, I could find no vacancy in any motel there, and the nearest accommodation available was in a little town called Horsehead, 2 miles north of Elmira.

Elmira!! What a nice quiet town! Today, few people notice that this place has a wealth of Civil War history. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, my wife and I went to the Woodlawn National Cemetery on Davis St., and paid respect to the fallen Civil War soldiers. At the time of our visit, there was no one else there in the Cemetery, and only the red cardinals and the blue jays darting from one branch to another. Besides the graves of the Union soldiers, there are about 3,000 Confederate dead prisoners buried there. Three huge monuments captured my attention. The first was the monument placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, with a statue of a Greek Goddess, commemorating the Confederate dead. The second was a monument remembering the train wreck in Shohola, Pennsylvania, en route transporting the Confederate prisoners to Elmira. 49 Confederates and 17 Union guards died on 7/15/1864. It was a train collision when two trains from opposite directions were directed on the same single track by human error. The third was a plaque honoring an ex-slave, John W. Jones, who buried the Confederates, marking their graves with names, Company, Regiment and State on wood headboards. Jones escaped to the north from the Elzey family, of Leesburg, Virginia, by the "Underground Railroad." In 1877, the Federal Government bought the Cemetery and replaced the wood headboards with headstones. Thanks to sexton John W. Jones, the identity of the Southerners was accounted for. He even numbered them in sequence of their death. I snapped several pictures at the cemetery and wrote my thoughts. Number 1 grave belonged to Wm. Garner, Co. G, 26 VA Reg. C.S.A. The last grave I found, was no. 2963, H.J.F. Griffin, Co. F, 25 S.C. Reg. C.S.A. There were 2973 known Confederate dead, but I could only find 2963 graves. Counting them by states showed the following: N. Carolina 1233; S. Carolina 387; Virginia 550; Georgia 314; Alabama 235; Tennessee 76; Louisiana 64; Florida 30; Mississippi 10; Texas 6; Maryland 3; Arkansas 1; Kentucky 1; Missouri 1 and the rest unknown. There are 36 rows of Confederate graves altogether.

Elmira! Elmira was a prosperous city by 1860's standard. It had excellent north-south and east-west railroad junctions. The Chemung canal connected Elmira with points as far west and north as Duluth, Minnesota, through the Erie Canal. In 1861, it was used as a military depot. In 1863, it was a rendezvous location for the draftees. The River Barrack, in 1864, served as a Confederate prison camp when the South refused to exchange the captured Union black troops and Union Secretary of War, Stanton, ordered the Army to suspend exchanging prisoners with the Confederates. The size of the prison population grew tremendously. Prisoners from Camp Point Lookout, spilled over and some were transferred to Elmira. On 7/6/1864, the first batch of prisoners arrived in the barracks, built on 30 acres of land, surrounded by 12 feet fence and guarded by armed sentry. The prison is located between Water St. and Grey St., and Union Col. William Hoffman was appointed the Commissary General of Prisoners and he was once a Confederate prisoner before the appointment.

I am curious to find out why 3,000 Confederate died in prison? Very often, When people talked about the inhumane conditions in Andersonville, the Southern sympathizers would retort, "How about Elmira?"

I did some study on the subject and instead of offering my opinion, I would like to let the contemporary historical eyewitnesses speak to us. Using both the Union source and the Confederate source, the Union soldiers and the Confederate prisoners would describe the conditions of the prison to you. Then, you could draw your own conclusion.

The quantity and quality of food is an important criterion to evaluate a prison. A document written by a Union officer, showed a ration consisted of 12 ounce of pork or beacon, 1 pound of fresh beef and salt, 1 pound of corn meal. To every 100 rations, 15 pounds of beans or peas, 10 pounds of rice, 10 pounds of green coffee, 5 pounds of roasted coffee and canned vegetable were to be shared. One ration was distributed to each prisoner without regard to rank. A Confederate source said that ration was scant. In the morning, a small piece of salt pork or pickled beef was served and small piece of bread and soup was given in the afternoon, with a little rice or Irish potato. Another Southerner wrote that he got 10 ounce of bread and 2 ounce of meat every day. One Union source said the camp had large number of kettles to boil beans and each kettle held 50 gallons of soup. They used 1,000 to 1,200 pounds of meat. Breakfast was consisted of one third of a pound of bread and a small piece of meat per ration. Supper had the same bread with warm soup. Another source said breakfast had 8 ounce of bread, 8 ounce of meat, while dinner had 8 ounce of bread, with one and a half pint soup made from meat, potato, onion and beans, with average 2.2 ounce of vegetable per day per prisoner. A Confederate wrote in his diary that the soup was made of just a few beans floating on tasteless water. Some Union ladies established a prison school, bringing in their old school books. One of the Confederate prisoners was recruited to teach. He got 20 pounds of meat as his salary. When the Union citizens came to visit and do their charitable work, their pets, dogs or cats, would mysteriously disappear. The prisoners later claimed that dog stew and cat soup were delicious, and boiled rat was superb!

Winter (1864) in the North was freezing, 40 degrees below zero, and the Southerners were not used to this type of climate. The Union source mentioned that each prisoner had a blanket. The shelter was a long barrack, 120 ft x 40 ft, with 3 tier bunks, and big stoves were installed every 30 feet and always kept red hot. Confederate source said that some prisoners had no blanket and the stove was fired only two times a day, at 8 a.m. in the morning and 8 p.m. in the evening. It was always freezing cold and one stove for every 100 prisoners and only half of the available fuel was used. Many of them suffered from frostbites. Some Southerners claimed that Elmira was 10 times worse than Andersonville? A Confederate diary mentioned that the Yankee guards were not cruel at all.

Disease is another major cause of casualty. Records showed that scurvy, diarrhea, pneumonia, small pox, typhoid and infections killed many Confederate prisoners. On average, about eight prisoners would die on a day. Similar to Andersonville, Elmira has a small stream running through a frog pond, called Foster pond. The garbage, debris and excremental filth fowled up the water, and drinking it would surely make the prisoners sick. The camp administrator took some action to improve the sanitation by using disinfectants. Inventory indicated they used sulfuric, carbonic and chlorine gases to clean up the place. Next they constructed a sluice to relieve the unsanitary condition of the pond. Give credit to the Federal to improve the condition of the camp. Medical staff was not sent until the fifth month! Medical care might not be adequate for all the prisoners, and it held true for all other northern or southern POW camps. Punishment included "buck and gag" and wearing "barrel shirt." Wearing "barrel shirt" means putting a prisoner in a barrel, covering his body, with his head and feet exposed. After 2 hours under the sun, the heat trapped in the barrel would simmer his body to such an intolerable state that he would scream in agony. The boundary of the prison was drawn with white chalk ---- the dead line. Crossing it means death by gunfire from the sentry. But diaries showed some prisoners did make their escape successfully. A Texan named Jimmie Jones determined to "die." He got a coffin, covering himself with white lime powder and laid himself in it. He looked bloodlessly pale white. A gravedigger escorted the "death" wagon out of the prison. He looked "dead" all right ---- a mere skeleton attached with a thin layer of flesh. The guard took a quick look at the immobile "corpse" and let it pass. When the gravedigger left the camp, Jimmie rose from the coffin. The surprised gravedigger cried, "Ghost!" and ran. Eventually Jimmie got a horse and galloped to Lake Erie. Then, he found a boat and rowed to Canada. Many years later, the writer of the diary saw Jimmie again in a Re-union gathering in Texas. The most exciting prison story was the tunnel escape. A group of Confederates, who swore in penalty of death not to reveal their secret scheme to anyone, successfully dug a tunnel with only their pocketknives. They carried out the soil in small bags and disposed them without anyone noticing anything suspicious. They hid the tunnel entrance under a tent and dug another ditch (as a decoy) to fool the authority. The guards watched the ditch but totally missed the tunnel. About 10 escaped, and they (J.F. Maull, J.P. Putegnat, J.P. Scruggs, J. Purifoy, W.B. Traweek, J.W. Crawford, C. Malone, B. Benson, H. Jackson and W.H. Templin) broke through successfully. Their story is another adventure on its own merit and I have to skip the detail for lack of space here.

Why did so many Confederates die? There are many factors. I believe the cumulative factors broke the camel's back. Most of the army of the Northern Virginia was on half ration in 1864, and therefore, the soldiers didn't receive the proper nutrition to begin with. Some were wounded when captured, and deficient medical care would drain their lives away slowly. Some were tired and exhausted to the point of complete collapse. Some gave up hope. Added on disease, cold weather, rationed food and homesickness, it won't be surprise that many perished. A few Confederate ward-masters cheated and defrauded their fellow prisoners on food and blanket etc. in order to survive. Darwin's law on "the survival of the fittest" kicked in. The same phenomenon occurred when a gang of Union soldiers preyed on other weaker Union soldiers in Andersonville. Judge not, so thou won't be judged.

The Camp Monument read as follow: "Civil War Monument, dedicated to the soldiers who trained at Camp Rathbun May 1861-1864, and the Confederate at Camp Chemung July 1864 - July 1865. Flagstaff located inside main entrance to the camp NW corner of property at 722 Windsor Ave., donated under auspices Chemung Valley Living History Center, Inc. Mayor James Hare, City of Elmira, N.Y. May 3, 1992." Prison camp ------ such a misfortune of war!

We would like to pay respect to those who gave up their lives for their country: men from the North and men from the South.

(Sources: Observation and notes-taking on site visit in the National Cemetry in Elmira; References and credit also included books on Elmira; Dr. James I. Robertson's article on Elmira, "Union Civil War Prison at Elmira, NY", and websites on Elmira.) (1999)

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March 11, 2001