American Prisoners of the Civil War

The publication of “A Fate Worse Than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War” by W. Fitzhugh Brundage of the University of North Carolina sheds new light on the Union and Confederate camps for those taken and held as prisoners of war (POWs). Drew Gilpin Faust’s recent review of the book noted “three times as many Union soldiers died at the Confederate camp in Andersonville, Georgia, as at Gettysburg.” In the Union prison camp at Elmira, New York, dubbed “Hellmira” by the southern POWs, almost three thousand died during the single year it operated.