The Other Side
While this site is dedicated to the Union Officers held by the Confederacy in Columbai Military Prison in 1864 and 1865, and the Confederate Patriots who guarded them, as an unreconstructed rebel, I must give both sides of the treatement of the Union Officers held in Columbia. The best defense was made by some of the Officers themselves.
I cannot exclude the following articles written by Confederate soldiers who were held in Northern Prisons. The conditions they lived under were similiar to those in the South. The difference is that the union had the resources to more humanly house, cloth, and feed them while the confederacy was slowly being starved into submission.
I make no excuses for the excesses but only want it understood that the atrocities were not limited to either side. Colonel D. R. Hundley; Alabama 31st Infantry Fritz Fuzzelbug; Immortal 600 1st Lieutenant Henry E. Shepherd; 43 North Carolina: Johnson Island, Ohio POW; Prison Narratives John H. King; Georgia 6th Cavalry; Camp Chase POW W. H. Duff; Louisiana 25th Infantry; Camp Chase POW Griffin Frost; Missouri State Guards - Co. A Miles O. Sherrill; North Carolina 12th Infantry W. A. Wash; Tennessee 60th Infantry; Johnson Island, Ohio POW A Soldier; Virginia 12th Infantry John R. King; Virginia 25th Infantry James F. Crocker; Virginia 9th Infantry
There are the twenty five regular prison pens in the North and a estimation of the number of Confederate deaths occurred. This does not included those men who were "FREED" at War's end with no way to make it home. Many died in transit.
| Prison Name | Deaths |
| Alton, Illinois | 1,613 |
| Camp Bulter, Illinois | 816 |
| Camp Chase, Ohio | 2,108 |
| Camp Douglass, Illinois | 3,750 |
| Camp Morton, Indiana | 1,765 |
| Camp Randall, Wisconsin | 137 |
| Chester, Pennsylvania | 213 |
| David's Island, New York Harbor | 178 |
| Elmira, New York | 2,960 |
| Fort Delaware, Delaware | 2,502 |
| Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, Mass | 13 |
| Frederick, Maryland | 226 |
| Gettysburg, Pennsylvania | 210 |
| Hart's Island, New York Harbor | 230 |
| Johnson's Island, Ohio | 270 |
| Knoxville, Tennessee | 138 |
| Little Rock, Arkansas | 220 |
| Nashville, Tennessee | 561 |
| New Orleans, Louisiana | 329 |
| Point Lookout, Maryland | 3,446 |
| Richmond, Virginia | 175 |
| Rock Island, Illinois | 1,922 |
| St. Louis, Missouri | 589 |
| Ship Island, Mississippi | 162 |
| Old Capitol Prison, Washington, DC | 457 |
| Total Estimated Deaths | 24,990 |
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Bil Brasington