Andersonville Prison, Civil War

 Andersonville

Chenango Telegraph, Norwich, NY, January 27, 1876

The debate on the Andersonville horrors in Congress has had the effect to reproduce some of the documents and dispatches which passed between rebels themselves during the war.  They were used by Gen. Garfield in his recent speech.  Here is the report of Col. Chandler, as sworn to on the trial of Wirz.

[Note:  At the end of the Civil War, Captain Henry Wirz was arrested and prosecuted for his involvement at Andersonville.  Wirz was accused of conspiracy to destroy prisoners' lives in violation of the laws and customs of war.]

Colonel:  Having in obedience to instructions of the 25th ultimo, carefully inspected the prison for Federal prisoners of war and post at this place.  I respectfully submit the following report:

Anderson, January 5, 1864:  The Federal prisoners of war are confined within a stockade fifteen feet high, of roughly hewn pine logs about eight inches in diameter, inserted five feet into the ground, enclosing, including the repeat extension, an area of five hundred and forty by two hundred and sixty acres. A railing around the inside of the stockade and about twenty feet from it, constitutes the "deadline," beyond which the prisoners are not allowed to pass and about three and one-fourth acres near the center of the enclosure is so marshy as to be at present unfit for occupation, reducing the available present area to about twenty-three and one-half acres, which gives somewhat less than six square feet to each prisoner.  Even this is being constantly reduced by the additions to their number.  A small stream passing from west to east through the enclosure at about one hundred and fifty yards from its southern limits, furnished the only water for washing accessible to the prisoners.  Some regiment of the guard, the bakery, and the cook house being placed on the rising grounds bordering the stream before it enters the prison, renders the water nearly unfit for use before it reaches the prisoners.   D.T. Chandler, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General; Colonel R.H. Chitton, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General.

Ambrose Spencer, a Georgia planter, on the same trial testified as follows:

Between the 1st and 15th of December 1863, I went up to Andersonville with W.S. Winder and four or five other gentlemen, out of curiosity to see how the prison was to be laid out.  I asked him if he was going to erect barracks or shelter of any kind.  He replied that he was not; that the damned Yankees who would be put in there would have no need of them.  I asked him why he was cutting down all the trees and suggested that they would prove a shelter to the prisoners from the heat of the sun, at least.  He made this reply, or something similar to it.  "That is just what I am going to do; I am going to build a pen here that will kill more damned Yankees than can be destroyed in the front."  Those are very nearly his words, or equivalent to them.

Again Col. Chandler reports as follows:

Andersonville, August 5, 1864:  Colonel:  My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the officer in the command of the post, Brigadier General J.H. Winder, and the substitution in his place of someone who unites both energy and good judgment with some feeling of humanity and consideration for the welfare and comfort (so far as is consistent with their safe keeping) of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control.  Someone who at least will not advocate deliberately and in cold blood the propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number has been sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangement suffice for their accommodation, who will not consider it a matter of self-laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade, a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe and which is a disgrace to civilization, the condition of which he might, by the exercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited means at his command, have considerably improved..  D.T. Chandler.  Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General.  Colonel R.H. Chitton, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General C.S.A. Richmond, Virginia.

Gen. Garfield says that so anxious was Col. Chandler that these horrors should be rebuked that he went to Richmond and in person delivered his report to the Secretary of War, a member, of course, of the cabinet of Jefferson Davis.  "If I am not correct in this, I believe there is a member of that cabinet now on the floor who can correct me.  Of course, being a soldier, Colonel Chandler first delivered his report to the Adjutant General and that officer, General Cooper on the 18th of August 1864, wrote upon the back of the report these words.

Adjutant and Inspector General's Office: August 18, 1874:  Respectfully submitted to the Secretary of War.  The condition of the prison at Andersonville is a reproach to us as a nation.  The engineer and ordinance departments were applied to and authorized their issue, and I so telegraphed General Winder.  Colonel Chandler's recommendations are coincided in.  By order of General Cooper.  R.H. Chitton, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General

Not content with that endorsement, Colonel Chandler went to the office of the Secretary of War himself; but the Secretary being absent at the moment, the report was delivered to the assistant Secretary of War, J.A. Campbell, who wrote below General Cooper's endorsement these words:

These reports show a condition of things at Andersonville which chills very loudly for the interposition of the department, in order that a change may be made.  J.A. Campbell, Assistant Secretary of War.

What was done with these reports and endorsements, which show the fiendish cruelty of Winder, the rebel commander of the prison pen?  Gen. Garfield continues:

"The record show, Mr. Speaker, that a few days thereafter an order was made in reference to General Winder.  To what effect?  Promoting him!  Adding to his power in the field of his infamy!  He was made commissary general of all the prisons and prisoners throughout the Confederacy.  That was the answer that came as the result of this humane report of Colonel Chandler; and that new appointment of Winder came from Mr. Seddons, the Confederate Secretary of War.

A Member:  By order of the President. 

Mr. Garfield.  Of course, all appointments were by the President [Jefferson Davis], for the gentleman from Georgia says that they carried our Constitution with them and hugged it to their bosoms. But that is not all. The testimony of the Wirz trial shows that at one time the Secretary of War himself became shocked at the brutality of Winder, and in a moment in indignation he relieved him from command.  For authority upon this subject, I refer to the testimony of Cashmyer, a detective of Winder's, who was called before Wirz court. That officer testified that when Mr. Seddons, Secretary of War, wrote the order relieving Winder, the latter walked over with it to Jefferson Davis, who immediately wrote on the back of it, "This is entirely unnecessary and uncalled for."  Winder appears to have retained the confidence and approval of Davis to the end, and remained on duty until the merciful providence of God struck him dead in his tent in the presence of the witness who gave this testimony. 

Now who [unreadable] but in the form of law we do [unreadable] responsibility for these atrocities a man whose name is [unreadable] is to be relived of all political [unreadable]. If not, let gentlemen show it.  Wipe out the charge and I will be the first man here to vote to relieve him of his disabilities. 

Winder was allowed to go on.  what did he do?  I will only give results, not details.  I will not harrow my own soul by the revival of those horrible details.  There is a group of facts in military history well worth knowing which will illustrate the point I am discussing. The great Napoleon did some fighting in his time, as did his great antagonist the Iron Duke.  In 1809 was fought the battle of Albuera, in 1812 the battle of Salamancs, in 1813 Vittoria, in 1815 the battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo, Wavre, and New Orleans, and in 1854 the battles of the Crimea.  The number of men in the English army who fell in battle or who were killed or died of wounds received in these battles amounted in the aggregate to 12,928.  But this Major General Winder, within his horrible area of death, from April 1864 to April 1865, tumbled into the trenches of Andersonville the dead bodies of 12,644 prisoners - only two hundred and eighty-four less than all the Englishmen who fell in or died of wounds received in the ten great battles I have named.

[Note:  General Winder died of a massive heart attack on February 7, 1865, and his death likely saved him from the gallows. His subordinate, Andersonville commandant Henry Wirz, famously was tried and executed following the war, in November 1865. Historians, meanwhile, have debated Winder's culpability in the deaths of thousands of Union prisoners, both in Richmond and at Andersonville.]