QUARTERS FOR THE CAPTURED

“WULD THAT I WAS AN ARTIST & had the material to paint this camp & all its horors.” Union Sergeant David Kennedy so described Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Ga. A Confederate soldier, however, could have spoken similarly about Union prison camps, as both sides failed to adequately house and feed their prisoners. Approximately 211,000 Union soldiers were captured during the war, and some 30,000 died in their prison pens. Meanwhile, 215,000 Confederates were held in Union camps, and some 26,000 died while incarcerated. Prison deaths had been curbed early in the war due to the 1862 prisoner exchanges outlined by the Dix-Hill Cartel, but after it collapsed in 1863, for a number of reasons, including the South’s refusal to swap black soldiers, the number of men