Dan, the History Channel show you refer to is the DVD I mentioned earlier called "80 Acres of Hell." At Andersonville, 12,913 prisoners died there (including my great-great grandfather) from a variety of horrible conditions. That prison held around 45,000 prisoners (Union Soldiers) during its time of operation. Camp Douglas held around 12,000 Confederat prisoners, of which about 6000 died there (including my great-great uncle) from similar conditions. The rest of the prison camps, north and south were far from exemplary. Overall, during the American Civil War, approximately 24,000 Confederate soldiers died in prison camps in the north. Approximately 23,000 Union soldiers died in prison camps in the south. And that's around 47,000 deaths just in the prison camps. Overall, over 600,000 from both sides died war-related deaths, which, as most already know, is more than the sum of all our nation's other fatalities from all the wars this country has fought, from the American Revolution to the present. The statistics can be a double-edged sword...it's worth knowing and meditating upon to understand where we've been, how we got there, and what frightening destruction we are capable of, even without today's weaponry and technology. The down side of such numbers is that sometimes the mind simply fails to comprehend the personal loss and anguish because the numbers are so great. The same is true of the holocaust, or the other 20th century genocides. I guess that's one reason I find individual stories so compelling, because it puts a more recognizable construct on the suffering.