Few know that the United States is home to the world's first death camps, which appeared in North America during the civil war between the North and South. Abraham Lincoln's supporters, no matter how hard they tried to whitewash them, were no less brutal than Jefferson Davis's supporters.
Since history is written by the winners, the events associated with the horrors of "Andersonville", organized by the southerners to contain the feds, received publicity, and the horrors of 11 concentration camps (including Camp Douglas), organized by the northerners to contain the confederates, were consigned to oblivion. …
The silence lasted 130 years, and only at the end of the 20th century did the investigations of historians begin, who brought up old archives and published documents related to the Douglas concentration camp.
17 november
<100 views
Full statistics will be available after the publication has more than 100 views.
The ancestral home of concentration camps - USA
Few know that the United States is home to the world's first death camps, which appeared in North America during the civil war between the North and South. Abraham Lincoln's supporters, no matter how hard they tried to whitewash them, were no less brutal than Jefferson Davis's supporters.
Promotional video:
Since history is written by the winners, the events associated with the horrors of "Andersonville", organized by the southerners to contain the feds, received publicity, and the horrors of 11 concentration camps (including Camp Douglas), organized by the northerners to contain the confederates, were consigned to oblivion. …
The silence lasted 130 years, and only at the end of the 20th century did the investigations of historians begin, who brought up old archives and published documents related to the Douglas concentration camp.
The Douglas Federal Concentration Camp was established in February 1862 near Lake Michigan, near Chicago. The camp contained both Confederate military prisoners and civilians from the territories of the southern states. Conditions at the Douglas were appalling. Half a century later, the Austrians in Thalerhof and Terezin arranged the same for the Russians of Galicia.
Meager food rations were held for the slightest misdemeanor, causing the prisoners to starve. In an overcrowded camp deprived of medicines, tens of thousands of prisoners (who did not even have anything to cover) lived in tattered tents at any time of the year, and people died from the cold.
According to eyewitnesses, prisoners were stabbed with bayonets for attempting to escape; for violations and offenses, the punishments applied in the Douglas camp are striking in their cruelty.
In cold weather, the guards forced the offenders to take off their pants and sit on the snow or frozen ground, holding them in this position for many hours.
Whipping with straps with metal buckles. According to contemporaries, they often flogged until the metal edges of the buckles cut through the skin and muscles to the bone.
The prisoner was placed with bare feet in the snow for several hours. The guards made sure that the prisoner did not move. This could be judged by the footprints in the snow. Many after such punishment were left without fingers, because they froze them. If a person shuffled or left his place, in addition to being punished by standing in the snow, he was flogged.
If a person reacted too slowly to the lifting command, he was hung up by his legs for several hours. Also, as a punishment, the prisoners were forced to stand in a bent state, head down, on straight legs, until blood began to run out of the nose, and the blood flowing to the eyeballs made the prisoner scream in pain.
Large groups of prisoners (several dozen) were locked in a small 10 square foot room with a very small window.
Another punishment is "riding a mule." Near the gate, high from the ground, a frame was installed on which a narrow beam was laid. A prisoner was put on this bar on horseback and kept there until he lost consciousness and fell. Sometimes the punishment was diversified by adding "spurs": tying buckets of sand to the punished feet.
This is not a complete list, but it is enough to create an overall impression.
From the very beginning, there was practically no registration of prisoners in the Douglas camp and there is an opinion that many Confederates who “disappeared” actually died in this camp and were buried in an unknown place, since the graves were also not counted. Some of the deceased prisoners were buried in swampy soil, and therefore no traces of graves can be found.
According to the history of Camp Douglas, about 12,000 prisoners survived the harsh winters of 1862 and 1863, when temperatures fell below zero. Between 1400 and 1700 people died during the same period, but only 615 could be counted in a mass grave near the camp. 700 to 1000 people just disappeared.
By December 1, 1866, only 1,402 graves could be found (out of 2,968 previously recorded). About 2,000 people are still missing. How many Confederates actually passed through Camp Douglas is unknown.
The mortality rate in "Douglas" exceeded the "indicator" of "Andersville", and the camp "Andersonville" was organized by the southerners much later than "Douglas" - in March 1864, and quite a lot has been written about the cruelty perpetrated by the Confederates against the prisoners in this concentration camp …
The 16-acre prison opened in Andersonville, Georgia, in February 1864. The estimated capacity was about 10,000 prisoners. By June, the number of people had doubled. “The place was so packed that there was nowhere for an apple to fall,” wrote one unfortunate prisoner of war. The Confederates quickly completed the necessary buildings on an additional ten acres, but the prison was still overcrowded and lacked resources. Food was especially prized; The standard daily ration consisted of a piece of cornbread and a worthless piece of pork, and the food was often handed out spoiled. “This is nothing more than a place of Famine, a shame for any government,” the same prisoner wrote.
Many POWs lacked a banal roof over their heads and clothing to protect themselves from the elements. "Many tore into shreds their underwear, shirts, underpants and the like, sew it all together and they managed to make some kind of shelter for themselves," the prisoner said. Despite the rampant diseases such as scurvy and gangrene, medicines were almost never supplied here. “There were plenty of open wounds that festered and swarmed with larvae,” wrote the prisoner captain of the Union.
Prisoners of war not only died of disease: they were also killed if they crossed the "line of death" - a line of wooden posts 19 feet from the prison. Those who crossed this line were subject to execution by sentries. Some people who are desperate to end their suffering have deliberately crossed this line.
After the war, Captain Henry Wirtz, commandant of Andersonville Prison, was found guilty of "conspiracy to harm and destroy federal prisoners" and "murder by violation of the laws and customs of war." Many inmates testified against him, although some supporters argued that he was just a scapegoat following orders from above. Anyway, he was hanged on November 10, 1865.
Execution of Wirtz.
At the end of the war in April 1865, nurse Carla Barton and former prisoner Dorens Atwater commemorated the graves of the dead soldiers who were buried in shallow graves near the prison. The state has since designated this place as a national military cemetery.
The memory of the southerners tortured in "Douglas" was perpetuated much more modestly. In 1895, 30 years after the end of the civil war, on the site where the concentration camp was located, the southerners erected a small monument on the mass grave, in which more than 6,000 Confederates rest.