The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

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[80] shovels, and picks, but as the blockade grew tighter and the old tools were worn out, this became a matter of greater and greater difficulty. Even the commonest implements were scarce within the beleaguered Confederacy. Sometimes he was unable to serve certain articles of food for want of proper vessels in which to place them. The commissary and quartermaster seem also to have struggled to secure the theoretical ration, viz.: ‘ Beef, one pound, or bacon, one-third of a pound; corn-meal, one and one-fourth pounds, with an occasional issue of rice, beans, molasses, and vinegar.’

Soon, however, the ration dwindled to one pound of cornmeal and one-third pound of bacon. Later, bacon was not always issued. All the other articles were issued but seldom. For the want of proper sieves the corn-meal was unsifted, and the sharp particles of the husk so irritated the stomachs and intestines of those unaccustomed to its use that diarrhea was practically universal. The lack of vegetables, the crowding, and the filth brought on much sickness for which the hospital accommodations were totally inadequate. This hospital at first was inside the stockade, but was soon transferred to the outside, though to little advantage.

In the prison itself, as the summer came on, conditions grew more and more hard. We do not need to repeat the sensational accounts of prisoners so popular just after the war. There exist two documents, one a report of Lieutenant-Colonel D. T. Chandler, who inspected the prison in August, 1864, and the report of Doctor Joseph Jones, who spent several weeks at the prison in September and October, 1864. These set forth clearly and dispassionately conditions as they actually existed, and from them we are able to reconstruct the prison scene. Here is the stockade, as Doctor Jones saw it in September, even after the worst of the crowding was over:

‘In the stockade, with the exception of the damp lowlands bordering the small streams, the surface was covered with huts and small ragged tents, and parts of blankets and fragments ’