If he survived 18 months at either Rock Island or Camp Douglas in Chicago, he deserves a medal indeed.
But neither of them was comparable in just human degradation to Camp Sumpter at Andersonville, Georgia.
Here is a description of conditions at Rock Island by a prisoner: Rock Island. Conditions were bad indeed. Conditions at Elmira prison in New York were also bad, and Elmira almost matched Andersonville in the percentage of prisoners who died.
But neither of them was comparable in just human degradation to Camp Sumpter at Andersonville, Georgia.
The only WBTS prison I've been to is Andersonville. The large collection of graves there is sobering and moving, and I'm sure the suffering there was terrible as it was at all of the above prisons.
The story of the prisons is not often put into perspective. The three Union prisons above were surrounded by uninvaded land that had plenty of food and supplies and a working transportation system. In Andersonville, trains carrying food and supplies were periodically interrupted/blocked by Union troops who often tore up the tracks. When that happened the prisoners had less food. In addition, the Northern blockade of Southern ports greatly reduced the supply of medicines.
I got interested in the war time prisons when I learned that my wife’s great grandfather had died as a prisoner in the Union prison at Point Lookout, Maryland. I bought a book about Point Lookout at the park store at Appomattox Courthouse, Point Lookout Prison Camp for Confederates, by Edwin W. Beitzell, copyright 1983. From it I learned that the South realized that something had to be done about the condition and care of the prisoners they had taken. Here is a proposal that the Confederate Agent for Prisoner Exchange, Judge Robert Ould, made to his counterpart in the Union Army on January 24, 1864:
Major General E. A. Hitchcock [US], Agent of Exchange:
Sir -- In view of the present difficulties attending the exchange and release of prisoners, I propose that all such on each side shall be attended by a proper number of their own surgeons, who under rules to be established, shall be permitted to take charge of their health and comfort. I also propose that these surgeons shall act as commissaries, with power to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food, clothing and medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of prisoners. I further propose that these surgeons be selected by their own Governments, and that they shall have full liberty at any and all times, through the agents of exchange, to make reports not only of their own acts but also of any matters relating to the Welfare of prisoners.
Respectfully, your obedient servant,
Ro. Ould, Agent of Exchange
And the Union reply:
WAR DEPARTMENT, February 24, 1864.
Respectfully returned to the commissioner for exchange.
The Secretary of War declines to entertain Mr. Ould's proposition.
ED. R. S. CANBY,
Brigadier-General
The Ould letter and the Union refusal to consider it are in the Official Records, Series II, Volume VI, Part 1, pages 871-872 [Link].
The Secretary of War who refused this proposal of Ould's and other similar offers was Edwin Stanton. After the war Stanton was in charge of the trial of Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison. Judge Ould, the Confederate agent for prisoner exchange, was called by Wirz to testify on his behalf about the efforts to get food, medicines, and humane treatment to the Federal prisoners at Andersonville. Ould showed up and attended court for ten days, but was dismissed by the prosecution and not allowed to testify. Ould said the following about it later:
Early in the morning of the day on which I expected to give my testimony I received a note from Chipman, the Judge Advocate, requiring me to surrender my subpoena. I refused, as it was my protection in Washington. Without it the doors of the Old Capitol might have opened and closed upon me. I engaged, however, to appear before the court, and I did so the same morning. I still refused to surrender my subpoena, and therefore the Judge Advocate endorsed on it these words: "The within subpoena is hereby revoked; the person named is discharged from further attendance." I have got the curious document before me now signed with the name of "N. P. Chipman, Colonel," etc. I intend to keep it if I can as the evidence of the first case in any court, of any sort, where a witness who was summoned for the defense was dismissed by the prosecution.
Ould’s testimony would have reflected badly on Stanton. Here are other things Ould might have testified about at Wirz’ trial if he had been allowed to do so (Source: Point Lookout Prison Camp for Confederates).
Item 1: Ould said the following in the National Intelligencer of August 20, 1868:
In the summer of 1864, in consequence of certain information communicated to me by the Surgeon General of the Confederate States as to the deficiency of medicines, I offered to make purchases of medicine from the United States authorities, to be used exclusively for the relief of Federal prisoners. I offered to pay gold, cotton, or tobacco for them, and even two or three prices if required. At the same time I gave assurances that the medicines would be used exclusively in the treatment of Federal prisoners; and moreover agreed, on behalf of the Confederate States, if it was insisted on, that such medicines might be brought into the Confederate lines by United States surgeons and dispensed by them. To this offer I never received any reply. Incredible as this appears, this is strictly true.
Item 2: An offer by Ould (instructed to do so by the Confederate government) in the summer of 1864 to release the prisoners at Andersonville with no Confederate prisoners being asked for in exchange. This was before the great bulk of the deaths occurred at Andersonville.
When it was ascertained that [prisoner] exchanges could not be made either on the basis of the cartel or officer for officer and man for man, I was instructed by the Confederate authorities to offer to the United States Government their sick and wounded, without requiring any equivalents. Accordingly, in the summer of 1864, I did offer to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand of the sick and wounded at the mouth of the Savannah River without requiring any equivalents, assuring at the same time the agent of the United States, General Mulford, that if the number for which he might send transportation could not readily be made up from sick and wounded, I would supply the difference with well men. Although this offer was made in the summer of 1864, transportation was not sent to the Savannah River until about the middle or last of November, and then I delivered as many prisoners as could be transported, - some thirteen thousand in number, amongst, whom were more than five thousand well men.
The majority of Union prisoners who died at Andersonville could have been saved if the Union had responded when the offer was made. Some have speculated that the Federals delayed retrieving the prisoners so that they would not be able to vote against the administration whose actions had kept them in prison for so long. I don't know whether that is true.
Here is how the Northern poet Walt Whitman saw it in a December 1864 letter to the New York Times:
In my opinion, the Secretary has taken and obstinately held a position of cold-blooded policy, (that is, he thinks it policy) in this matter, more cruel than anything done by the secessionists. ... In my opinion, the anguish and death of these ten to fifteen thousand American young men, with all the added and incalculable sorrow, long drawn out, amid families at home, rests mainly on the heads of members of our own Government...