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Camp Lawton was the largest prisoner of war camp constructed during the American Civil War. Built to replace Andersonville, at 42 acres it was almost twice the size of that more notorious prison. Confederate plans called for Camp Lawton to house up to 40,000 Union prisoners. Only just over 10,000 prisoners were captive there when Sherman's March to the Sea forced its evacuation. This book is the only work ever published which focuses entirely on Camp Lawton. It contains over a dozen eyewitness accounts, most of them long out of print, by Union soldiers held prisoner there. It also includes a short overview of the history of Camp Lawton and the "Roll of Honor," "names of the soldiers removed from Lawton National Cemetery to Beaufort National Cemetery." Camp Lawton is now on the site of Magnolia Springs State Park, where the editor is employed. For more information on Camp Lawton or Magnolia Springs State Park please visit http: //www.gastateparks.org/info/magspr/ or call 478-982-1660.
During the Civil War, Union and Confederate politicians, military commanders, everyday soldiers, and civilians claimed their approach to the conflict was civilized, in keeping with centuries of military tradition meant to restrain violence and preserve national honor. One hallmark of civilized warfare was a highly ritualized approach to retaliation. This ritual provided a forum to accuse the enemy of excessive behavior, to negotiate redress according to the laws of war, and to appeal to the judgment of other civilized nations. As the war progressed, Northerners and Southerners feared they were losing their essential identity as civilized, and the attention to retaliation grew more intense. When Black soldiers joined the Union army in campaigns in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, raiding plantations and liberating enslaved people, Confederates argued the war had become a servile insurrection. And when Confederates massacred Black troops after battle, killed white Union foragers after capture, and used prisoners of war as human shields, Federals thought their enemy raised the black flag and embraced savagery. Blending military and cultural history, Lorien Foote's rich and insightful book sheds light on how Americans fought over what it meant to be civilized and who should be extended the protections of a civilized world.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, federal officials captured, imprisoned, and indicted Jefferson Davis for treason. If found guilty, the former Confederate president faced execution for his role in levying war against the United States. Although the federal government pursued the charges for over four years, the case never went to trial. In this comprehensive analysis of the saga, Treason on Trial, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez suggests that while national politics played a role in the trial’s direction, the actions of lesser-known individuals ultimately resulted in the failure to convict Davis. Early on, two primary factions argued against trying the case. Influential northerners dreaded the prospect of a public trial, fearing it would reopen the wounds of the war and make a martyr of Davis. Conversely, white southerners pointed to the treatment and prosecution of Davis as vindictive on the part of the federal government. Moreover, they maintained, the right to secede from the Union remained within the bounds of the law, effectively linking the treason charge against Davis with the constitutionality of secession. While Icenhauer-Ramirez agrees that politics played a role in the case, he suggests that focusing exclusively on that aspect obscures the importance of the participants. In the United States of America v. Jefferson Davis, preeminent lawyers represented both parties. According to Icenhauer-Ramirez, Lucius H. Chandler, the local prosecuting attorney, lacked the skill and temperament necessary to put the case on a footing that would lead to trial. In addition, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had little desire to preside over the divisive case and intentionally stymied the prosecution’s efforts. The deft analysis in Treason on Trial illustrates how complications caused by Chandler and Chase led to a three-year delay and, eventually, to the dismissal of the case in 1868, when President Andrew Johnson granted blanket amnesty to those who participated in the armed rebellion.
William Marvel’s The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 examines a dozen understudied Confederate and Union military operations carried out during the spring of 1864 that, taken cumulatively, greatly revived white southerners’ hopes for independence. Among the pivotal moments during this period were the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the CSS Hunley; Nathan Bedford Forrest’s defeat of William Sooy Smith’s cavalry raid; and the Confederate army’s victory at Olustee, Florida. The repulse of Union advances on Dalton, Georgia; botched Union raids on Richmond; and the capture of the Union garrison in Plymouth, North Carolina, likewise suggested that the tide of fighting had turned toward the Confederate cause. These events boosted the morale of southern troops and citizens, and caused grave concerns about the war effort in the North and in the mind of Abraham Lincoln. In late 1863 and early 1864, dejection and despair prevailed in the South: Union soldiers had vanquished Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, the Confederate nation had been cut in two, Tennessee was lost, and Braxton Bragg’s army had been utterly routed at Chattanooga. Defeatism loomed in the South during the first weeks of 1864, and the ease with which William T. Sherman rampaged across Mississippi illustrated the dominance of Union forces, while Confederates’ ineffectual assault on New Bern accentuated their weakness. Yet between February 20 and April 30, southern troops enjoyed an unbroken string of successes that included turning back a concerted Union offensive during the Red River campaign as well as Forrest’s triumphant incursions into Union City, Paducah, and Fort Pillow. Aided by flawed strategy implemented by Union army officers, the achievements of Confederate forces restored hope and confidence in camp and on the southern home front. The Confederacy’s battlefield successes during the early months of 1864 remained almost unnoticed by Civil War scholars until recently and have never been investigated in detail until now. The victories invigorated southern combatants, demonstrating how abruptly the most dismal military prospects could be reversed. Without that experience, Marvel argues, the Confederates who faced Sherman and Grant in the spring of that year would certainly have displayed less ferocity and likely would have succumbed more quickly to the demoralization that ultimately led to the collapse of Confederate resistance.
From battlefields, boxcars, and forgotten warehouses to notorious prison camps like Andersonville and Elmira, prisoners seemed to be everywhere during the American Civil War. Yet there is much we do not know about the soldiers and civilians whose very lives were in the hands of their enemies. Living by Inches is the first book to examine how imprisoned men in the Civil War perceived captivity through the basic building blocks of human experience--their five senses. From the first whiffs of a prison warehouse to the taste of cornbread and the feeling of lice, captivity assaulted prisoners' perceptions of their environments and themselves. Evan A. Kutzler demonstrates that the sensory experience of imprisonment produced an inner struggle for men who sought to preserve their bodies, their minds, and their sense of self as distinct from the fundamentally uncivilized and filthy environments surrounding them. From the mundane to the horrific, these men survived the daily experiences of captivity by adjusting to their circumstances, even if these transformations worried prisoners about what type of men they were becoming.
Beginning in 1924, Proceedings are incorporated into the Apr. number.
Black Flag over Dixie: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War highlights the central role that race played in the Civil War by examining some of the ugliest incidents that played out on its battlefields. Challenging the American public’s perception of the Civil War as a chivalrous family quarrel, twelve rising and prominent historians show the conflict to be a wrenching social revolution whose bloody excesses were exacerbated by racial hatred. Edited by Gregory J. W. Urwin, this compelling volume focuses on the tendency of Confederate troops to murder black Union soldiers and runaway slaves and divulges the details of black retaliation and the resulting cycle of fear and violence that poisoned race relations during Reconstruction. In a powerful introduction to the collection, Urwin reminds readers that the Civil War was both a social and a racial revolution. As the heirs and defenders of a slave society’s ideology, Confederates considered African Americans to be savages who were incapable of waging war in a civilized fashion. Ironically, this conviction caused white Southerners to behave savagely themselves. Under the threat of Union retaliation, the Confederate government backed away from failing to treat the white officers and black enlisted men of the United States Colored Troops as legitimate combatants. Nevertheless, many rebel commands adopted a no-prisoners policy in the field. When the Union’s black defenders responded in kind, the Civil War descended to a level of inhumanity that most Americans prefer to forget. In addition to covering the war’s most notorious massacres at Olustee, Fort Pillow, Poison Spring, and the Crater, Black Flag over Dixie examines the responses of Union soldiers and politicians to these disturbing and unpleasant events, as well as the military, legal, and moral considerations that sometimes deterred Confederates from killing all black Federals who fell into their hands. Twenty photographs and a map of massacre and reprisal sites accompany the volume. The contributors are Gregory J. W. Urwin, Anne J. Bailey, Howard C. Westwood, James G. Hollandsworth Jr., David J. Coles, Albert Castel, Derek W. Frisby, Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., Gerald W. Thomas, Bryce A. Suderow, Chad L. Williams, and Mark Grimsley.