While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War (review)

Not since William Best Hesseltine published his accurate study of the Civil War prisoner of war (POW) problem as Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology in 1930 has a seriously critical work appeared in the historical literature that attacks the heart of events as this book does. Charles W. Sanders, Jr., is to be congratulated for the massive amount of research he conducted leading to, as expected, a curse on both the Union and Confederate policies that led to the maiming and unnecessary death of so many American soldiers in captivity. The numbers, as the author shows clearly, are simply staggering: 211,400 Union POWs in the south; 220,000 Confederates in the north; Union dead, 30,218, Confederate dead, 26,436. Not only did the respective prison systems fail, but individuals responsible for them also failed. But that is not enough, really, neglect is not the issue, responsibility and lack of accountability are.

Wars are not won or lost because of POWs; they are won or lost in spite of them. All the major players—U. S. Grant, R. E. Lee, John Henry Winder, William Hoffman, Edwin Stanton, James Seddon, and both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis—knew it, too. In the author's view, they are all equally evil, but, curiously, for different reasons. First, neither side remembered how prisoners were treated in the Revolution, 1812, or Mexico. Had they done so, provisions would have been made for exchanges in great numbers and humane treatment in the stockades, but Civil War politics interfered badly. Lincoln refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Confederacy, hence, even calling captured Confederates prisoners of war presented problems. Military necessities, of course, changed everything, and the Dix-Hill Cartel began to move prisoners to their own lines. Yet, no cartel worked very well for long. By 1864, U. S. Grant forbade formal exchanges knowing that he wanted to maintain his edge in manpower to destroy the Confederate Army and charging that Confederate soldiers returned to their regiments prematurely. Saying that the Union Army had great concern for black Union POWs in Confederate hands sat well with the Abolitionists perhaps, but in reality such concern was more propaganda than reality.

The author poses several fascinating questions in the text: were there low levels of concern for Union and Confederate prisoners' physical welfare? What role did parsimony play in the steady destruction of healthy young soldiers in enemy hands? Why was Richmond so overcrowded with Union prisoners? What was the nature of the Union and Confederate systems? Where did they fail, and why did they fail? Who failed them? The author attacks these questions and many more in the text and shows how decentralization in prison systems, personalities hardened by war psychosis, newspapers howling for retribution, and radical Union politics hardened human feelings toward the suffering of captured enemy soldiers.

Without a doubt, this book is a solid and welcome contribution to the field of historical POW studies. One may not agree with all the author's conclusions, but they are indeed provocative and very vigorously argued.