Junius H. Smith -- Hawkins Co., Tennessee -- my 3rd great-grandfather
Co. C, 63rd Regiment, Tennessee Infantry -- Confederate
Prisoner of War -- Captured June 17, 1864 near Petersburg, Virginia
Arrived at Point Lookout prison camp in Maryland on June 24, 1864
Transferred to Elmira prison camp in Elmira, New York on July 23, 1864
Died at Elmira January 5, 1865
Junius H. Smith enlisted for service during the Civil War August 2, 1863 in Rogersville, Hawkins Co., Tennessee. He would have been around the age of 43 at the time. He was a private in Co. C, 63rd Regiment Tennessee Infantry which saw several battles during the war, but the battle that took place in Petersburg, Virginia was his last.
This is one of the Muster Roll cards found in the military file of Junius H. Smith. Note, it shows in the remarks section at the bottom that he was captured in
Petersburg on June 17, 1864. He was first sent to a prison camp in Point Lookout, Maryland, arriving on June 24th. On July 23, 1864, Junius was transferred to the
Elmira Prison Camp in Elmira, New York, a camp it’s inmates had dubbed as “Hellmira” because of the horrible conditions it’s prisoners were forced to endure.
Elmira was rumored to have been one of the worst prison camps of the north, being the north’s version of Andersonville in the south. It was originally used as a training facility for Union soldiers, but on May 15, 1864, it was decided the facility would be used to hold prisoners of war. On July 6th of that year, the first of the Confederate prisoners started to arrive from Point Lookout, Maryland. With a capacity to hold no more than 5,000 inmates, the camp quickly became overcrowded with a total of 9, 600 prisoners incarcerated by about mid-August of that year. Some were crowded into the barracks and others were crowded into tents outside. By the time the last of the prisoners had arrived on May 12, 1865, Elmira had held a total of 12, 123 Confederate soldiers.
Many of the prisoners were forced to endure the bitter cold winter in the same tattered, torn, dirty rags they had arrived in. They were not issued warmer clothing or blankets, and many had no shoes. The families of the inmates at Elmira would send clothes for their loved ones, but Col. William Hoffmann, the U. S. Commissary-General of prisoners, would only allow grey items to be distributed. Clothing in any other color was burned while the sons and husbands for whom they were intended froze to death.
Col. William Hoffmann was a vindictive man. It was said that he deliberately created the horrible conditions at Elmira in retaliation for the treatment of Union soldiers held in the prison camps in the south. On August 18, 1864, he ordered rations for the prisoners to be reduced to bread and water. Without meat and vegetables in their diet, 1, 870 cases of scurvy had been reported by September 11th, 1864.
Scurvy followed by an epidemic of diarrhea, then pneumonia, and smallpox. Prisoners with smallpox were not quarantined from the rest of the prison population. They were left to sleep in the tents and barracks with the “well” prisoners.
Bathroom facilities were nothing more than trenches dug into the ground out in the open. A pond on the property known as Foster’s Pond served as a place for drainage from these “bathrooms”, as well as a garbage dump. This pond quickly became a cesspool of disease and has been blamed for many of the illnesses these prisoners had been afflicted with.
There was a tall, wood plank fence built around the complex supposedly to prevent the civilians living in the area from seeing the prisoners confined within. That didn’t stop curious onlookers, however, and prison officials really didn’t do much to stop it. Civilians had constructed tall wooden towers near the fence and charged 10 cents a head for the opportunity to climb up and take a peak.
A total of 2,963 prisoners died at Elmira from a combination of malnutrition, lack of medical care, and continued exposure to the harsh and bitter cold winter. My great-great-great-granddfather, Junius H. Smith, was among them. He died January 9, 1865 of “chronic diarrhea” and is buried at the Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, New York.