Editing Libby Prison (section)

== Prisoner conditions ==
[[File:Libby Prison by David Gilmour Blythe, 1863.jpg|thumb|250px|Depiction by [[David Gilmour Blythe]], 1863]]
Upon their release from Libby a group of Union surgeons published an account in 1863 of their experiences treating Libby inmates in the attached hospital:

<blockquote>Thus we have over ten per cent of the whole number of prisoners held classed as sick men, who need the most assiduous and skilful attention; yet, in the essential matter of rations, they are receiving nothing but corn bread and sweet potatoes. Meat is no longer furnished to any class of our prisoners except to the few officers in Libby hospital, and all sick or well officers or privates are now furnished with a very poor article of corn bread in place of wheat bread, unsuitable diet for hospital patients prostrated with diarrhea, [[dysentery]] and fever, to say nothing of the balance of startling instances of individual suffering and horrid pictures of death from protracted sickness and semi-starvation we have had thrust upon our observation.<ref name="Herald"/></blockquote>

They said that prisoners were always asking for more food and that many were only half clad. Newly arriving prisoners who were already ill often died quickly, even in one night.  Due to the "systematic abuse, neglect and semi-starvation," the surgeons believed that thousands of men would be left "permanently broken down in their [bodily] constitutions" if they survived.  In one story they noted that 200 wounded prisoners brought in from the [[Battle of Chickamauga]] had been given only a few hard crackers during their three days' journey, but suffered two more days in the prison without medical attention or food.<ref name="Herald">"The Richmond Prisoners," The ''New York Herald'', November 28, 1863</ref>

An article in the ''[[Daily Richmond Enquirer]]'' vividly described prison conditions in 1864:

<blockquote>Libby takes in the captured Federals by scores, but lets none out; they are huddled up and jammed into every nook and corner; at the bathing troughs, around the cooking stoves, everywhere there is a wrangling, jostling crowd; at night the floor of every room they occupy in the building is covered, every square inch of it, by uneasy slumberers, lying side by side, and heel to head, as tightly packed as if the prison were a huge, improbable box of nocturnal sardines.<ref>"City Intelligence. The Libby Prison and its Contents", ''Richmond Enquirer'', February 2, 1864</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Libby-life.JPG|right|thumb|150px|"LIBBY LIFE" by Lieut. Col. Federico Fernández Cavada]]
Lieut. Colonel [[Federico Fernández Cavada]], who belonged to the [[Union Army Balloon Corps|Hot Air Balloon Unit of the Union Army]], was captured during the Battle of Gettysburg and sent to Libby. Released in 1864, Fernandez Cavada later that year published a book titled ''LIBBY LIFE: Experiences of A Prisoner of War in Richmond, VA, 1863-64'', in which he told of the cruel treatment in the Confederate prison.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/libbylifeexperi00cavagoog Lieut. Col. Federico Fernández Cavada, ''LIBBY LIFE: Experiences of A Prisoner of War in Richmond, VA, 1863-64''], Philadelphia: Roger & Baird, 1864</ref>

In the introduction, Cavada wrote:

<blockquote>It was a beautiful country through which we had just passed, but it had presented no charms to weary eyes that were compelled to view it through a line of hostile bayonets; we felt but little sympathy for the beautiful; on our haggard countenances only this was written: "Give us rest, and food."<ref>Fernandez Cavada, ''Libby Life'', pp. 19-20</ref></blockquote>

Cavada published his narrative before 1865. Former Union prisoners also published memoirs after the surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. According to a Southern source printed after the war:
 
<blockquote>Such [post-1865] memoirs should be read in context, however. After the war, former Union prisoners were not granted pensions unless they had also sustained injuries or suffered from disease during their service. To muster support for their plight, the veterans mounted a public-relations campaign that included wildly sensationalistic "recollections" owing much to the dime novels of the "Wild West." When the United States government granted universal pensions beginning in 1890, these memoirs virtually disappeared.<ref name="VAEnc">[http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Libby_Prison "Libby Prison"], ''Encyclopedia Virginia,'' accessed 21 April 2012</ref></blockquote>