Adams, Charles Francis, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 1775-1865 (1911). Adams, Ephraim D., Great Britain and the American Civil War (2 vols., 1925). Bulloch, James D., The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe (2 vols., 1883, 1960). Callahan, James M., Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy (1901). Duberman, Martin B., Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1886 (1961). Jordan, Donaldson and Pratt, E. J., Europe and the American Civil War (1931). Meade, Robert D., Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (1943). Monaghan, Jay, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers (1945). Owsley, Frank L., King Cotton Diplomacy (1925, 1961). Sears, Louise B., John Slidell (1925). Seward, Frederick W., Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, 1830-1915 (1916). ____, Ed., Autobiography of William H. Seward (1877). Sideman, Belle B., and Friedman, Lillian, eds., Europe Looks at the Civil War (1960). Woldman, Albert A., Lincoln and the Russians (1952).
Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, near Chicago, Ill. This photograph was taken soon after the camp became a compound for prisoners.
VII. PRISONS AND PRISONERS OF WAR
The Civil War was the first time that the nation had to contend with large numbers of war prisoners. As might be expected, therefore, policies and treatment varied greatly—and oftentimes sadly.
During the war the Confederates captured about 211,000 Federal soldiers. Of this number, 16,000 agreed to battlefield paroles—signed promises that they would not bear arms again. Conversely, Federal forces took some 215,000 Confederates as prisoners. At various times throughout the war, both sides made efforts to establish a workable program of prisoner exchange. (A ratio of exchange once existed whereby forty privates equalled one major-general.) However, owing to misunderstandings, violations of terms, and Grant’s determination late in the war to bring the South to its knees at all costs, prisoner exchange was slight and sporadic.
The most notorious Southern prisons were: Libby and Castle Thunder, which were converted warehouses in Richmond; Belle Isle in the James River; “Camp Sorghum” at Columbia, S. C.; and Camp Sumter at Andersonville, Ga. Among the worst of the Northern compounds were: Elmira Prison Camp in southwestern New York State; Point Lookout, on the Chesapeake Bay; Johnson’s Island, in Lake Erie a few miles offshore from Ohio; Camp Douglas, near Chicago; and Rock Island Prison Camp, Illinois.
Writing of these compounds in general, one historian has observed: “The prisons of the Civil War were of a considerable variety in structure and general make-up and for the most part consisted of temporary structures or old unused buildings not originally intended to confine prisoners. Most of them, judged by present-day standards of sanitation and safety, would have been condemned as uninhabitable.”
This is an artist’s conception of the horrors of life in Andersonville. The hastily built camp spread over 26 acres.