A General Behind Bars: Neal Dow in Libby Prison

A GENERAL BEHIND BARS: NEAL DOW IN LIBBY PRISON Edited by Frank L. Byrne An historian of Civil War prisons sometimes wearily suspects that every inmate of Libby, the Confederate prison for Union officers at Richmond, must have later written an account of his experience. Many of the Libbyans, being highly literate, spent some of their idle hours in keeping diaries and other records of prison life. The prison penmen often used these as the basis of descriptions of Libby, which ranged in tone from bitter invective in the immediate postwar period to a tolerant sentimentality by the turn of the century. Yet, even with a wealth of evidence, the historian of Libby is impoverished by the lack of primary sources undebased by subsequent revision. AU too many of the published diaries and the reminiscences based upon them bear traces of their author's clipping and polishing of the historical coin. Hence the publication ofa diary unaltered by its keeper may be a worthwhile addition to the already rich treasury of Libbyana.1 The identity of the diarist himself, Neal Dow, gives additional significance to his work.2 A native of Portland, Maine, Dow had won nationwide fame in the 1850's through his authorship of the "Maine Law" against liquor-seUing, and through his partially-successful campaign to spread prohibition. In several states he and his foUowers were important elements in the political fusions which created the Republican party. Dow, who was also an ardent abolitionist, welcomed the Civil War as an opporunity to break the South's political power and free its enslaved Negroes. In the faU of 1861, at the age of fifty-seven, he reDr . Byrne received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, where he studied under this issue's guest editor, Dr. William B. Hesseltine. Author of Prophet of Prohibition: Neal Dow and His Crusade, Dr. Byrne is now a member of the history department at Creighton University, Omaha. 1 For an annotated bibliography which includes the principal published prisoners' narratives of Libby, see William B. Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (Columbus, Ohio, 1930), pp. 261-77. 2 Dow's original Libby diary, which fills seventy closely-written pages of a small notebook, is among the Dow Papers in the possession of his granddaughter, Mrs. William C. Eaton of Portland, Maine. She has kindly consented to assist Civil War scholarship through its publication. 164 ceived a colonel's commission from the Republican governor of Maine. He and the regiment which he raised among his prohibitionist supporters served for a time in the Department of the Gulf. Because of Dow's personal and political differences with his successive commanders, Generals Benjamin F. Butler and Nathaniel P. Banks, he enjoyed only minor assignments. Nevertheless, his political friends in Washington managed to secure his promotion to the rank of brigadier general. Thus, on June 30, 1863, when captured near Port Hudson, Louisiana, Dow became one of the relatively few Union generals to enter Southern captivity. Dow was part of the even more select group of generals who endured prolonged imprisonment. His captors brought him to the warehouse of Libby & Son at Richmond, Virginia, which they had been using to hold Union officers awaiting exchange. Upon his arrival on July 11, 1863, Dow learned that the regular exchange of officers had recently ceased because of a complicated controversy centering around the Confederates' refusal to release the officers and men of Negro units. Moreover, the Confederates correctly suspected Dow himself of having incited slaves to leave their masters and of encouraging the fugitives to form military organizations . On August 1, Dow's captors transferred him to Mobile, Alabama , for an investigation of these charges but found insufficient evidence upon which to try him. Dow then returned to Richmond and, on October 12, 1863, settled himself for an indefinite period behind the thick brick walls of Libby Prison. Dow observed Libby during its most crowded and controversial period. By the winter of 1863-64, some 1,000 Federal officers were awaiting the resumption of exchanges in a prison originaUy hastily improvised as a place of temporary confinement. Living conditions within the three-story warehouse on...