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A Fate Worse than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War
From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, a harrowing new history of the Civil War’s prisoner of war camps, North and South.
It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war’s death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War’s prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization.
A Fate Worse Than Hell contemplates the roots and consequences of this mass incarceration from America’s bloodiest conflict. Based on first-person prisoner accounts, photographs, and contemporaneous journalism, historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage shows how POW camps were of far greater significance to the war than is commonly a subject of stalled negotiation, escalating retaliation, and increasing political liability between the Union and the Confederacy. Brundage describes how the camps were not the products of improvisation, but the results of design and resolve, marshaling prodigious quantities of manpower, technology, and resources—with successor camps in every major war during the next century.
Brundage also shows how prisons such as Andersonville, Elmira, and Point Lookout were the catalyst for the United States’ first formal laws of war, which became a bedrock for international law. Nowhere during the Civil War was the juxtaposition between our “better angels” and our capacity for brutality starker than in the prison camps—sites of unprecedented atrocity that also served as places of selflessness and human dignity among the incarcerated. The most comprehensive work to date about the life of America’s captives during the Civil War, A Fate Worse Than Hell exposes this national violence that imprisoned more Americans during wartime than ever before or since.
It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war’s death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War’s prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization.
A Fate Worse Than Hell contemplates the roots and consequences of this mass incarceration from America’s bloodiest conflict. Based on first-person prisoner accounts, photographs, and contemporaneous journalism, historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage shows how POW camps were of far greater significance to the war than is commonly a subject of stalled negotiation, escalating retaliation, and increasing political liability between the Union and the Confederacy. Brundage describes how the camps were not the products of improvisation, but the results of design and resolve, marshaling prodigious quantities of manpower, technology, and resources—with successor camps in every major war during the next century.
Brundage also shows how prisons such as Andersonville, Elmira, and Point Lookout were the catalyst for the United States’ first formal laws of war, which became a bedrock for international law. Nowhere during the Civil War was the juxtaposition between our “better angels” and our capacity for brutality starker than in the prison camps—sites of unprecedented atrocity that also served as places of selflessness and human dignity among the incarcerated. The most comprehensive work to date about the life of America’s captives during the Civil War, A Fate Worse Than Hell exposes this national violence that imprisoned more Americans during wartime than ever before or since.
680 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 24, 2026
About the author
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
33 books24 followersWilliam Fitzhugh Brundage (born 1961) is an American historian, and William B. Umstead Professor of History, at University of North Carolina. He graduated from the University of Chicago, and from Harvard University with an MA and Ph.D, in 1988. Prior to taking up his current position at the University of North Carolina, he taught at Queen's University, and University of Florida.
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Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book’s bibliography cites numerous examples, showing that this is far from the only modern history of Civil War prison camps and prisoners. Brundage gracefully credits many of them for informing his work.
But I’ve never come across one of these histories until now, after reading dozens of Civil War-related books over the past few years. After all, most Civil War books are about major battles and those who fought and died there. Little mention is made of those who were taken prisoner, and less if anything is said about what happened to them after they were.
Brundage gives them their due here in a very informative and readable new book, pushing the battles and the politicians to the side in order to move the prisoners and their experiences to the forefront. After all, he argues, “the fate of prisoners of war was of far greater significance to the course of the Civil War than is commonly understood.”
The book begins and ends in Andersonville, which remains the most notorious Civil War prison camp, and for good reason. While it features prominently throughout the book, though, it’s far from the only place where tens of thousands of prisoners were hastily and haphazardly housed.
Early chapters provide a brief history of prisoners of war, from ancient times when they were often enslaved or killed, to the early days of the Civil War, when a gallant system of paroles and exchanges had many prisoners living in comfort and relative freedom.
That’s a far cry from what it became as the number of soldiers captured on the battlefield swelled, and crucially, prisoner exchanges ground to a halt when the Confederacy refused to treat Black Union soldiers as prisoners of war and the Union refused further exchanges until they did. This impasse is what “hastened the creation of the largest prison camps in the nation's history,” Brundage writes.
At first, both sides improvised, housing prisoners in whatever structures could be found and retrofitted into prisons. Overcrowding led to the frequent transfer of prisoners, often over long distances and in terrible conditions. In time, camps designed specifically to house prisoners were created, but due to “unfounded confidence and managerial indifference,” these camps were often “little more than storage dumps for prisoners.”
Andersonville itself was seemingly created with the best of intentions - its location was chosen because it was close to water and timber, and because it was remote, lessening the chance of escapes or of inconveniencing local civilian populations. But corners were cut in its creation, and “through a combination of inept planning, bumbling administration, and cynical design,” it quickly became overcrowded and unsuitable for long-term use. And its indifferent administrators and the government bureaucrats who oversaw them added to the prisoners’ misery.
In time, the growing number of prisoners and the terrible conditions they endured in captivity was not a mere sideshow to the war, but began to affect the war itself. As the Confederacy’s ranks thinned, Brundage explains, their intransigent determination not to treat Black soldiers as actual prisoners of war deprived them of exchanges that could have returned many Confederate soldiers to service. And the Union’s equally unwavering insistence that Black prisoners be treated the same as whites caused divisions in the North, with some criticizing the government for sacrificing scores of white prisoners on stubborn principle.
Brundage manages to be fair and even-handed, matter-of-factly describing how and why Confederate prison camps as a whole were indeed worse than those in the North. This, he explains, was often due to a lack of existing infrastructure and not due to purposeful cruelty as some critics have claimed.
With the backstory and the creation of the camps now established, Brundage moves into a generally chronological, but largely thematic, set of chapters focusing more on the prisoners themselves, on both sides - how they lived, ate, slept, sent and received mail, formed their own communities within their camp, and came up with games and pastimes to fill their days. Obviously there was more to it than that, though - early comradery and fraternity among the prisoners often gave way to fights, and a feral every-man-for-himself atmosphere as the war went on and camps became ever more crowded. Prisoners also suffered harsh discipline, malnutrition and near-starvation, often becoming ill, with tens of thousands of them ultimately dying.
Here, too, Brundage is even-handed, acknowledging the hardships the prisoners faced without exaggerating or questioning their accounts.
Prisoner exchanges finally resumed in the waning days of the war as the Confederacy became “desperate to be relieved of the burden of feeding and guarding prisoners of war.” As they grew equally desperate for manpower, it became impossible to justify a refusal to recognize Black Union soldiers when the Confederacy was about to break down and enlist Black soldiers of their own.
As in any war, the end of the fighting and soldiers’ return home was more complicated than glorious for former prisoners of war. The last few chapters of the book consider the postwar challenges that prisoners faced in returning to society, and in telling their stories to some who would rather forget or who chose not to believe they really suffered as much as they did. This continued even after their generation faded away, as Brundage calls out several mid-20th century historians who began to minimize the prison camps as bad, but not as bad as many of the prisoners made them out to be.
While “Americans have typically dwelt on feats of battlefield valor,” three times as many Union soldiers died at Andersonville than at Gettysburg, Brundage points out. And yet he notes that nearly 60,000 acres of Civil War battlefields have been preserved, compared to less than 750 acres associated with Civil War prisons - and Andersonville alone accounts for most of that total. Not until more than a hundred years after the war, was a concerted effort made to turn Andersonville into the historic site it is today. But even a visit to the site, Brundage argues, doesn’t give you the full picture of what the prisoners there experienced.
His book, however, comes closer to doing so than anything I’ve read before. This is the rare Civil War book that’s not about battles and strategies and tactics, or about politics and governance and democracy. It’s a human story that’s not often told, and Brundage tells it in a compelling, engaging, fair and factual way that's well worth a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and publisher W.W. Norton & Company for providing an advance copy of this book for review, ahead of its February 24th release.
But I’ve never come across one of these histories until now, after reading dozens of Civil War-related books over the past few years. After all, most Civil War books are about major battles and those who fought and died there. Little mention is made of those who were taken prisoner, and less if anything is said about what happened to them after they were.
Brundage gives them their due here in a very informative and readable new book, pushing the battles and the politicians to the side in order to move the prisoners and their experiences to the forefront. After all, he argues, “the fate of prisoners of war was of far greater significance to the course of the Civil War than is commonly understood.”
The book begins and ends in Andersonville, which remains the most notorious Civil War prison camp, and for good reason. While it features prominently throughout the book, though, it’s far from the only place where tens of thousands of prisoners were hastily and haphazardly housed.
Early chapters provide a brief history of prisoners of war, from ancient times when they were often enslaved or killed, to the early days of the Civil War, when a gallant system of paroles and exchanges had many prisoners living in comfort and relative freedom.
That’s a far cry from what it became as the number of soldiers captured on the battlefield swelled, and crucially, prisoner exchanges ground to a halt when the Confederacy refused to treat Black Union soldiers as prisoners of war and the Union refused further exchanges until they did. This impasse is what “hastened the creation of the largest prison camps in the nation's history,” Brundage writes.
At first, both sides improvised, housing prisoners in whatever structures could be found and retrofitted into prisons. Overcrowding led to the frequent transfer of prisoners, often over long distances and in terrible conditions. In time, camps designed specifically to house prisoners were created, but due to “unfounded confidence and managerial indifference,” these camps were often “little more than storage dumps for prisoners.”
Andersonville itself was seemingly created with the best of intentions - its location was chosen because it was close to water and timber, and because it was remote, lessening the chance of escapes or of inconveniencing local civilian populations. But corners were cut in its creation, and “through a combination of inept planning, bumbling administration, and cynical design,” it quickly became overcrowded and unsuitable for long-term use. And its indifferent administrators and the government bureaucrats who oversaw them added to the prisoners’ misery.
In time, the growing number of prisoners and the terrible conditions they endured in captivity was not a mere sideshow to the war, but began to affect the war itself. As the Confederacy’s ranks thinned, Brundage explains, their intransigent determination not to treat Black soldiers as actual prisoners of war deprived them of exchanges that could have returned many Confederate soldiers to service. And the Union’s equally unwavering insistence that Black prisoners be treated the same as whites caused divisions in the North, with some criticizing the government for sacrificing scores of white prisoners on stubborn principle.
Brundage manages to be fair and even-handed, matter-of-factly describing how and why Confederate prison camps as a whole were indeed worse than those in the North. This, he explains, was often due to a lack of existing infrastructure and not due to purposeful cruelty as some critics have claimed.
With the backstory and the creation of the camps now established, Brundage moves into a generally chronological, but largely thematic, set of chapters focusing more on the prisoners themselves, on both sides - how they lived, ate, slept, sent and received mail, formed their own communities within their camp, and came up with games and pastimes to fill their days. Obviously there was more to it than that, though - early comradery and fraternity among the prisoners often gave way to fights, and a feral every-man-for-himself atmosphere as the war went on and camps became ever more crowded. Prisoners also suffered harsh discipline, malnutrition and near-starvation, often becoming ill, with tens of thousands of them ultimately dying.
Here, too, Brundage is even-handed, acknowledging the hardships the prisoners faced without exaggerating or questioning their accounts.
Prisoner exchanges finally resumed in the waning days of the war as the Confederacy became “desperate to be relieved of the burden of feeding and guarding prisoners of war.” As they grew equally desperate for manpower, it became impossible to justify a refusal to recognize Black Union soldiers when the Confederacy was about to break down and enlist Black soldiers of their own.
As in any war, the end of the fighting and soldiers’ return home was more complicated than glorious for former prisoners of war. The last few chapters of the book consider the postwar challenges that prisoners faced in returning to society, and in telling their stories to some who would rather forget or who chose not to believe they really suffered as much as they did. This continued even after their generation faded away, as Brundage calls out several mid-20th century historians who began to minimize the prison camps as bad, but not as bad as many of the prisoners made them out to be.
While “Americans have typically dwelt on feats of battlefield valor,” three times as many Union soldiers died at Andersonville than at Gettysburg, Brundage points out. And yet he notes that nearly 60,000 acres of Civil War battlefields have been preserved, compared to less than 750 acres associated with Civil War prisons - and Andersonville alone accounts for most of that total. Not until more than a hundred years after the war, was a concerted effort made to turn Andersonville into the historic site it is today. But even a visit to the site, Brundage argues, doesn’t give you the full picture of what the prisoners there experienced.
His book, however, comes closer to doing so than anything I’ve read before. This is the rare Civil War book that’s not about battles and strategies and tactics, or about politics and governance and democracy. It’s a human story that’s not often told, and Brundage tells it in a compelling, engaging, fair and factual way that's well worth a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and publisher W.W. Norton & Company for providing an advance copy of this book for review, ahead of its February 24th release.
June 4, 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
March 3, 2026
A Fate Worse Than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War by W. Fitzhugh Brundage looks at the less glamorous side of the American Civil War. The glory is found in thumping battles and rousing last stands—people don’t enjoy reading about men who die from diarrhoea and dysentery. But that was the fate for thousands and thousands of men unknowingly sentenced to death in prison camps, where disease festered and soldiers suffered in torment before finally expiring.
That is what this book covers, and it is thorough on the subject. It goes into the beginnings of the prison camps and how there was a “civility” applied to those taken, as well as an expectation of agreements seen through due to sense of honour, into the Confederate and Union soldiers squabbling over excess captives to be paroled, to black soldiers not being treated as equals and prompting shows of protection from the Union. It also explores how the awful conditions of Andersonville formed from the Confederacy’s intransigence in exchanging black soldiers.
I learned a great deal, like how in the early years of the war, the prison camps often put on plays and played baseball. Probably my favourite section was “Alleviation?” which was about the medical treatment (or really lack thereof) that took place in the prison camps. Thousands dying (on both sides!) from diarrhoea-related illnesses that could have easily been prevented in some instances by attempting more rigorous draining and disposal of waste and water that collected said waste.
Another favourite was “Can These Be Men?” because it detailed the suffering endured and often put a face to the pain. It also showed that the men were touched by their time in the camps, like William H. Lightcamp picking through his food for bugs even decades after the war ended, or Henry Clay Mettam struggling to sleep on a feather pillow and preferring pillows with straw that reminded him of his captivity. Poor Waitstill Hastings had dug a tunnel and escaped and was so tormented by fears ever after of bloodhounds and strangers that he killed himself years after.
The quotes and excerpts from diaries are great and make it even easier to feel what the soldiers felt, especially when the author noted here and there that they expired shortly after they wrote the quoted passaged. Brundage is great at laying everything out, showing that there was suffering in the Union and Confederate camps, even if the pain endured was due to different circumstances.
I think this book is accessible even for people who may not know a lot about the Civil War because many of the people within are just everyday folks who went off and—in many cases—never made it home again.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
That is what this book covers, and it is thorough on the subject. It goes into the beginnings of the prison camps and how there was a “civility” applied to those taken, as well as an expectation of agreements seen through due to sense of honour, into the Confederate and Union soldiers squabbling over excess captives to be paroled, to black soldiers not being treated as equals and prompting shows of protection from the Union. It also explores how the awful conditions of Andersonville formed from the Confederacy’s intransigence in exchanging black soldiers.
I learned a great deal, like how in the early years of the war, the prison camps often put on plays and played baseball. Probably my favourite section was “Alleviation?” which was about the medical treatment (or really lack thereof) that took place in the prison camps. Thousands dying (on both sides!) from diarrhoea-related illnesses that could have easily been prevented in some instances by attempting more rigorous draining and disposal of waste and water that collected said waste.
Another favourite was “Can These Be Men?” because it detailed the suffering endured and often put a face to the pain. It also showed that the men were touched by their time in the camps, like William H. Lightcamp picking through his food for bugs even decades after the war ended, or Henry Clay Mettam struggling to sleep on a feather pillow and preferring pillows with straw that reminded him of his captivity. Poor Waitstill Hastings had dug a tunnel and escaped and was so tormented by fears ever after of bloodhounds and strangers that he killed himself years after.
The quotes and excerpts from diaries are great and make it even easier to feel what the soldiers felt, especially when the author noted here and there that they expired shortly after they wrote the quoted passaged. Brundage is great at laying everything out, showing that there was suffering in the Union and Confederate camps, even if the pain endured was due to different circumstances.
I think this book is accessible even for people who may not know a lot about the Civil War because many of the people within are just everyday folks who went off and—in many cases—never made it home again.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
June 18, 2026
Mulling over this one a bit.
Historiography-wise this book systematically takes Hesseltine’s prison book to task, and ultimately has a chapter / section landing blow after blow to Hesseltine’s work.
This book is steeped in first hand anecdotes derived from memoirs, letters, and diaries and used as the entrails of the arguments put forth by the author. This is in sharpe contrast to Hesseltine, who, as Brundage points out, completely ignores any and all such evidence.
Brundage buries the lead - he doesn’t get to Hesseltine until the end of the work. Only then does it click in a larger picture what he was doing in the previous chapters.
Solid work, giving the reader much to consider or reconsider.
Oddly, there is no exploration of prisoners who ‘galvanized’ - switching sides to escape the horrors of the prisons. While not a large group, the opportunity is missed to show that Lincoln offered an escape from the stuck exchange system by authorizing the Oath of Allegiance amongst his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in December 1863. The opportunity to take the Oath, as part of Lincoln’s reconstruction policy, gave many CSA prisoners a way out of a deadlocked system. Small quibbles? Perhaps. Maybe there just wasn’t any record beyond pensions that gave a good account of these men - no contemporary records.
Otherwise informative. A good addition to the historiography and a corrective overall. Paired with Hesseltine. And other current works.
Historiography-wise this book systematically takes Hesseltine’s prison book to task, and ultimately has a chapter / section landing blow after blow to Hesseltine’s work.
This book is steeped in first hand anecdotes derived from memoirs, letters, and diaries and used as the entrails of the arguments put forth by the author. This is in sharpe contrast to Hesseltine, who, as Brundage points out, completely ignores any and all such evidence.
Brundage buries the lead - he doesn’t get to Hesseltine until the end of the work. Only then does it click in a larger picture what he was doing in the previous chapters.
Solid work, giving the reader much to consider or reconsider.
Oddly, there is no exploration of prisoners who ‘galvanized’ - switching sides to escape the horrors of the prisons. While not a large group, the opportunity is missed to show that Lincoln offered an escape from the stuck exchange system by authorizing the Oath of Allegiance amongst his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in December 1863. The opportunity to take the Oath, as part of Lincoln’s reconstruction policy, gave many CSA prisoners a way out of a deadlocked system. Small quibbles? Perhaps. Maybe there just wasn’t any record beyond pensions that gave a good account of these men - no contemporary records.
Otherwise informative. A good addition to the historiography and a corrective overall. Paired with Hesseltine. And other current works.
April 12, 2026
I knew this was going to be a tough read before I even started; you don't read as many Civil War books as I have [and I have barely scratched the surface] and not get glimpses of how awful the prisoner of war camps were [especially Libby Prison and the notorious Andersonville], and I knew at some point I was going to have to read about about the camps/prisons and this is both that time and that book.
Filled with first-person accounts of survivors and their time in the POW camps/prisons, details of what happened in these camps, much that is still felt today [especially with our own ever-expanding prison system, and how dehumanizing people is still horrifically used] is nothing short of horrific and I am not sure how anyone survived, and those that DID, was it really surviving? Also explored is how laws around war and POW's were formed from these experiences [that then eventually became international law] as well as how, in the midst of horror, filth, and dehumanization, many of the prisoners themselves often showed more grace and compassion to each other [and is why many of the men DID live to tell the tales of the horrors they experienced] than one would have thought possible.
Filled with both horror and hope, this book will make you angry, will absolutely make you cry, and will make you think [and remember] about these men for a very long time.
Thank you to NetGalley, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and W. W. Norton & Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Filled with first-person accounts of survivors and their time in the POW camps/prisons, details of what happened in these camps, much that is still felt today [especially with our own ever-expanding prison system, and how dehumanizing people is still horrifically used] is nothing short of horrific and I am not sure how anyone survived, and those that DID, was it really surviving? Also explored is how laws around war and POW's were formed from these experiences [that then eventually became international law] as well as how, in the midst of horror, filth, and dehumanization, many of the prisoners themselves often showed more grace and compassion to each other [and is why many of the men DID live to tell the tales of the horrors they experienced] than one would have thought possible.
Filled with both horror and hope, this book will make you angry, will absolutely make you cry, and will make you think [and remember] about these men for a very long time.
Thank you to NetGalley, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and W. W. Norton & Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 19, 2026
3/10. I’m such a history nerd, and I’m thrilled by history books that I feel are going to teach me something regarding a topic about which I know nothing. And this book had that potential!! This historical claim at the beginning positing that the American Civil War needs to be understood as the building blocks for how warfare, violence, POWs, and captivity is understood and the precursor to the violent practices, etc. seen in the World Wars was fascinating! But it felt like we immediately lost that thread. Additionally, it seemed to me like we’d be focusing more on the photographer and his images and how they helped us understand these prisons. We lost that, too. I understand the author was trying to cover multiple prisons, situations, etc, but it was a little all over the place. It felt as if he was telling one individual prisoner story after another, and I lost the overarching thread. It was obviously meticulously researched and still taught me some on prisoners in the Civil War, but, from a purely historical writing perspective, this was very disorganized.
May 3, 2026
Gripping account of American prisoners during the Civil War and the brutal conditions they endured. Brundage uses careful research to show the physical suffering, emotional strain, and lasting human cost of captivity. It is a powerful book that brings a harsh part of the war into clear focus.
March 4, 2026
Excellent and thoroughly researched history of Civil War prisons, a largely overlooked aspect of Civil War history. This is not a glorious or inspiring history, but rather one of inhumanity and bureaucratic callousness. Brundage argues that the horrors of CW prisons were not accidental results of the chaos of war, but conscious and predictable policy decisions. Andersonville, for example, was set up with basically no infrastructure for housing, feeding, and providing medical treatment to soldiers. Camp administrators were callous at the top down, setting the tone that prisons would receive minimal support and accept massive death from disease and starvation as a matter of course. Captain Henry Wirz of Andersonville was of course callous, but his callousness reflected larger policy, for which he paid the ultimate price when he was executed after the war.
A few interesting themes stand out in this book. For example, Civil War POW practices marked a significant break in the history of warfare because of the collapse of parole and exchange systems that had defined most of warfare to this date. Most pre-modern or even early modern states had little desire or capacity to take and hold prisoners; they either killed, enslaved, paroled, or ransomed them. But in the Civil War, the initial system of paroling prisoners collapsed when the Confederacy decided to refuse to treat black soldiers as legitimate POWs, instead either killing them or enslaving them. Lincoln made the noble and politically costly decision that US soldiers would all be treated alike. This gummed up the transfer/parole system and led to the construction of massive camps on both sides. The U.S. camps were more well-administered but still deadly; the Confederacy's camps quickly became hellholes where tens of thousands died.
Brundage vividly shows what life was like in these camps, which became important precedents for the surge of concentration-type camps around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These prisons approached teh status of "total institutions," which simultaneous controlled and deprived their inmates. This was a major growth in the power of the state, one with terrifying consequences.
The Civil War camps, however, fell rapidly out of American memory. They are in no way heroic, in contrast to campaigns and battles. They were also the sites of the most gratuitous harms that Americans did to each other in this conflict. As national memory moved toward reconciliationism and the denial that the war was about slavery, the desire to memorialize the suffering of POWs or highlight the crimes of people like Wirz or Winder faded. As a result, many prison sites were neglected or even razed, and the prisons took up little space in public education about the war. It wasn't until a surge in interest in POWs after the Vietnam War that more attention was paid to Andersonville and other camps, leading to the building of the National POW Museum in the 1990s (which still paid little attention to the Civil War and focused instead on Vietnam and WWI.
Anyways, great book for people interested in the Civil War or the general topic of carcerality.
A few interesting themes stand out in this book. For example, Civil War POW practices marked a significant break in the history of warfare because of the collapse of parole and exchange systems that had defined most of warfare to this date. Most pre-modern or even early modern states had little desire or capacity to take and hold prisoners; they either killed, enslaved, paroled, or ransomed them. But in the Civil War, the initial system of paroling prisoners collapsed when the Confederacy decided to refuse to treat black soldiers as legitimate POWs, instead either killing them or enslaving them. Lincoln made the noble and politically costly decision that US soldiers would all be treated alike. This gummed up the transfer/parole system and led to the construction of massive camps on both sides. The U.S. camps were more well-administered but still deadly; the Confederacy's camps quickly became hellholes where tens of thousands died.
Brundage vividly shows what life was like in these camps, which became important precedents for the surge of concentration-type camps around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These prisons approached teh status of "total institutions," which simultaneous controlled and deprived their inmates. This was a major growth in the power of the state, one with terrifying consequences.
The Civil War camps, however, fell rapidly out of American memory. They are in no way heroic, in contrast to campaigns and battles. They were also the sites of the most gratuitous harms that Americans did to each other in this conflict. As national memory moved toward reconciliationism and the denial that the war was about slavery, the desire to memorialize the suffering of POWs or highlight the crimes of people like Wirz or Winder faded. As a result, many prison sites were neglected or even razed, and the prisons took up little space in public education about the war. It wasn't until a surge in interest in POWs after the Vietnam War that more attention was paid to Andersonville and other camps, leading to the building of the National POW Museum in the 1990s (which still paid little attention to the Civil War and focused instead on Vietnam and WWI.
Anyways, great book for people interested in the Civil War or the general topic of carcerality.
May 12, 2026
The prisoner-of-war experience is often condensed into individual situations, one-off events, or the consequence of sheer rotten luck in the wake of fraternal warfare. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, however, diverts from this trend by assessing the unique cultures that emerge in each spotlighted facility and addressing the systematic and administrative reasons behind one of the darkest aspects of the Civil War.
Brundage synthesizes what would typically be relegated to economic, political, or ideological studies on the war in order to holistically analyze prisoners, their captives, and their joint realities. Through a combination of personal diaries, daily reports, civilian reactions, and government actions, A Fate Worse Than Hell considers that the severity of prison life was not generally accidental or inevitable, but instead a result of decision-making and blurred lines between morality and duty spurred by national conflict.
This book is organized chronologically from the war’s beginning through to the legacy of imprisonment during Reconstruction. Rather than generalize prison life, this narrative expands on themes that permeate across borders, boundaries, and battlefields such as food rationing, poor hygiene, mail delivery, and religious observance during captivity. It emphasizes the critical fact that the impact of imprisonment extended way past wartime. By reflecting on the evolution of the prisoner-of-war system across history, Brundage’s arguments shed light on how radical, extreme, and unmanageable the system became in a few short years. As an author and historian, Brundage does not shy away from distressing topics, choosing to lean into the records and anecdotes in order to tell a grander, more complex tale than meets the eye.
A Fate Worse Than Hell complements the existing literature on Civil War prisons. It provides additional insights and necessary background information on the Union and Confederate systems, as well as how the two sides played on the other’s treatment of their captured soldiers. The subtitle, American Prisoners of the Civil War, negates an “us versus them” stance and unites the North and South under a common condition: prisoner status.
The continued inclusion of minority and specialized experiences, rather than a sole chapter dedicated to these populations, makes this publication stand out. The circumstances of the United States Colored Troops, pious prisoners, high-ranking officials, and the disobedient behind bars make regular appearances as their stories relate to introduced topics of discussion. This aspect truly harmonizes Brundage’s arguments instead of viewing them as isolated opinions.
As a student and active scholar of Civil War prisons, I particularly enjoyed Brundage’s broadened consideration of well-known facts about famous facilities, such as Andersonville or Elmira. Through exemplifying the experiences of handpicked prisoners, one gets a glimpse into not only the day-to-day schedule, but also the far-reaching impacts for the war itself. This book is perfect for both storied readers and newcomers to the subject due to its established authority and conversational tone.
Brundage synthesizes what would typically be relegated to economic, political, or ideological studies on the war in order to holistically analyze prisoners, their captives, and their joint realities. Through a combination of personal diaries, daily reports, civilian reactions, and government actions, A Fate Worse Than Hell considers that the severity of prison life was not generally accidental or inevitable, but instead a result of decision-making and blurred lines between morality and duty spurred by national conflict.
This book is organized chronologically from the war’s beginning through to the legacy of imprisonment during Reconstruction. Rather than generalize prison life, this narrative expands on themes that permeate across borders, boundaries, and battlefields such as food rationing, poor hygiene, mail delivery, and religious observance during captivity. It emphasizes the critical fact that the impact of imprisonment extended way past wartime. By reflecting on the evolution of the prisoner-of-war system across history, Brundage’s arguments shed light on how radical, extreme, and unmanageable the system became in a few short years. As an author and historian, Brundage does not shy away from distressing topics, choosing to lean into the records and anecdotes in order to tell a grander, more complex tale than meets the eye.
A Fate Worse Than Hell complements the existing literature on Civil War prisons. It provides additional insights and necessary background information on the Union and Confederate systems, as well as how the two sides played on the other’s treatment of their captured soldiers. The subtitle, American Prisoners of the Civil War, negates an “us versus them” stance and unites the North and South under a common condition: prisoner status.
The continued inclusion of minority and specialized experiences, rather than a sole chapter dedicated to these populations, makes this publication stand out. The circumstances of the United States Colored Troops, pious prisoners, high-ranking officials, and the disobedient behind bars make regular appearances as their stories relate to introduced topics of discussion. This aspect truly harmonizes Brundage’s arguments instead of viewing them as isolated opinions.
As a student and active scholar of Civil War prisons, I particularly enjoyed Brundage’s broadened consideration of well-known facts about famous facilities, such as Andersonville or Elmira. Through exemplifying the experiences of handpicked prisoners, one gets a glimpse into not only the day-to-day schedule, but also the far-reaching impacts for the war itself. This book is perfect for both storied readers and newcomers to the subject due to its established authority and conversational tone.
March 23, 2026
Thanks in part to a Pulitzer prize winning novel in 1956 (Andersonville), and a 1996 television movie ( Andersonville), the stories of the prisoners of war (POW) of the Civil War is not unknown to the average American. But where those two works center on the single infamous prison, W. Fitzhugh Brundage's A Fate Worse Than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War explores the issue of POWs up to the outbreak of the war, and then the shifting realities forced by politicians, economics of war, military campaigns and the central issues of the conflict: slavery.
Moving year by year through the American Civil War, Brundage centers the narrative on the lived experience of known individuals, biographing them and their experience making this a very human story. Alongside the POWs, Brundage also explore the work of the different military and government officials who shaped policy, negotiated for prisoner releases or those who ran or worked in the different prisons.
As is often the case in war, the beginning saw an ad hoc era of civility and equal exchanges. Especially when there had been little in the way of preparation for the scale of prisoners on either side. As the war continued and animosities settled, parole and exchange was offered less, and once African Americans were in the Union forces officially, the South refused to allow further exchanges, wit their understanding that an African American could not be treated as a soldier in the armed forces, but were either stolen property or seditious elements.
Brundage details the difficulties in finding adequate and suitable space for prison camps, frequently enumerating the diseased cramped conditions and lack of food or adequate medical care. These conditions were most widespread in the South, the Northern (or Federal) prisons could be crowded, but they did not suffer the same high mortality rate.
The central issues of the work are centered from the beginning by the detailing of the photographic work of Andrew Jackson Riddle who photographed Andersonville on August 16, 1864. And does not shy from the horrible conditions and that in some cases, the POWs constrained by circumstances, stole or killed from each other.
An extended concluding chapter traces the after war lives of the camps. Some living on only through the recorded accounts to the point where it is not clear where they physically were located. While at least one continues as repurposed materials in existing buildings. A troubling exploration of war and the unfortunate innovations that resulted, one of the clearest is the demonstration of the captivity for detaining thousands of men and the rapid movement of them through modern transportation networks.
Recommended to readers or researchers of the American Civil War, prisons or systems of war.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
Moving year by year through the American Civil War, Brundage centers the narrative on the lived experience of known individuals, biographing them and their experience making this a very human story. Alongside the POWs, Brundage also explore the work of the different military and government officials who shaped policy, negotiated for prisoner releases or those who ran or worked in the different prisons.
As is often the case in war, the beginning saw an ad hoc era of civility and equal exchanges. Especially when there had been little in the way of preparation for the scale of prisoners on either side. As the war continued and animosities settled, parole and exchange was offered less, and once African Americans were in the Union forces officially, the South refused to allow further exchanges, wit their understanding that an African American could not be treated as a soldier in the armed forces, but were either stolen property or seditious elements.
Brundage details the difficulties in finding adequate and suitable space for prison camps, frequently enumerating the diseased cramped conditions and lack of food or adequate medical care. These conditions were most widespread in the South, the Northern (or Federal) prisons could be crowded, but they did not suffer the same high mortality rate.
The central issues of the work are centered from the beginning by the detailing of the photographic work of Andrew Jackson Riddle who photographed Andersonville on August 16, 1864. And does not shy from the horrible conditions and that in some cases, the POWs constrained by circumstances, stole or killed from each other.
An extended concluding chapter traces the after war lives of the camps. Some living on only through the recorded accounts to the point where it is not clear where they physically were located. While at least one continues as repurposed materials in existing buildings. A troubling exploration of war and the unfortunate innovations that resulted, one of the clearest is the demonstration of the captivity for detaining thousands of men and the rapid movement of them through modern transportation networks.
Recommended to readers or researchers of the American Civil War, prisons or systems of war.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
May 26, 2026
This is not a bad book,about American Civil War prison camps,but not an outstanding one.
The author spends a lot of time on Andersonville,which is probably the most infamous prison camps of the War.
But spends very little time on the prison camps in the North. Never a mention of Camp Randall,where the University of Wisconsin now play football. He has it on the map on the inside cover,but not a thing in the actual book.
I did enjoy the story of John January,since he's buried not far from my hometown.
I also appreciated his shout out to Benton McAdams in the acknowledgement section. I knew Benton through the old
AOL Civil War chat room,from many years ago. His book on the Rock Island prison camp,written many years ago,was a good one.
I also enjoyed how the author,brought an update on the survivors of the camps.
Overall,this is worth the read,but again I think not enough was written about the Northern prison camps.
The author spends a lot of time on Andersonville,which is probably the most infamous prison camps of the War.
But spends very little time on the prison camps in the North. Never a mention of Camp Randall,where the University of Wisconsin now play football. He has it on the map on the inside cover,but not a thing in the actual book.
I did enjoy the story of John January,since he's buried not far from my hometown.
I also appreciated his shout out to Benton McAdams in the acknowledgement section. I knew Benton through the old
AOL Civil War chat room,from many years ago. His book on the Rock Island prison camp,written many years ago,was a good one.
I also enjoyed how the author,brought an update on the survivors of the camps.
Overall,this is worth the read,but again I think not enough was written about the Northern prison camps.
July 4, 2026
As the prophecy foretold, I, a white man, am developing an interest in civil war history.
In reading the letters sent home from my great (x3) grandfather, many assumptions I had about the civil war broke open and revealed gaps in information in my own education. It is a a complete revelation to me that such massive and brutal prisoner of war camp operations happened on American soil- and that one camp is just a 50 minute drive away.
Brundage lays out an extensively researched look into the lives of prisoners, including things I wouldn’t have thought to ask, like the procession of religious services and past times. These details help paint a larger picture beyond just the details of survival, illness, and desperation.
The finer details of the structural collapse of these camps is over my head as a civil war history novice, but I took in the larger points.
The end, discussing the failures of remembering the camps and the danger that poses is particularly potent.
In reading the letters sent home from my great (x3) grandfather, many assumptions I had about the civil war broke open and revealed gaps in information in my own education. It is a a complete revelation to me that such massive and brutal prisoner of war camp operations happened on American soil- and that one camp is just a 50 minute drive away.
Brundage lays out an extensively researched look into the lives of prisoners, including things I wouldn’t have thought to ask, like the procession of religious services and past times. These details help paint a larger picture beyond just the details of survival, illness, and desperation.
The finer details of the structural collapse of these camps is over my head as a civil war history novice, but I took in the larger points.
The end, discussing the failures of remembering the camps and the danger that poses is particularly potent.
April 5, 2026
A solidly interesting history about an aspect of the Civil War I knew nothing about. The author took a lot of care to quote directly from primary sources as much as he could, whichb I always appreciate. He thoroughly covered the history of the camps throughout the entire war, and briefly ends with their legacy and how they were forgotten. Rather fascinating, very saddening what those men endured.
April 29, 2026
I won this book off of Goodreads Giveaway
I’m not usually into nonfiction history but this one had me at the first chapter.
I’m glad I gave it a chance
I’m not usually into nonfiction history but this one had me at the first chapter.
I’m glad I gave it a chance
Read
May 27, 2026A very important addition to the vast trove of Civil War history.
June 22, 2026
More of a collection of names, places, events, accounts, and facts than an analysis of this info. Provides only a short analysis at the end.
July 3, 2026
Scurvy and dysentery and gangrene, oh my!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews