Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil War Prisons

Civil War America

by Evan A. Kutzler

From battlefields, boxcars, and forgotten warehouses to notorious prison camps like Andersonville and Elmira, prisoners seemed to be everywhere during the American Civil War. Yet there is much we do not know about the soldiers and civilians whose very lives were in the hands of their enemies. Living by Inches is the first book to examine how imprisoned men in the Civil War perceived captivity through the basic building blocks of human experience--their five senses. From the first whiffs of a prison warehouse to the taste of cornbread and the feeling of lice, captivity assaulted prisoners' perceptions of their environments and themselves. Evan A. Kutzler demonstrates that the sensory experience of imprisonment produced an inner struggle for men who sought to preserve their bodies, their minds, and their sense of self as distinct from the fundamentally uncivilized and filthy environments surrounding them. From the mundane to the horrific, these men survived the daily experiences of captivity by adjusting to their circumstances, even if these transformations worried prisoners about what type of men they were becoming.

Genres: Civil War, United States, 19th Century, History

195 pages, Hardcover

Published December 16, 2019

Reviews

[shari lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

How the senses saw and felt civil war prison experience

While educational, this portrayal of prison life was somewhat tedious. The author went to great lengths to capture how the five senses shaped prison life on both sides of the conflict. It is very revealing and excruciating at the same time.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this sensory history of Civil War prisons. Kutzler did a nice job balancing anecdotes with interpretation.

[Maddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for comps