Long called by some the "Andersonville of the North," the prisoner of
war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all
Union-run POW camps. It existed for only a year--from the summer of 1864
to July 1865--but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly
emblematic of man's inhumanity to man.
Confederate prisoners called it "Hellmira."
Hastily constructed, poorly planned, and overcrowded, prisoner of war
camps North and South were dumping grounds for the refuse of war. An
unfortunate necessity, both sides regarded the camps as temporary
inconveniences--and distractions from the important task of winning the
war. There was no need, they believed, to construct expensive shelters
or provide better rations. They needed only to sustain life long enough
for the war to be won. Victory would deliver prisoners from their
conditions.
As a result, conditions in the prisoner of war camps amounted to a great
humanitarian crisis, the extent of which could hardly be understood even
after the blood stopped flowing on the battlefields.
In the years after the war, as Reconstruction became increasingly
bitter, the North pointed to Camp Sumter--better known as the
Andersonville POW camp in Americus, Georgia--as evidence of the cruelty
and barbarity of the Confederacy. The South, in turn, cited the camp in
Elmira as a place where Union authorities withheld adequate food and
shelter and purposefully caused thousands to suffer in the bitter cold.
This finger-pointing by both sides would go on for over a century.
And as it did, the legend of Hellmira grew.
In Hellmira: The Union's Most Infamous POW Camp of the Civil War,
Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil
War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of
the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira. In the end,
Maxfield suggests that it is time to move on from the blame game and see
prisoner of war camps--North and South--as a great humanitarian failure.
