The South would also gain a vast amount of POW’s as the fighting was taking place inside their territory. Neither side was prepared for the vast influx of prisoners that would soon swarm both sides. Both the North and the South scrambled to find places suitable to make into POW camps, and transformed many training bases into makeshift POW camps. The problem was that this was barley good enough for a temporary solution when the prisoners began piling up. With the first few victories in Tennessee alone the Union now had between 12,000 and 15,000 POW’s. These astonishing amount of people were just from the first few battles in Tennessee alone. Granted these numbers were prisoners captured while taking forts, but still the invasion had just begun
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The problems did not stop there. Rock Island also saw multiple prisoners show up, and while Rock Islands first prisoners were only 465, but within that month there were up to 5,000 POW’s in Rock Island Arsenal. These numbers would continue to grow with no sign of decreasing. Both POW camps would maintain numbers well over 10,000 in their lifetimes. However neither Rock Island, nor Chicago were prepared for these prisoners, both Rock Island and Chicago were at first seen as temporary encampments turned into more permeant ones as both the Union and Confederacy realized the staggering numbers of prisoners they were getting. What is worse is that conditions never truly improved from a makeshift prison camp. Both Rock Island, and Chicago would have a very small cramped space to place all of their prisoners, and this meant that they did not have very many places to sleep, eat, or get away from other prisoners. One of the biggest causes of death in POW camps spread in both camps here disease. With the camps being so cramped together, overcrowding being so rampant, and medicine at the time being completely terrible disease began to spread rampantly. Many prisoners would just drop dead from the disease, and deteriorating …show more content…
At times the makeshift graves made became almost more like mass graves as multiple soldiers were just piled in. Overcrowding became the number one problem throughout the Civil War. Many of the POW camps like Camp Douglass tried to ask for better conditions, and more space for prisoners, but this was denied by the United States government only providing the utmost essentials for human survival, and even lower than that sometimes. Finally another problem for the POW camps in Illinois was the weather. Many nights during the winter the temperature would reach at or below 0 degrees. This weather would leave to even worse conditions for prisoners as they would freeze to death, or get even sicker during the winter months. Finally one factor that lead to the mistreatment of prisoners even more was world of Southern POW camps. Many of the Northern POW camps were giving prisoners decent rations, but when word reached the United States Government of how their POW’s were being treated they called for all rations to POW’s to be severely cut as punishment for what the South was doing. This resulted in a never ending cycle as both sides made cuts because of what the other side was
The problems did not stop there. Rock Island also saw multiple prisoners show up, and while Rock Islands first prisoners were only 465, but within that month there were up to 5,000 POW’s in Rock Island Arsenal. These numbers would continue to grow with no sign of decreasing. Both POW camps would maintain numbers well over 10,000 in their lifetimes. However neither Rock Island, nor Chicago were prepared for these prisoners, both Rock Island and Chicago were at first seen as temporary encampments turned into more permeant ones as both the Union and Confederacy realized the staggering numbers of prisoners they were getting. What is worse is that conditions never truly improved from a makeshift prison camp. Both Rock Island, and Chicago would have a very small cramped space to place all of their prisoners, and this meant that they did not have very many places to sleep, eat, or get away from other prisoners. One of the biggest causes of death in POW camps spread in both camps here disease. With the camps being so cramped together, overcrowding being so rampant, and medicine at the time being completely terrible disease began to spread rampantly. Many prisoners would just drop dead from the disease, and deteriorating …show more content…
At times the makeshift graves made became almost more like mass graves as multiple soldiers were just piled in. Overcrowding became the number one problem throughout the Civil War. Many of the POW camps like Camp Douglass tried to ask for better conditions, and more space for prisoners, but this was denied by the United States government only providing the utmost essentials for human survival, and even lower than that sometimes. Finally another problem for the POW camps in Illinois was the weather. Many nights during the winter the temperature would reach at or below 0 degrees. This weather would leave to even worse conditions for prisoners as they would freeze to death, or get even sicker during the winter months. Finally one factor that lead to the mistreatment of prisoners even more was world of Southern POW camps. Many of the Northern POW camps were giving prisoners decent rations, but when word reached the United States Government of how their POW’s were being treated they called for all rations to POW’s to be severely cut as punishment for what the South was doing. This resulted in a never ending cycle as both sides made cuts because of what the other side was