Why the prisoners were fed on corn bread.
It has been charged as a crying shame upon the
Confederacy by ignorant humanitarians that the
South might at least have given the prisoners wheat bread occasionally; that they rarely ate corn bread in their own land, and that the bread we issued was made of meal so coarse and unsifted that it caused dysentery, thereby largely increasing the mortality.
It is well known now that the
South depends very largely, and with shame I confess it, on the
West for her bread and bacon, and the cotton belt proper makes but little pretension of raising wheat, for the climate, it is said, is unsuited; so that the region round about
Andersonville, being in the very heart of the cotton-growing section of
Georgia, such a thing as feeding prisoners on flour was simply impossible, and the little flour that was obtained as tithes (one-tenth of all the crops raised was required by our Government) was devoted entirely to the use of the hospitals.
Not only was this true of the territory immediately surrounding
Andersonville, but of the whole
South.
Our own armies were unsupplied with flour, and perhaps not one family in fifty throughout the whole land enjoyed that luxury.
The guards ate the same bread, or rather meal; the bread eaten by the prisoners being baked by regular bakers (prisoners detailed for that purpose), while the guards did their own cooking.
The meal, however, was the same, and both were unsifted and in truth very coarse.
I ate the unsifted meal always.
