From elmira, new york, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, derek maxfield. Derek thank you very much. Im very pleased to be here and talk about my latest project. Hellmira and prisoner over cams prisoner of war camps in general have been quite a surprise to me. I have studied the civil war since i was quite young and new the length of the tragedy during the civil war. But it was eyeopening to me the extent of the home and italian crisis that unfolded over the course of those for bloody years. The extent of the humanitarian crisis that unfolded over the course of those four bloody years. 500,000 incarcerated in total. And, although we understand that this is a small number of casualties considering the total number of casualties during the civil war, over 750,000 now we believe, when we consider that we could have done better. Both north and south. When you consider that this was in our power to make lives for those who were incarcerated better. It is really quite disappointing. And it tells us much about ourselves, i think then as today. This was a project that actually started because i was asked by chris to write this book but it was something that was something of a surprise to me because when i was growing up just 30 miles from elmira, i had no clue that elmira was the site of a pow camp. I think i learned in college for the first time about this, and was just entirely shocked. Because i thought by that time i was fairly wellversed in the civil war. And come to learn there is a good reason why i did not know about it. And, in fact, many people in elmira did not know about it. To some extent, it was an exercise in civic amnesia. This was a community that wanted to hide its past. It was only quite recently they began to embrace what happened there along the river. And, for in large measure, the reason for this had to do with being compared to andersonville. So, andersonville many people know was the pow camp near americas georgia, it was the largest of the pow camps. It was the most deadly of the camps. It held over 30,000. It had a death rate of approaching 30 . And as the war came to the end and the union came to learn more and more about the tragedy, the atrocities of andersonville, there began to be this kind of backandforth fingerpointing where every time the union would scream about the atrocities at andersonville, the south would answer what about elmira . And this is the way this would go on for 30 some years after the war, as both sides try to blame each other for what happened in these pow camps. It was not until the 1990s that this community decided to reembrace its past. A High School Teacher in elmira at the time led a movement to place a monument on the spot where the camp set. About 30 acres on the river on water street. And so, you see this here. The original flag staff of the camp was placed near this monument as well at that time. About that same time, the only two modern books until mine were published. One by Michael Horrigan and the other by michael gray. Both were released with any year within a year of each other. But, before that, the next book you have to look at would be holmesbook just before world war i. It has not had a lot of attention by historians. And those that knew about it really had no reason to want to uncover this again fearing that it would be bad for business, bad for tourism, which is an industry that elmira relies upon quite heavily. So, this was part of my interest. Another interest of mine had to do with this man here. This is william b. Reese my third greatgrandfather and in my research came to learn that he served in elmira during the time it was a prison camp. He was part of the invalid corps, or the veterans reserve corps. He had been in the battle of gettysburg. He was injured on the first day, and after that could not return to full duty. He ends up in elmira perhaps guarding some of the prisoners that i would be studying. So lets start the story of pow camps in general, just to contextualize this a little bit. So, this is montgomery. He is the quartermaster general and as the civil war got underway, one of the things that we see is neither side gave serious thought to the potentiality of needing to hold prisoners of war. And, although there were prisoners taken in some of the earliest battles of the war, they were exchanged pretty much on the spot in a kind of informal way that harkens back to the way things were done in the mexican war. No formal policy at all. And it was in the early days of the war that miggs suggests to the secretary of war, maybe we should do something to prepare in case we need to hold prisoners of war. Simon cameron was more interested in lining his own pockets at that time than he was in anything else. As result, nothing gets done. The confederates do little or nothing, either. So, then we come to the story of william hoffman. Lieutenant colonel william hoffman. He is going to be appointed at the request of montgomery meggs, the commissary general of union prisoners. And one of the things that occurs to me in all of this is that, if you are going to take this problem seriously, you want to have your best people on this. And when i look back at the way both sides operated pow camps from the top down, part of how they could have done things better is the people they chose to run these facilities. And hoffman was a good enough officer, but he had no administrative experience at all. He happened to be available. And one of his qualifications is that he was a pow himself for a short time. Hoffman was a graduate of west point. He served in the mexican war. He was in the 8th new york, im sorry, the 8th u. S. Regulars infantry. And very early in the war found himself a pow. He was exchanged in this kind of informal manner, but while awaiting exchange, he was in washington and they said, hey, we have got this job. How about you . This is how he comes to this job. I think when you look at his administration and the pow facilities, one of the things that i think is a characteristic that is important here is this ingrained frugality. He is really cheap. He is going to run these camps on a real shoestring. That is something that incidentally makes a secretary of war, whether it is Simon Cameron or stanton, very pleased because they do not want to spend any more money than is necessary, either. On the confederate side of things, they did not have as formal an administrative structure when it came to the pow camps. The closest they came was their Provost Marshal. This was the Provost Marshal of richmond, virginia. And when the war started he would be placed in charge of the pow facilities in richmond itself. And that is primarily where their pow facilities will remain for quite some time. And, only later near the end of the war, do they make this in any way more formal. He was a west point graduate. A tactics instructor. A little bit after his graduation, mexican war vet. He has more of an administrative capacity than hoffman did but he has Less Authority, much Less Authority than his union opposite. So, the pow issue comes to a head at shiloh. So, shiloh is really the big battle early in the war. It is a battle that opened the eyes of the north and south to how long, how bloody this war is really going to be, and over the course of two days, over 23,000 casualties. This also meant that you had hundreds if not thousands of prisoners taken on both sides. And shiloh is in the middle of a vast wilderness. Pittsburg landing is on the tennessee river, which is a water highway out of there, but where the battle took place is really in the middle of nowhere. And so, you have to move your wounded and your casualties out of this wilderness to be treated or to be imprisoned. And what this meant was kind of an emergency in the west at this time for the holding of pows. They have to be shipped north, and the union in very quick order has to convert what facilities they have available to them. This might be old penitentiaries, old prisons, old fairgrounds, anything where you could convert to holding a large number of prisoners in a fairly short amount of time. Now, the issue of Prisoner Exchange was really complicated by Abraham Lincolns stance when it came to recognizing the confederacy. Which he could not, of course, do. He saw this as an insurrection, a rebellion. And to treat with them about the pow issues in some ways would be to recognize them, which is something he could not do. And yet, the pragmatist in lincoln recognize that, yet, we have got to do something. We have to formalize a system of exchange because this really is not going to work otherwise. And this is what leads to what is called the dix hill cartel. We have these two men. They get together and they come to an agreement largely based on the framework from the mexican war with some updates. It is largely a man for man exchange and a formula of exchange between officers and enlisted men, but at least they have something in place, something that they can work from. And that gives some hope to men who find themselves incarcerated, and to some extent, empties out the pow camps that were then in place. But this is all quite complicated by the emancipation proclamation issued in january 1863. So, Abraham Lincoln came to the conclusion that in order to win this war, this measure would be necessary. And so, he issues the preliminary emancipation proclamation after the battle of antietam, seeing this as a victory, and it becomes official in january 1863. But it also sends the south into a tailspin over this and there is some fury. But it also opens the door to africanamerican prisoners. And this is where the breakdown of the cartel system begins. The high command of the confederacy, of course, does not want africanamerican soldiers in the field. They are offended by this. But they absolutely refuse to treat them as white soldiers. And this complicates exchange dramatically. Sutton says at the time that black soldiers cannot be recognized in any way as soldiers, subjects of the rules of war, and they absolutely refused to exchange africanamericans. This gets worse as time goes on because not only is the confederacy refusing to exchange any africanamerican soldiers they take, but reports start to get back to Union Authorities that many men are shot in the process of surrender, the cash to rate among africanamericans that are incarcerated is very high. Over the course of the war, over 800 black pows are taken, which is really a small number of those that the number should reflect. And, of those that do go into captivity, only 35 im sorry, 35 dying captivity. Die in captivity. And so, lincolns response at the time is to help exchanges. You hold exchanges, that means both sides now have the burden of taking care of these pows. Where are you going to hold them . And, of course, as the war goes on and the fighting gets worse, this problem becomes worse and worse. They have to open new camps. They have to be on the lookout for new facilities. And the one that most impacts our story is Point Lookout maryland. Point lookout, maryland results from the fighting in 1863. The camps are overflowing. And camp hoffman, aka Point Lookout, is created at the time. It has the advantage of being very near the Biggest Union hospital. So, this hospital, you can see down here on the point. It looks like spokes on a wheel. The General Hospital is the largest of the union hospitals. It has there he Good Transportation access. It is also a place would be hard to escape from. They begin to set up camps very near there. You see that in the upper right of the screen. Now, Point Lookout will very quickly swell to over 20,000 at its peak. This would be the feeder camp to what would become elmira. There is another view. At the very same time, early 64, andersonville was created in the south. We talked about this earlier. This is a camp that would come to house over 30,000. It is really just a big pen where Union Soldiers are thrown, and they will have little freshwater. They will have food occasionally, as the confederacy can get supplies to them, but almost immediately report start to get back to the union about how things are going there and the state of the prisoners in the confederate charge. The Overland Campaign is another thing that really directly impacts the overflow and then the real humanitarian crisis of the pow camps, because this is a campaign that is going to see over 65,000 union casualties, over 35,000 confederate casualties. All of the pows are taken captive. There is no exchange of this time. So these cancer just busting at the seams. These camps are just busting at the seams. Grant said at the time he felt to Exchange Prisoners would help himself. It would help them to fight on longer and he felt it was a way to quicken the end of the war, even if that meant that Union Soldiers are going to suffer in the process, which they certainly did. So, elmira comes into the store because of the union camps busting at the seams. Where are we going to put these men . The load at Point Lookout was becoming almost unbearable. And they were beginning to have security concerns there. And so, they decided to look about for another location. And elmira suited them quite well because elmira was already a draft rendezvous. It was on a Major Railroad hub. It was next to a canal. This was a place that had been a feeder location for Union Soldiers early in the war. So many of the facilities were still there and still available. So, there would be a minimum of preparation necessary to get this ready. So, at that post was lt. Col. Seth eastman. He was kind of your average soldier. He was not a great able administrator. He was a topographical engineer by training. He graduated from west point. Here is a guy that was also really not up to the job, either. But he is a good soldier, and you can see in his correspondent correspondence with his superiors that he is ready to do what they want him to do. Though he is not in great health himself. He is also kind of conflicted because his real interests are not military. His real interests are in oil painting and being in illustrator and an artist. And really the stress and the physical toll that the camp takes on him will lead to his removal in a short amount of time, but while he is there, he does the best that he can. One interesting side note on this, though, is eastmans wife, mary henderson, was a virginia. Virginian. She was an ffb. From one of the first families of virginia and very proslavery, and was so agitated by the book written by Harry Beecher stowe called uncle times cabin. A and she wrote her own version called aunt phylliss cabin in answer to this. So that has to of been have been controversial. It is more interesting when you consider that harriet Beecher Stowe herself summered in elmira, new york. These two ladies would have been circulated in the same part of elite elmira society. One wonders what those conversations were like. One of the more interesting figures in elmira was the commandant of the elmira pow camp, henry holt. He also is on the injured reserve. He was with the new york regiment, and he had been injured in battle, 104th new york. And they put him on duty at elmira to run the pow camp. And it is really interesting that when you look at the memoirs of the prisoners in the years after the war, the vitriol is quite thick. And some of that i think is guided by the controversy over andersonville at the time, but what is really interesting is, although they have terrible things to say about the conditions and the food at elmira, especially the winters, they love this man, love this man. And in the memoirs, especially the memoirs of Anthony Kylie who we will talk about they talk about how humane and kind this man was. So he is their jailer. And they write in their memoirs about how terrible the place of elmira was, and yet they love the man that was in charge of it, which i find kind of interesting. In january when he returns to duty the prisoners give him a parting gift on a silver platter, literally on a silver platter a chalice that is made from a coconut. That is the bowl of this cup. Handmade chalice on it as a gift to him on his way out. You will see here the rough outlines of the pow camp in elmira. You can see that the wall at the top there is right on the river. This is definitely built on a floodplain. Fosters pond, one of the things we will be talking about in the a moment, you will see about a third of the way down. And the largest amount of the camp is they are in the bottom half. This encompassed over 30 acres of land. And, just to give you some notion of what this looks like today, this is an overlay of that map on the modern neighborhood, and you will see near the top there water street. You can see fosters pond overlaid there. So there are probably at least a hundred homes that sit on where the pow camp was during the war. Fosters pond was one of the big controversies in the occupation of this land. Fosters pond is just kind of a farm pond but it was very still water, and early in the occupation in july of 1864, they set up the sinks, the latrines, very close to the pond. So, the pond very quickly is getting filled with urine and excrement. Theres no fresh water really running through it, so it begins to stink really bad. At the time this was cited as a real health concerned. An inspector from the War Department cited miasmas, it a term used for these but term that is used for odors that would make men sick. This was cited very early on, and yet nothing is going to be done about it despite effective feel that this is hazardous to the health of the soldiers and their charge. There are no hospital facilities in july of 1864 when this camp opens. The prisoners are marched in. They are housed in tents. And that is the way it will remain for quite some time. One of the early tragedies in the history of the camp was a wreck of a train full of prisoners on its way to elmira. I believe this was only the third or fourth shipment of prisoners. It was caring 800 prisoners from jersey city and it collided headon with a coal train in the mountains of pennsylvania. In that wreck, 14 guards are killed, 40 prisoners are killed, a numbers escape, and all of the talented people load up the train and bury the dead and do with this tragedy. And we know it was the middle of the night that the wounded arrive in elmira with no advanced word. So, in elmira,they had no idea this tragedy had happened. All they know is the train arrived unexpectedly this leads to suffering. About this time, they also have to establish a cemetery to bury the dead. Before august 1, already 11 prisoners had died. The sheholah dead will let up removed until much later. This was something that was put into a charge of a very interesting man named john jones. Jones was at one time in his life a slave who ran away to his freedom. Settled in elmira where he became a prominent conductor on the underground railroad ushering hundreds to their freedom, but settled there and found a new life. He was so trusted that they made him caretaker of the local cemeteries, including woodlawn cemetary. He was also placed in charge of the prisoners that died at the camp, and he will have almost 3000 of those to deal it during his tenure as a caretaker. Another interesting figure in all this is eugene sanger. He does not arrive until six weeks into the existence of this camp. Sanger is sent to become the chief surgeon. Went to Dartmouth College before going to school, medical school in philadelphia. He was not a man that was really wrote was well respected in elmira, especially among the prisoners. Anthony keiley, who wrote a memoir, say he especially hated sanger, and accused him of murdering the prisoners in his charge. And he has some really interesting quotes. He calls sanger a club footed gentleman with an abnormal head and snakey looking little eyes. Keiley had much to say about his incarceration. He is worth mentioning because he is not the ordinary prisoner. So, when you look at the prisoners in elmira, these are your foot soldiers from lees army largely. Almost no officers. And keiley actually was a civilian when he was caught near petersburg. He was called out to help the local militia, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time and get snatched. He was a member of the Virginia House of delegates at the time. He was incarcerated at Point Lookout and then sent on to elmira, where he strikes up a really interesting friendship with henry colt, and is given a special job, given special quarters, given special meals. So, he really gets abnormal treatment. And yet, after the war, his memoir will be one of the most interesting to read book filled with some of the worst vitriol of any of the memoirs. And it is definitely worth reading. Another interesting aspect of this camp was the enterprising gentleman on the outside in the town, who set up an observation platform which you can see on the right side of the screen there. He will charge you 10 cents to go to the top and get a look at a real live reb. Seth eastman did not last long. His health was not good when the camp began. And his health grew worse and worse until they finally were forced to remove him. In his place, they put colonel benjamin tracy. Now, tracy is not on the injured reserve. Really interesting man in his own right. He is one of those politicians soldiers that grant and sherman so disliked. He was an assemblyman in new york before the war, a lawyer, district attorney. Though, to give him credit, you know, he raised a regiment, he served with the 109th new york, and earned the medal of honor for his heroism in the battle of the wilderness. He earned his stripes. But he was a politician through and through. It is very clear when they place and in elmira, the War Department knows who they are getting. And he has a clear idea of what is expected of him. They just want to keep his head down, not make any noise, and be prepared to follow orders from the War Department about how they want these prisoners treated, which includes the cutting of rations twice during his tenure, despite the fact that food was abundant in the area around elmira. This is what has led to some suggesting that what you had going on here in elmira was a union answer to the atrocities in andersonville, a concerted effort to punish confederate prisoners because of the treatment of Union Soldiers at andersonville, and the evidence definitely sustains this. As i told you before, they were housed in tents, the prisoners are housed in tents. By october 1, you have 9000 prisoners in elmira, but you only had a small number of barracks. The first snow arrived in october. Then you are still going to have hundreds of men in tents into january when the final barracks get up. The men not in barracks are sleeping on the bare ground largely unless they have some straw or something to sleep on. Every man is given to blankets. Of course, you all know, those of us from western new york, no how cold it can get in elmira that time of the year. We know by january 1, there was a foot of snow standing on the ground. And so, these men would have been sleeping in snow, standing in the snow and ice for roll call each morning. It mustve been really hard on alabama or mississippian. And here is a view of the reconstructed barracks that you can see now that have been built there. Another interesting prisoner is marcus toney. He is a tennessean. In his memoirs we get an interesting view of life in camp because he contracted smallpox and had to be housed in the smallpox hospital. The smallpox hospital was set up very down close to the river, away from everybody else to provide isolation. And they thought that this was the best place to put it. Toney finds himself there and gives us a riveting account of how the patients suffered. The men who died were dragged out and left in front of their tents in whatever position a man was when death overtook him, in that position he froze. And they would stay there frozen in these positions for as much as a day before their bodies would be removed. Food was always an issue at elmira. It should not have been. It was an area of plenty. Scurvy was a real problem inside of elmira, and again, there is no reason this needed to be because there was an abundance of vegetables in the elmira area. But, as i already mentioned to you, the union high command issued a cutting of russians of rations twice first in the First Six Months of the existence of the camp. So men were forced to look out for themselves in some cases. There was a lively market in muskrats. There were reports of dogs going missing. They would scrounge for whatever they could get. Another prisoner said, there were a lot of drones or lifeless men, who moped around, pining away for whatever sufficient food to eat, losing their humanity, eating almost anything a brute would eat, even gangrene poultices and the like. Another interesting part of the story has to do with the Spiritual Life of the confederates. Housed in elmira. A lot of local ministers would come to minister the spiritual needs of the prisoners. Some were welcomed with open arms. Others were a little bit too preachy. Thomas beecher was probably the most prominent pastor, pastor of the park church. That is the brother of harriet Beecher Stowe. One of the things we know that was happening inside the camp was these prisoners desperately looking for some thing to do. Boredom was their biggest enemy apart from the cold. And they looked for different ways to pass the time. And these are some pieces of jewelry, a die made by prisoners. Very enterprising men in elmira. They would make train its and they would make deals with the guards to sell them in the community, and some of the money would actually make it back to the prisoners. The medium of exchange was tobacco. In high demand north and south. In this kind of became the replacement for money there for a time. So, the winter of 18641865 was brutal. We know the temperatures were below zero for much of early january, deep snows, howling winds. In the barracks, those lucky enough to be in barracks, there would be one or two stoves but they were given an allotment for the day, and when that ran out, they would be cold. They would be warmed for a few hours. And freeze for the better part of eight hours. But police they were sheltered from the wind. Shelters provided for them, unlike the prisoners in andersonville who were provided with no shelters at all. Now, as i said before, this was built on a floodplain. On the river it is a substantial river. It is surrounded by high hills. And i told you there were deep snows on those hills. It does not take a genius to figure out when that snow begins to melt that is a river that is going to swell rapidly. So, this is something the authorities in elmira should have seen coming. Benjamin tracy was warned several times in writing, you had better figure something out here, because that river is going to come booming in february, march, or april. There was a quick thought, and thaw, and this massive flood the washes down the valley is called the st. Patricks day flood. Almost 90 of the camp was underwater. And they had to, in fact, rescue the smallpox patients who were in vital danger of drowning. As i said, the smallpox hospital was way out down close to the river itself. And so, they mounted this rescue effort in the middle of the the night with jury rigged rafts and tow ropes. You had guards and prisoners working through the night to rescue these prisoners. Some of whom fell into the icy water and would die shortly after, but many of them were, in fact, rescued. For their efforts, the prisoners were at least given a ration of whiskey. So, the dismantling of the camp begins to happen in march of 1865. By this time, grant has given permission for exchanges to be resumed. These were resumed before the appomattox campaign. And so, elmira began to empty out little by little. It was not, though, until july, long after appomattox and the surrender at benton place, that these men would go home. 140 men were not well enough to travel. Some of those would never leave. The camp began to be dismantled almost immediately. Part of the Lease Agreement between the foster family who owned the land and the government was that the land would be returned to its original state as much as possible. So all of the buildings work dismantled. They were auctioned off. But remnants and reminders of what was once there became very sparse in a short amount of time. One of those that existed into the 20th century was the former dead house, where they would hold dead bodies until they could be buried. Clay homes writes about this in his book shortly before world war i. Today we have an organization in elmira, called the friends of the elmira prison. They are working really hard to bring back that history and acknowledge what happened there. Their efforts have included the reconstruction of an original camp building. This was made from lumber held in storage since the civil war, reconstructed. 80 of it is original lumber. You can see it in elmira today. They have also reconstructed in an original barracks. Lets just take a quick look at the numbers before wrap up. 400,000 soldiers were held. 56,000 died in captivity. The elmira numbers include almost 10,000 held. A death rate of 24 . This is why elmira gets compared to andersonville the death rate. In many almost other ways, i do not believe there is an adequate comparison, a good comparison at all. But what i argue in the book is it is long past time for fingerpointing, and it is time to acknowledge that both side could have done a much better job of taking care prisoners in their care. Thank you very much. The cspan cities tour travels the country exploring the american story. We have been to more than 200 communities across the nation. Our staff is staying close to home due to the coronavirus. Next, look at one of our cities tour is its. The battleship missouri becomeshe