(Andersonville Prison, Ga.)

The American Civil War resulted in the death of over 650,000 soldiers.  The carnage was unimaginable as new technologies were applied to combat.  Apart from death on the battlefield was the loss of life in prison camps.  Conditions were insufferable and the loss of life and the horrors experienced in the camps was extraordinary, particularly in Confederate camps like Andersonville.  In W. Fitzhugh Brundage’s latest book, A FATE WORSE THAN HELL: AMERICAN PRISONERS OF THE CIVIL WAR the reader is exposed to the dread that was experienced in camps, attempts to improve conditions, the courage and tenacity of those who found the will to survive in a system that produced over 400,000 prisoners involving both sides in the war.

Brundage has written the most comprehensive monograph dealing with Civil War prisoners  relying on diaries of the prisoners and officials who ran the camps in addition to other primary and secondary sources.  Brundage’s account seems to cover every aspect of his topic ranging from the governments that controlled the prisons, the personalities on both sides that were the decision makers in determining prison policies, the travel that prisoners were subjected to, the training, or lack of training for Doctors, the exchange of prisoners, to the different treatment of officers and regular troops, and post-war issues.  The author begins his study by introducing Andrew Jackson Riddle, a photographer who chronicled the only visual record of the notorious Confederate prison – Andersonville.  Riddle would become a witness to the “mass prison pens” and produced a catalogue of POW experiences matched by few written accounts.  Riddle’s photographs provided incontrovertible evidence supporting the written descriptions offered by POWs, i.e., acute deprivation, no permanent buildings to house prisoners, absence of sanitary facilities, and extreme overcrowding.  Though Riddle’s photos dealt with Andersonville the author offers evidence that it was the norm not the exception in Civil War prisons, Confederate and Union, however it must be noted the Confederate prisons were crueler.

r prison on Belle Isle

(Belle Island Prison, Richmond, Va.)

Brundage’s template for each topic is to introduce a historical figure; a soldier, a physician, an officer, government bureaucrat, or family member at the start of a chapter and build the storyline around that figure.  The author develops a number of important themes which are the core of the monograph.  First, as the fighting progressed and the war lasted from year to year the treatment of prisoners and the facilities they were incarcerated in declined precipitously.  A second important theme rests on how prisoners were exchanged, which greatly impacted the number of POWs who languished in captivity.   The Confederate authorities refused to exchange black soldiers for white soldiers on an equal basis leading to President Lincoln’s refusal to continue to exchange prisoners equally which was the standard for the first two years of the war.  Lincoln ruled out any further prisoner exchanges as long as black soldiers were excluded.  In July 1863 he ordered that for any union soldier killed in violation of the laws of war, a Confederate prisoner would be executed; for any returned to slavery, a Confederate prisoner would be sent to hard labor.   The Confederate view that a black soldier was nothing more than an escaped slave greatly impacted decision-making on both sides especially after the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s realization that black soldiers were needed to help win the war.  The key point is that had prisoner exchanges continued throughout the war, the prison population would have been greatly reduced leading to better care of POWs.  Men like Walt Whitman argued that he was willing to sacrifice black POWs if it would save white ones, reflecting the undercurrent of racism that existed throughout the fighting.

Brundage offers personality studies of important decision makers like General H. Winder who was the architect of the Confederate POW system and created the abhorrent prison pens and guidelines for treatment of union captives.  Winder, like other Confederate officials, never fully accepted the obligation to provide for POWs in the absence of exchanges.  They saw prisoners as a security liability that imposed no ethical imperative.  Union decisions were left in the hands of Lt. Colonel William Hoffman who under orders from Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, implemented strict, frugal policies to manage Northern camps and would always respond to the maltreatment of Union soldiers in Confederate hands with similar treatment in Union prisons.  On both sides government officials found it difficult to find competent men to run and supervise the camps leading to men like Captain Henry Wirz who oversaw Belle Island and  Andersonville and later was hanged for his treatment of Union prisoners.

1863 became the turning point for the treatment of POWs as the south’s low population did not produce enough prisoners to try and keep prisoner exchanges going.  The result was Confederate prison populations markedly increased.  Prisons would evolve from temporary holding pens to long term captivity facilities, the new prisons by design were mercilessly primitive leading to appalling conditions which the author carefully delineates.

(Elmira Prison, NY)

An interesting component of the book is how Brundage explores the social hierarchy of the prison populations.  Each prison developed their own culture and tasks for the prisoners who in many cases policed themselves.  They would create cultural and sports activities to pass the time and would rely on each other for survival as they dealt with the “half-witted cruelty” dealt out by prison guards and an environment that lacked any semblance of privacy.  It was clear that those men who established social bonds were better able to survive than those who did not. Many POWs equated captivity with slavery!

It is clear that on both sides the war took precedence over the treatment and plight of POWs.  Brundage’s chapters dealing with medical care bears this out as for the first time governments had to experiment with improving medical care on a scale they had never experienced.  The problem rested on the lack of any effective medical infrastructure to train and appoint doctors to prison camps.  Hunger was the key issue, and no medical care would suffice if food rations were inadequate.  Even though the concept of the general hospital emerged from the war it did little to assist POWs who suffered from scurvy, diarrhea, exposure, and diseases like smallpox as overcrowding made it easier for disease to spread.  The hospital at Andersonville was described as a death house as 12,541 POWs died there between February 1864 and April 1865.

As the war spread to areas where prison camps were located POWs had to be moved quickly.  Brundage’s example of General Sherman’s march through Georgia perfectly encapsulates the problem as prisons were about to be overrun.  Prisoners were transported by train, steamboat, and walking as prisoners were subjected to a captivity that saw them travel over 2000 miles throughout the south in a period of ten months.  The process was brutal for prisoners and reflects a key component of the horrors they had to endure.

Captain Henry Wirz, commander of Andersonville Prison)

Once the war was concluded between April and November 1865 about 800,000 prisoners were transported home.  Brundage spends the last hundred pages of his study exploring topics that included legal responsibility for the atrocities that are associated with the treatment of POWs, the trials and tribulations they experienced upon release, particularly readapting to society which today we would place under the heading Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome which the author does not mention, and how the war and its prison systems were described in the art and literature that followed for the next century.

Brundage focuses on a number of ancillary topics as he closes his study.  First and foremost are the Civil War created precedents that come under the heading of war crimes.  By 1862 allegations of deliberate cruelty against Union prisoners had accumulated and influenced Union policies .  With victory the opportunity presented itself based on Lincoln’s General Order 100 to support the concept that transgressions by the enemy would be punished which would lead to the prosecution of Henry Wirz and other former Confederates which would establish a precedent not only for American law but international law.  The trials are seen as the origin of the modern prosecution of war crimes. 

Lincoln appointed Judge Advocate Joseph Holt to oversee the prosecutions who believed it “was essential to deprive the rebellion it’s architects of any residue of legitimacy.”  The trials were designed to strip the Confederacy of any esteem or honor it still retained.  Interestingly the two men most responsible for Confederate policies, President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of War James Sedden were never tried due to the attitude of President Andrew Johnson and the acceptance that justice was sacrificed in the craven pursuit of reconciliation.  Another important issue Brundage raises is the concept of “custodial” POW camps.  Over time they were generally accepted, the problem was how they could be effectively run with less negative impact on prisoners.  However, these types of camps would appear in the future ranging from the Boer War, the war in the Philippines, World War I and II and onward.

In the end Brundage offers a deeply researched and well written account of Civil War prisons.  It is a sensitive and important study of a neglected topic, whose implications go far beyond the battlefields of the war between the states to present day conflicts be it Ukraine, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere.

(Andersonville Prison, Ga.)