Do We Under-Study Civil War Prisons and the Experience of Captivity?

Pat Young

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Featured Book Reviewer
Joined
Jan 7, 2013
Location
Long Island, NY
elmira.JPG

Elmira Prison in Upstate New York housed Confederate prisoners in 1864-1865. Nearly 3,000 prisoners died there in a little over a year.

I was reading the September 2017 issue of Civil War history today. It had a roundtable discussion by academic and public historians about Civil War incarceration. It is an interesting discussion and I recommend that folks read it in full, but I wanted to see if we could discuss one question it raised: Do we under-study Civil War prisons and the experience of captivity?

I am going to post a few remarks from some of the participants in the rountable to help inform the discussion, but i really hope folks will offer their own experiences and views.
 
Chris Barr is with the National Park Service. He had worked at Andersonville and is now at Chickamauga. He offered some thoughtful remarks on the subject:

When developing public programs on the captivity experience, which I’ve done at Chickamauga as well as at Andersonville, I try to focus on individuals. There’s an old cliché, which is often attributed to Josef Stalin: “A thousand deaths is a statistic, but a single death is a tragedy.” This was always my interpretive foundation for talking about captivity in most of my programs. When we talk about 400,000 prisoners in the Civil War, or 56,000 deaths in captivity, it is far too easy to see little more than numbers on a ledger. This is especially true at Andersonville, where the scale is simply mindboggling: 45,000 prisoners over fourteen months, with 12,920 deaths. That makes Andersonville the deadliest single site in the entire Civil War, something not lost on survivors. I’ve read several accounts from survivors discussing how many battle death counts must be combined to reach Andersonville’s death toll.
 
I would say that not only do we under-study Civil War prison camps, what little we usually hear is all about Andersonville. Even before I started really reading up on this history, I had heard how horrible that camp was, but I had never heard of Camp Douglas, Elmira, Point Lookout, etc. The emphasis is all about the cruelty of what the Union soldiers experienced in prison, not the Confederate soldiers freezing to death, starving or standing in foot high water while civilians could pay to stand outside the wall and watch the sorry spectacle below. It's a subject that should be emphasized more than it is.

One of my ancestors, Andrew Williams, 57th NC, was a POW in Point Lookout for the last eight months of the war after being captured at Winchester VA on Sept. 19, 1864. Since I learned that, I definitely have a more personal interest in this subject.
 
One of my wife's Civil War ancestors was a POW. Captured at Bentonville and shipped to Point Lookout, then Johnson's Island.

I wouldn't say POW camps are under-studied. In his book Race and Reunion, Prof. David Blight notes that there seemed to be an unnatural obsession with the subject in immediate post-war years. Some northerners felt that the experience of Andersonville demonstrated the moral superiority of the north. Southerners naturally objected to the notion, and pointed out the shortcomings of northern POW camps.
 
Last edited:
One of my wife's Civil War ancestors was a POW. Captured at Bentonville and shipped to Point Lookout, then Johnson's Island.

I wouldn't say POW camps are under-studied. In his book Race and Reunion, Prof. David Blight notes that there seemed to be an unnatural obsession with the subject in immediate post-war years. Some northerners felt that the experience of Andersonville demonstrated the moral superiority of the north. Southerners naturally objected to the notion, and pointed out the shortcomings of northern POW camps
Immediately post-war there was a lot of attention given to the returned prisoners as a subject of interest. Some countries treat returned POWs as suspect for being potentially cowards or traitors, but I don't think there was much of that in either the former-Confederate states or the rest of the U.S. So, I agree with you there.

I was thinking more about the subject today.
 
Maybe both, please? I mean it's very hard to have good conversations about them, you know? It seems possible ' Andersonville ' is made to cover the wholeeeee topic, for an attention span made a little short these days? Not we geeks- in general? Oh, and Libby- famous escape, plenty of photos.

There are awful stories it pays to listen to, frequently you're a little intimidated. " Well Andersonville was worse ". Caps it! Remember a Camp Morton account, just one of many, guards feeling it entertaining to haul men out of bed and march them in circles, in the snow. Recounting these can cause a brawl- and shouldn't? Some prisons were awful because prisons are awful, some were awful through the natural gravitation to them of the kind of people in charge, who avoided the front and did like to inflict suffering.

I don't know. Maybe permitting accounts 150 years later would be helpful, and am not trying to start an argument, honest.
 
"I was reading the September 2017 issue of Civil War history today. It had a roundtable discussion by academic and public historians about Civil War incarceration. It is an interesting discussion and I recommend that folks read it in full, but I wanted to see if we could discuss one question it raised: Do we under-study Civil War prisons and the experience of captivity?

I am going to post a few remarks from some of the participants in the rountable to help inform the discussion, but i really hope folks will offer their own experiences and views."

Sure, you know it has been discussed here before. Many times. And as usual, it gets into a high level dissing contest trying to place the most blame on the other. Count me out.
 
The obsession with prison camps is real. How else can you explain the single war crimes trial from the conflict falling on the commandant of Andersonville (and the fact that a society devoted to clearing his name is still active)? Or that Libby Prison was dismantled brick by brick and re-erected 50 years later for the tourists at the Chicago Worlds Fair? I myself visited Fort Delaware a couple of years back -- morbid curiousity.
 
"I was reading the September 2017 issue of Civil War history today. It had a roundtable discussion by academic and public historians about Civil War incarceration. It is an interesting discussion and I recommend that folks read it in full, but I wanted to see if we could discuss one question it raised: Do we under-study Civil War prisons and the experience of captivity?

I am going to post a few remarks from some of the participants in the rountable to help inform the discussion, but i really hope folks will offer their own experiences and views."

Sure, you know it has been discussed here before. Many times. And as usual, it gets into a high level dissing contest trying to place the most blame on the other. Count me out.

I always appreciate you stopping by to offer your regrets.
 
Part of the problem might be the absence of sites and interpretation. My dad and I went to the site of Elmira fifty years ago and I went back five or six years ago. It is a residential area with a highway marker and a small monument.

I also visited Shahola, the scene of a rail disaster involving Confederates bound for Elmira, and saw decent interpretation there.

Fort Lafayette, the American Bastille in Southern propaganda, was right off of Brooklyn under the eastern support of the Verrazano Bridge, but few locals know anything about it.

Governor's Island, only recently opened to the public, does offer some interpretation of its role as prison for Confederate captives. Perhaps its relatively low death rate makes this an easier task than at Elmira where a quarter of the prisoners died.
 
I don't think I under-study it. I am a relative latecomer to CW history,so I have a lot to catch up on. I have read Rebels At Rock Island and visited Camp Ford in Tyler,Texas this year. Camp Ford comes up a lot in reading about the Trans-Mississippi Department. Have a trip to Andersonville planned in June next year and I have a book about Camp Douglas in the "Save For Later" list.
 
Part of the problem might be the absence of sites and interpretation. My dad and I went to the site of Elmira fifty years ago and I went back five or six years ago. It is a residential area with a highway marker and a small monument.

I also visited Shahola, the scene of a rail disaster involving Confederates bound for Elmira, and saw decent interpretation there.

Fort Lafayette, the American Bastille in Southern propaganda, was right off of Brooklyn under the eastern support of the Verrazano Bridge, but few locals know anything about it.

Governor's Island, only recently opened to the public, does offer some interpretation of its role as prison for Confederate captives. Perhaps its relatively low death rate makes this an easier task than at Elmira where a quarter of the prisoners died.

There was a POW camp on the grounds of Fort McHenry here in Baltimore. The history park is devoted almost exclusively to the War of 1812, but there is no effort to cover up this fact. It's just not commemorated.
 
There was a POW camp on the grounds of Fort McHenry here in Baltimore. The history park is devoted almost exclusively to the War of 1812, but there is no effort to cover up this fact. It's just not commemorated.

Francis Scott Key's grandson, Francis Key Howard, was imprisoned in Fort McHenry, though he was not a POW but a Northern civilian. He was arrested for writing a critical editorial in his newspaper of Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeus corpus, ironically becoming in this way a victim of that very policy. He had this to say about being imprisoned in the fort:

When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the Star Spangled Banner. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.​
 
More from Chris Barr on how historic sites interpret, or don't interpret, captivity:

Unfortunately, most of our public history sites don’t really address captivity as well as they could. Recently, I visited a Civil War battlefield on which as many as seventeen thousand men were taken prisoner. I entered its museum hopeful that prisoners would at least be addressed, given that one out of every ten soldiers who marched onto the field was captured and left with the enemy army. Greeting visitors when they entered the exhibit space was a floor-to-ceiling–size 1865 photo of the headboards at Andersonville, paired with a photo of an emaciated prisoner, so I was optimistic. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a single exhibit or panel on the prisoners from that battle; perhaps it was there, and I just missed it. Rather, all I saw was a single exhibit panel on prisoners of war in general. I was disappointed but hardly surprised. At least they had a panel on prisons. At most battlefields, typically the only reference to prisoners is a mention of Andersonville and usually one northern camp to provide some sort of balance. Captivity is rarely incorporated into the narrative of the battle...
 
The two grandfathers of my paternal grandmother were members of the Union 8th Tennessee Cavalry. Both died as P.O.W.'s at Danville, Virginia. One was reportedly shot while attempting escape.

My paternal 2 x great-grandfather, a February-1864, 40 year-old, father of seven, Confederate conscript, from Wilkes County, NC. was captured April 2, 1865. Held at Hart Island, NY until June 20, 1865. I believe Hart Island was the last Union prison camp opened.

A Confederate maternal 3 x great-uncle died at Johnson's Island. His brother died at Fort Delaware. Both were captured at Big Black River, Mississippi during the Vicksburg Campaign. A 4 x great uncle, maternal side, but different family, same company and regiment was also captured and died at Fort Delaware.

A Confederate 4 x great-grandfather, maternal side, a 56 year-old replacement in February, 1863, was captured the same day, (May 17, 1863), he died at Camp Morton, Indiana. He had two Confederate sons die of disease, early in the war. His only son to survive the war, had moved north in the 1850's. He was Captain of company E 122nd Illinois Infantry.

A Confederate paternal 3 x 1st cousin, was mortally wounded April 2, 1865. Captured while hospitalized in Richmond April 3, 1865. He died in Union custody July 9, 1865, just days after taking the Oath Of Allegiance. One of his CMSR cards states he was "turned over to the provost", April 14, 1865, day of Lincoln's assassination.

john land.jpg
 
Barr has interesting things to say about how public historians can incorporate captivity into their public presentations. He also discusses the problems involved with telling the Confederate prisoner's story:

Because I worked at Andersonville and grew up near the prison site, I naturally focus on stories of Union soldiers there. I sometimes have to make a conscious effort to include other prison camps. That has been easier to do with Union prisoners, because there is this natural connection among camps, as the Confederates frequently moved prisoners around. So one Andersonville prisoner may have also been held at Belle Isle, Danville, Camp Lawton, Blackshear, and Thomasville. Expanding this prisoner’s story requires simply reading the rest of his memoir or diary. Confederate prisoners can be difficult to study sometimes, as many enlisted men did not publish full-scale memoirs or diaries, at least not in the same numbers as their Federal counterparts. Many Confederate prisoner accounts come from postwar magazines like Confederate Veteran, and with these, the line between actual experience and postwar challenges to memory can be blurry. So I think memory studies are a great place for scholars to begin to tackle captivity....

Here at Chickamauga, I’ve been working to add stories of captivity to my programs at the battlefield. I’ve recently finished reading Rags and Hope, a memoir by Val Giles of the 4th Texas Infantry..., who was captured at Wauhatchie outside of Chattanooga in October 1863 and held at Camp Morton. His memoir includes both stories of Union prisoners in the Texans’ ranks during the Battle of Chickamauga as well his own captivity and prison experience. I’ve been working to include Giles’s story in my battlefield programming. And I think that is how most Civil War scholars and public historians can incorporate captivity into their work—by simply including it in the narrative. In some battles, more people were taken prisoner than were killed on the field, but our books and museum exhibits don’t usually address that. These mediums are filled with images of bloated bodies and horrifying descriptions of death and carnage at places like Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. They offer little insight, however, into the experience of the men of the 69th Pennsylvania who were captured during that charge and taken all the way back across that field by the retreating Confederates or the men of the 54th Massachusetts who were captured on Morris Island in July 1863. Around 13 percent of all Civil War soldiers—around one in seven—were taken prisoner at some point. This is not an insignificant number or just a footnote to the story; this is a core part of the Civil War experience that needs to be addressed just as much as deaths or injuries on the battlefield.
 
Back
Top