01/18/2026
Yeah the good guys.....Not! đźš«
They built an observation tower so citizens could pay 15 cents to watch Confederate prisoners starve. Refreshments were available.
Elmira, New York. Summer, 1864.
The Civil War was in its fourth year. Prisoner exchanges between Union and Confederate armies had been suspended, and suddenly both sides had thousands of POWs with nowhere to put them.
The Federal government looked at an old training camp in upstate New York and decided: This will work.
On July 6, 1864—161 years ago today—Elmira Prison opened for business.
It was designed to hold 3,000 to 4,000 Confederate prisoners. Within one month, there were over 10,000 men crammed inside.
There wasn't enough shelter. Not enough kitchens. Not enough sanitation. Not enough medical facilities. Not enough food.
The prisoners called it "Hellmira."
Then someone had an idea. An entrepreneurial, American, deeply disturbing idea.
Local citizens wanted to see the prisoners. So someone erected an observation tower just outside the camp walls. For 15 cents, you could climb up and look down into the prison.
Food and beverage stands were set up at the base of the tower.
Families came. They brought their children. They bought refreshments. They climbed the tower. They looked down at thousands of starving, diseased men and ate their snacks.
Think about this. People paid money—15 cents, a not-insignificant sum in 1864—to watch human beings slowly die.
And they wanted refreshments while they did it.
"I'll have a lemonade, please. Then I'm going to watch some Confederates suffer."
It's one of the most casually cruel things you can imagine. Not active torture. Not deliberate violence. Just… entertainment.Human suffering as a tourist attraction.
The observation tower did brisk business initially. But as winter set in and the brutal reality of the conditions became impossible to ignore, attendance declined. Watching men freeze and starve to death apparently lost its appeal once the weather got bad.
Eventually, the tower closed.
Meanwhile, inside Hellmira, men were dying at an extraordinary rate.
The poor conditions alone would have been deadly. Overcrowding. Inadequate shelter. No sanitation. But then Union officials decided to make things worse.
When news of the horrific conditions at Andersonville prison in Georgia reached the North, officials retaliated by reducing rations at Elmira.
Prisoners at Elmira were already starving. Now they got even less food.
Scurvy, typhoid, dysentery, pneumonia, and smallpox swept through the camp. Men died by the hundreds, then by the thousands.
Some guards found a business opportunity. They used a dog to catch rats, then sold the rat meat to prisoners who could somehow scrape together money.
Rat meat. Sold by guards. To dying men.
Then two prisoners from North Carolina caught the rat-catching dog, killed it, cooked it, and ate it.
You'd think the guards would understand. These men were so desperate they ate a dog. Maybe that's a sign we should feed them better?
Nope.
The two men were forced to march around the camp wearing "barrel shirts"—wooden barrels with holes cut for their heads and arms. Hanging from the barrels were placards that read: "I EAT DOG."
Public humiliation. For eating a dog. While starving to death. In a camp where guards were selling rat meat.
The absurdity is almost darkly comic. Except it's real. And men died.
By the time the war ended and the remaining prisoners at Elmira were finally paroled, 2,963 Confederate soldiers had died there.
Out of about 12,000 total prisoners, that's a death rate of 24.5%.
For comparison, Andersonville—the Confederate prison that became synonymous with Civil War atrocities—had a death rate of 28.7%.
Elmira was almost as deadly as Andersonville. But it was in New York. Run by the Union. The supposed good guys.
Here's what makes this story important: It's not about North versus South. It's about what happens when you dehumanize people. When suffering becomes entertainment. When cruelty becomes policy.
The citizens of Elmira weren't monsters. They were ordinary people. They had jobs, families, churches. They probably considered themselves good, moral, Christian people.
And they climbed a tower with their children, bought lemonade, and watched prisoners die.
Because the prisoners were Confederates. The enemy. Traitors.People who didn't count as fully human anymore.
That's how it works. You don't wake up one day and decide to be cruel. You just stop seeing certain people as people. Then cruelty becomes normal. Even entertaining.
After the war, Elmira Prison was demolished. The site is now a residential neighborhood. Houses. Lawns. Kids playing in yards where Confederate prisoners once died of starvation and disease.
Most of the dead were buried in Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira. There's a monument there now—a statue created by Frederick William Sievers, memorializing the men who died.
But for decades after the war, nobody wanted to talk about Hellmira. Andersonville became famous—the symbol of Confederate cruelty. But Elmira? A Union prison camp in New York where nearly as many men died?
That didn't fit the narrative.
It's easier to remember history in simple terms: good guys versus bad guys, heroes versus villains, North versus South.
But Elmira reminds us that cruelty isn't a regional trait. It's a human trait. And given the right circumstances—overcrowding, resource scarcity, wartime hatred, dehumanizing propaganda—ordinary people will do extraordinary terrible things.
They'll even buy refreshments while they do it.
Elmira Prison opened 161 years ago today. Over the next year, nearly 3,000 men would die there. And for a while, their suffering was worth 15 cents admission.
The observation tower is long gone. The prison is demolished. The site is just houses now.
But the lesson remains: It's frighteningly easy to convince people that some human beings don't deserve humanity.
All you need is a war, an enemy, and a tall enough tower.
