A Fate Worse Than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War

Pulitzer finalist Brundage (Civilizing Torture) chronicles the excruciating suffering of the Civil War’s hundreds of thousands of POWs, as well as the political and legal ramifications of this unprecedented mass incarceration of Americans on U.S. soil. Drawing on voluminous first-person accounts, Brundage tells a story of human misery and political incompetence drifting toward indifference. The worst of the era’s detainment facilities were the “prison pens,” reminiscent of concentration camps, such as Maryland’s Point Lookout and Georgia’s Andersonville. Over the course of the war, conditions worsened steadily for POWs; Brundage argues against the common notion that this was the result of mere expediency. Rather, he claims, the horrors were a product of design and resolve: “Men, not events, made Andersonville.” While the early years of the war saw frequent prisoner exchanges that reduced prison populations, a failure in negotiations and the halting of such exchanges brought about “experiments in custodial imprisonment” that were “beyond anyone’s worst prewar premonitions,” including the use of retaliation—i.e., hurting captive POWs in recompense for how the other side treated POWs. The camps, he explains, prompted new international codes of warfare, including those deeming “just following orders” an inadequate excuse. Captivity in the Civil War camps, Brundage perceptively concludes, “marked a generation of Americans in ways that we have barely recognized.” It’s a benchmark study in a harrowing yet oft-overlooked episode in America’s past. (Feb.)