Captured by War

July 16, 1863

I am an inspector for the Confederate War camps, where they keep the Union prisoners.  Right now I am traveling to Andersonville Prison camp in southwestern Georgia.  When we arrived, we saw about 45,000 Union prisoners that would never see the outside world again.  The prison camp was heavily guarded by confederate troops.  I walked in to start inspecting how they were doing.  They were in very poor condition.  But who cares, I mean they want to get rid of slavery!  If they do that, the plantation owners would have nobody to work the farm.  They got what they deserved!  So then I went up to the head tower to go see Henry Wirz, the head officer of the prison camp.  When I got up there, he was sitting in his chair doing some work.  I told him,” Sir I must inspect the prisoners now.”  So he walked me down to the place where they keep the union prisoners.  They were in very poor condition.  There were guys just sitting up against the wall miserably.  He brought me to this one man and I looked at his arms and legs.  They were in pretty good shape but not very muscular.  Then I looked at his stomach and body and he had bullet wounds and was extremely skinny.  So on a scale from one to ten, ten being healthy and everything being good.  Overall I would give him a five because he was in pretty poor shape.  Captain Wirz took me to another group of people sitting up against the wall suffering of heat since it was ninety-eight degrees outside and they were out there all day.  So that was a sign that they weren’t given any shelter.  When we started to look at them, they had several teeth missing, and some were even missing arms and legs.  I checked out this one guy and he only had a couple of teeth, one leg, and one of his arms was as skinny as a twig and was shorter than the other one.  Also he was so skinny you could see his bones and ribs.  He only weighed about eighty pounds.  And all the rest of them looked bad too.  “So”, I told him,” you need to feed them more and provide them with shelter and clothing.”  He said he would provide them with basic supplies, but I bet he wasn’t.  Then I got back on my horse and got ready to go to another prison camp.  I did not like what I saw at Andersonville, but they got what they deserved.

Alex F.