George W. Alexander and Castle Thunder: A Confederate Prison and Its Commandant, and: Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy (review)

Since the 1990s, the study of Civil War prison camps has increasingly begun to capture the attention of scholars. In recent years, these historians have moved beyond narratives of high death rates and poor conditions to offer nuanced studies about the social, economic, and political implications of these prison camps on local regions. The books presented here investigate two relatively neglected camps in the Union and the Confederacy.

In George W. Alexander and Castle Thunder, Frances Casstevens takes a pointed look at the military career of one of Richmond’s most controversial prison commandants. Challenging the dubious reputation attached to George Alexander, she seeks to offer a more balanced assessment of his tenure at Castle Thunder. This book, however, is more than simply a biographical sketch. Instead, Casstevens supplements her study with an in-depth exploration into the organizational structure and daily living experience of this little-known Confederate prison.

Casstevens should be commended for the vast amount of source material incorporated into this study. Throughout the book are examples of her adherence to meticulous research, such as her description of the congressional investigation into Alexander’s prison policies. Her appendix alone, which offers a detailed account of prison inmates, a court marshal transcript, a copy of George Alexander’s morning report, and a partial list of prisoners transferred to Castle Thunder from other prison camps, will prove valuable to scholars of the field.

Despite Casstevens’s commitment to research, however, her study ultimately lacks meaningful depth and analysis. For example, in an effort to redeem George Alexander’s reputation for torturing prisoners, she points to his “lighter side,” which consists of little more than his appreciation of music and the arts (55). In addition, the overabundance of thematic breaks, which at times occur after no more than a paragraph, prevents her from producing an articulate and interpretive prose. Due to this, her study reads as a tedious list of names, dates, and events. Moreover, though Casstevens aptly describes the organizational make up of Castle Thunder she fails to place it within the overall political and social context of the Confederate capital. For instance, throughout the book she fleetingly comments that Richmond’s citizens often criticized Alexander for his harsh treatment of Union prisoners; here she misses an opportunity to discuss and analyze how these criticisms reflected the public’s opinion on the Union, the war, and the policies of the Confederate government.

Moving the study of Civil War prison camps further north, Roger Pickenpaugh’s Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy illustrates how these institutions changed in tandem with the needs of the Federal government. Through diligent research, the author traces the history of Camp Chase as it transitioned from a Union military training facility to a holding area for exchanged or paroled ex-confederate prisoners and ultimately into a Federal prison camp. The inherent value of this study lies in the author’s ability to tie the Union prison policies of Camp Chase to the shifting social, political, and military concerns of the war years. One of the strongest elements of the book discusses how the prison policies of Camp Chase—which was just four miles from Columbus, Ohio—were forced to respond to the fluctuating influence of the Copperhead movement.

Throughout his study, Pickenpaugh highlights the operational difficulties Camp Chase experienced throughout the war. Similar to other prison camps, it suffered from inadequate funds, a lack of resources, unruly trainees and prisoners, a high commandant turnover, and overpopulation. Though Pickenpaugh’s work is less interpretive in scope, his lucid narrative provides a useful introduction into the complex interplay of bureaucratic prison policies.

As these two works show, the study of Civil...