The Little Brown Reader

What--you rightly wonder--does this horrific prison, located in the heart of America have to do with the Abu Ghraib? Both Andersonville and now Abu Ghraib share the shameful distinction of being among the blackest marks in American military history. One military prison, Andersonville, witnessed the slow torture and death of thousands of prisoners through bureaucratic neglect, while the other--Abu Ghraib--saw the slow torture and death through a bureaucratic policy of malignant intent. Even in Andersonville, where death was slow and painful, guards rarely "interrogated" or tortured prisoners for bits of information.

Indeed, Union soldier Lt. James Page spoke of his Confederate captors in almost generous terms, from the time of his capture by rebel cavalry, through his internment and later transfer to Andersonville prison. Page and members of his company were captured after a superior force of Confederate cavalry surprised them near Culpepper, Virginia. Forced to flee, Page and the others ran and were ordered to halt. Captured unharmed, they were "genially interrogated by General A.P. Hill . . . and consistently treated with kindness by his Southern captors."

Page wrote in a published memoir after the war, that the Alabama guards assigned to the prison were generally kind and humane. "I said then, and I have ever since said, in speaking of our guards, the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, I never met the same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call gentlemen. They were respectful, humane and soldierly."