At the Community College in new york. Derek has recently earned fame for his brand new book as part of the emerging civil war series. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome derek maxfield. Thank you very much. Im very pleased to be here and talk about my latest project. You know, elmira is, and prisoner war camps in general, have been a surprise me. Ive studied the civil war since, umm, since i was quite young, and, umm, you know, knew the lengths of the tragedy during the civil war, umm, but it was eyeopening to me the extent of the humanitarian crisis that unfolded over the course of those four bloody years. Umm, over 56,000, umm, died, umm, in prisoner of war camps over that time. Just over 500,000 incarcerated in total. And all though we understand, you know, the that this is just a small number of casualties considered the total number of casualties during the civil war, over 750,000 now, we believe, umm when you consider we could have done better both north and south. You consider this was in our power to a large measure to make lives for those that were incarcerated better, its really, umm, quite disappointing. It tells us much about ourselves, i think, than as today. This was a project that actually started, umm, because i was asked by Chris Mackowski to write this book. It was something, umm, something of a surprise to me because when i was growing up, just 30 miles from elmira, i had no clue that elmira was a site of a p. O. W. 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 well versed in the civil war. I come to learn theres a good reason why i didnt know about it and, in fact, many people in elmira didnt know about it. To some extent, it was an exercise in civic amnesia. They wanted to hide the past. It was only quite recently that they began to embrace what happened there along the river. And in large measure, the reason for this had to do with being compared to andersonville. So andersonville, many people know, was the p. O. W. Camp near americas georgia. It was the largest of the p. O. W. Camps. It was the most deadly of the p. O. W. Camps of the civil war. It held over 30,000. It had a death rate approaching 30 . And as the war came to an end and the union came to learn more and more about the tragedy, the atrocities at andersonville, there began to be this kind of back and forth finger pointing 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 is going to go on for 30 some years after the war. As both sides tried to blame each other for what happened in these p. O. W. Camps. It wasnt until the 1990s that this community decided to reembrace its past. A High School Teacher lead a movement to place a monument on the spot where the camp sat on water street. So you see this here. The original flagstaff of the camp was placed near the monument, as well, at that time. About that same time, umm, the only two modern books were published, until mine. Both were released within a year of each other. But before that, the next book you have to look at would be clay holmes book just before world war i. It hasnt had a lot of attention by historians, and those that knew about it really had no reason to want to uncover this again fearing it would be bad for business, bad for tourism, which is an industry that elmira relies on heavily. This is one of my interests. Another interest had to do with this man here. William b. Reese. My third great grandfather. In my research, i learned he served in elmira during the time it was a prison camp. He was part of the veterans reserve corps. He had been in the battle of gettysburg. He was injured on the first day and couldnt return to full duty. He ends up at elmira guarding some of the prisoner ins i would be studying. We start the story of p. O. W. Camps in general. This is montgomery. He is the Quarter Master general for the union. As the civil war got underway, one of the things we see is neither side give serious thought to the potentiality of needing to hold prisoners of war. All though 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 harkened back to the way things were done in the mexico war. No formal policy at all. It was early days in the war that was suggested 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, i think, in lining his own pockets at that time than anything else. And as a result, nothing gets done. The confederates do little or nothing either. So, umm, then we come to the story of william huffman. Hes going to be appointed at the request of montgomery. The commissary general of union prisoners. One of the things that, that occurs to me in all of this, that if youre going to take the problem seriously, you want your best people on this. When i look back at the way that both sides operate in p. O. W. Camps from the top down, part of how they could have done things better is the people they chose to run these facilities and how farman was a good enough officer but he had no administrative experience at all. He happened to be available. And one of his qualifications was he was a p. O. W. Himself for a short time. Huffman was a graduate of west point. He served in the mexican war. He was in the 8th u. S. Regulars infantry. Very early in the war he found himself a p. O. W. He was exchanged in the informal manner but while awaiting exchange, he was in washington and they said, hey, weve got this job. How about you . This is how he comes to the job. And i think that when you look at his administration anyway of the p. O. W. Facilities, one of the things that i think is a characteristic that is important here is his ingrained frugality. Hes really cheap. Thats himself but thats also the way hes going to run the p. O. W. Camps on a real shoe string. Thats something that incidentally makes the secretary of war, whether its Simon Cameron or admiral stanton very pleased because they dont want to spend anymore money than is necessary, either. On the confederate side of things, they didnt have as formal an administrative structure when it came to the p. O. W. Camps. The closest they came was their marshall. This is john winder who was prohost marshall of richmond, virginia. When the war started, he would be placed more or less in charge of the p. O. W. Facilities in richmond itself, and thats primarily where the p. O. W. Facilities will remain for some time. Only later near the end of the war did they make this in any way more formal. Hes an interesting guy. He was a west point graduate. A Tactics Instructor a little bit after his graduation. Mexican war vet. Riveted for gallantry in the field. He has more of an administrative capacity than huffman did but he has Less Authority. Much Less Authority than his union opposite. So the p. O. W. Issue comes to a head at shy l shiloh. Shiloh is the battle early in the war. Its the battle that opened the eyes of the north and south how long and bloody the war is going to be. Over the course of two days saw 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. Pittsburgh landing is on the tennessee river, which is is a water highway out of there, but where the battle took place is really in the middle of nowhere. So you have to move your wounded and your casualties out of this wilderness to be treated or to be imprisoned and what it meant was, really, kind of an emergency in the west, at this time, for the holding of p. P. O. W. S. They have to be shipped north and the union, in quick order, has to convert what facilities they have available to them. It might be old penitentiaries, old prisons, old fairgrounds, anything where you can convert to holding a large number of prisoners in a fairly short amount of time. Now the issue of Prisoner Exchange was complicated by lincolns stance when it came to recognizing the confederacy, which he could not, of course, do. He saw this as a rebellion. To treat with them about the p. O. W. Issues, in some ways, it would be to recognize them, which is something he could not do yet the pragmatist in lincoln recognized that yet weve got to do something. We have to formalize the system of exchange because this really isnt going to work otherwise. This is what leads to what is called the dicks hill cartel. So if you have these two men, john a. Dix, d. H. Hill. They get together and come to an agreement. Largely based on the framework from the mexican war with some updates. Its largely a manforman exchange and formula of exchange of officers and enlisted men. At least they have something in place, something they can work from. That gives some hope to men that find themselves incourarcerated and, to some extent, empties out the p. O. W. Camps that were then in place. This is all quite complicated by the emancipation proclamation issued in january of 1863. So lincoln came to the conclusion that in order to win this war, this measure would be necessary. So he issues the preliminary emancipation proclamation after the battle of antietam seeing this as a victory and it becomes official in january 63 and as you imagine it sends the south into a tail spin over there 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. Sed don says at the time black soldiers cannot be recognized in any way as soldiers subject to the rules of war and they absolutely refuse 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 casualty rate among africanamericans that are incarcerated is very high. Over the course of the war, over 800 black p. O. W. S are taken, which is really a small number of those that the numbers should reflect. And of those that do go into captivity, only 35 im sorry, 35 die in captivity. And so lincolns response to this at the time is to halt exchanges. Well, when you halt exchanges, that means that both sides now have the burden of taking care of these p. O. W. S. And where are you going to hold them . 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. So Point Lookout, maryland results from the fighting in 1863. The camps are overflowing. And camp hoffman, aka Point Lookout is created at that time. Its a beautiful area, a former resort area. But it also had the added 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. Hammond General Hospital is the largest of the union hospitals. It has very Good Transportation access. Its also a place that would be hard to escape from. And so they begin to set up camps very near there. And youll see those in the upper right of the screen. Now, Point Lookout will very quickly swell to over 20,000 at its peak. This will be the big feeder camp to what becomes elmira. Theres another view. At about the same time, early 64, andersonville is created in the south. We talked about this a little bit earlier. This was a camp that will come to house over 30,000. Its really just a big pen where Union Soldiers are thrown and they will have little fresh water. They will have food occasionally. As the confederacy can get supplies to them. But almost immediately reports start to get back to the union about how things are going there in the state of this 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 p. O. W. Camps because this is a campaign thats going to see over 65,000 union casualties, over 35,000 confederate casualties. All the p. O. W. S are taken captive. There is no exchange at this time. And so these camps are just busting at the seams. Grant says at the time that its hard on our men to be held in southern prisons, not to exchange them, but its humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. He felt to Exchange Prisoners would help the south, it would help them to fight on longer and he felt this 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 story because of the union camps busting at the seams, where are we going to put these men. The load on Point Lookout was 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 rauendezvous. It was next to a canal. This was a place that had been a feeder location for Union Soldiers earlier in the war so many of the facilities were still there and Still Available and so there would be a minimum of preparation necessary to get this ready. So at that post was Lieutenant Colonel 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. Hes a guy that was also really not up to the job either. But he is a good soldier, and you can see in his correspondence with his superiors that hes ready to do what they want him to do. Though he is not in great health himself. Hes also kind of conflicted because his real interests arent military. His real interests are in oil painting and being an 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 hes there, he does the best that he can. One interesting side note on this, though, is eastmans wife, Mary Henderson was a virginiian. She was an ffv from one of the first families of virginia and very proslavery. And was so agitated by the book written by Harry Beecher stow, uncle toms cabin, she wrote her own vision called aunt phylliss cabin in answer to this. That had to have been controversial. Its more interesting because Harriet Beecher stow summered in new york. These two ladies would have been circulating in elite elmira society. One wonders what those conversations were like. One of the more interesting figures in elmira was the commandant of the elmira p. O. W. Camp henry colt, he also is kind of on the injured reserve, if you will. He was with a new york regiment, and he had been injured in battle, the 104th new york. And they put him on duty at elmira to run the p. O. W. Camp. And its really interesting that when you look at the memoirs of the prisoners in the years of 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 well talk about, they talk about how humane and kind that this man was. So hes their jailer. And they write in their memoirs about how terrible a place elmira was, and yet they love it had man that is 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. Thats the bowl of this cup. Handmade chalice as a gift to him on his way out. Youll see here the outlines, the rough outlines of the p. O. W. Camp at elmira. Youll see that the wall at the top there is right on the shmung river. Its definitely built on a floodplain, fosters pond, one of the things well talk about in a moment youll see about a third of the way down and the largest amount of the camp is there in the bottom half. This encompasses 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 youll see near the top there water street, you can see fosters pond overlaid there and a place on the shmung river so there are probably at least a hundred homes that sit where the p. O. W. 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 64 they set up the sinks, the latrines very close to the pond and they were very poorly sided so the pond is getting filled with urine and excrement. Its still water, no fresh water running through it so it begins to stink really bad. And at the time this was sighted as a real health concern. An inspector from the War Department cited it as much, citing myasmas, a word used at the time of odors which they believed would make men sick. This was cited as an issue very early on yet nothing is done about it despite the fact that they feel this is hazardous to the health of the soldiers in their charge. There are also no hospital facilities in july of 64 when this camp opens. The prisoners are marched in. They are housed in tents. And that is the way that it will remain for quite some time. One of the early tragedies in the history of the camp was a wreck, a train full of prisoners, on its way to elmira. I believe this was only the third or fourth shipment of soldiers. It was carrying 800 prisoners from jersey city. And it collided he