The Andersonville Trial

[12th Doctor]

Fact:  The Confederates could not afford to spread out their prison camps due to the massive loss of territory they were expiriencing at the time, and the fact that their resources were more spread out.

Fact:  A large part of the reason conditions were so horrid in Andersonville is because prisoner exchange had haulted between the two sides... this was the Unions decision, not the Confederacy's... the Confederates could not have predicted the influx of prisoners they were encountered with.

Fact:  The Union had the resources, medical supplies and the manpower to assure the Confederates under their care did not die, or were nto ill treated.  The Confederates did not.

Fact:  The prisoners at Andersonville received the exact same rations that the Confederate soldiers recieved in the field.  That's more a testiment to how sad conditions were for the average Confederate soldier by 1864 than to any Confederate "cruelty".

Fact:  Confederate prisoners of war did not recieve equivlent rations to Union soldiers in the field, even while the Union could have easily have afforded to do so.

Fact:  Yellow Fever, Scarlet Fever, Malaria, food spoilage... all far more common in the South than in the North.  Most deaths in the camp were caused by these things.  Many Confederate cities, namely Richmond and New Orleans expirience severe outbreaks of these illnesses during the war.  If the Confederates could not control an outbreak against their own civilians, its not very resonable to think they could control one in the POW population.

I'm not a Confederate apologist, but the whole Andersonville episode is one of the most distorted events of the Civil War and is yet another example of how Northern and revisionist historians have presented events in such a way as to make the Confederates seem just this side of evil.