North And South

8 Pages 1994 Words

all the men take off their clothes. It is understandable that they would have the prisoners give up all belongings, but to take away a necessity such as clothing does not make any sense. The prison was wrong for stripping the men of their clothes, it was an unnecessary act and it led to the deaths of thousands of innocent men who were fighting for what the believed in.
Once someone would find proper clothing that fitted them, they would need to wash it. But there was another problem that these men encountered; no one could find any soap. Soap was the hardest commodity to come buy in a southern prison. Instead of using soap, the men had to make do with sand and water to try to scrub out the dirt and stains on their clothes. A man named Albert Shatzel was captured by the Confederate army and sent to Andersonville. He wrote this account about his experience there, “Since the day I was born I never saw such misery as there is here…they can’t get aney (sic) soap or aney (sic) thing else to wash their clothes with.” The men had to live every day in the waste of others. The prison did not have any designated bathroom areas for the inmates. A person could not live a healthy life in these kinds of conditions. They could not live healthy l...