Member Review Civil War Prisons edited by William B. Hesseltine

Ryan was among the Union officers used as human shields by the Confederates to try to halt the shelling of the city.

Ryan and 44 other Federal POW hostages including generals, were purposely placed under fire inside Charleston, S.C. by the Confederate army during the Union's bombardment of the city during June-July 1864 with eventually a total of 600 Union officers being placed as hostages in the city. This led to Secretary of War Stanton's order to retaliate by placing 600 Confederate officers on Morris Island where federal forces were under Confederate bombardment. These 600 Confederates would become known by the Lost Cause adherents as the "Immortal 600." The usual Lost Cause version of events fails to mention what led 600 Confederate officers to be placed under Confederate artillery fire on Morris Island.
 
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Pvt. Berry Benson of the 1st South Carolina Infantry wrote a memoir after the war. He was imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland from whence he escaped, only to be re-captured and shipped to Elmira, New York.

Benson and several of his comrades would effect the only successful escape from Elmira. IIRC, he wrote of young men who died, frozen to the ground in that place.
 
Ryan and 44 other Federal POW hostages including generals, were purposely placed under fire inside Charleston, S.C. by the Confederate army during the Union's bombardment of the city during June-July 1864 with eventually a total of 600 Union officers being placed as hostages in the city. This led to Secretary of War Stanton's order to retaliate by placing 600 Confederate officers on Morris Island where federal forces were under Confederate bombardment. These 600 Confederates would become known by the Lost Cause adherents as the "Immortal 600." The usual Lost Cause version of events fails to mention what led 600 Confederate officers to be placed under Confederate artillery fire on Morris Island.
A lot of the post-War discussion of prisoners was more polemic than history.
 
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