If there ever was a hell on Earth, Elmira Prison was that hell.  Almost twenty-five percent of the twelve thousand one-hundred twenty-three Confederate  soldiers who entered the fourty acre prisoner of war camp at Elmira,New York died.  This death rate was more than double the average death rate in other northern prison camps, and only two percent less than the death rate at the infamous southern prison at Andersonville, Georgia.  Deaths at Elmira caused by disease brought on by terrible living conditions and starvation, condition delibertaty caused by the vinidictive U.S. general of prisnors, Col. William Hoffman.