NCJ Number
175953
Date Published
1998
Length
311 pages
Annotation
This historical review of Civil War prisons portrays the rise and fall of the prisoner exchange system that eventually led to the establishment of prison camps and describes the treatment of prisoners by the North and the South.
Abstract
Once established through a cartel in July 1862, the exchange system functioned reasonably well until it collapsed in late 1863. Until this point in the Civil War, the treatment of prisoners featured few of the horrors that proliferated after the cartel was dissolved. The treatment of prisoners remained an inflammatory issue throughout the postwar period. Northerners took the lead in this debate, beginning during the war with a Congressional investigation of released prisoners of war that revealed the suffering in Southern prison camps. Southerners fought these impressions with publications by Confederate veterans and memoirs of key political features such as Jefferson Davis. In exposing several myths about the prison system during the Civil War, the author indicates that the North shared responsibility with the South for the poor treatment of prisoners, and argues that the North conducted a propaganda campaign aimed at impugning the southern character, thus creating a wartime psychosis that it made it easier for Northerners to believe the worst about the Confederacy. References and notes