Overview

It is newly estimated that 750,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. But less well-known than the war's death toll are the roughly 400,000 Union and Confederate troops who were captured and imprisoned. Many POWs died from starvation, dysentery, and exposure, and at the worst of the prison pens, more than 30,000 soldiers were caged in the equivalent of ten city blocks. Against the backdrop of a brutal internecine conflict, the Civil War's prison camps were a harrowing milestone in the history of mass dehumanization. A Fate Worse Than Hell contemplates the roots and consequences of this mass incarceration from America's bloodiest conflict. Based on first-person prisoner accounts, photographs, and contemporaneous journalism, historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage shows how POW camps were of far greater significance to the war than is commonly understood: a subject of stalled negotiation, escalating retaliation, and increasing political liability between the Union and the Confederacy. Brundage describes how the camps were not the products of improvisation, but the results of design and resolve, marshaling prodigious quantities of manpower, technology, and resources-with successor camps in every major war during the next century. Brundage also shows how prisons such as Andersonville, Elmira, and Point Lookout were the catalyst for the United States' first formal laws of war, which became a bedrock for international law. Nowhere during the Civil War was the juxtaposition between our ""better angels"" and our capacity for brutality starker than in the prison camps-sites of unprecedented atrocity that also served as places of selflessness and human dignity among the incarcerated. The most comprehensive work to date about the life of America's captives during the Civil War, A Fate Worse Than Hell exposes this national violence that imprisoned more Americans during wartime than ever before or since.

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Reviews

Americans generally prefer to forget the horror of Civil War prisons. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, one of our greatest historians in the archive and on the page, has written a masterpiece that will go a long way toward changing such amnesia. As Brundage demonstrates in a heroic achievement of research, including in photography, Civil War prisons were 'milestones in dehumanization, ' but they were also an unprecedented story of law, policy, political retaliation, military 'design and resolve, ' even a modern 'innovation' that brought the very concept of slavery into focus. Every chapter delves deeply into the gruesome experience of real people we get to know in what is simply a beautiful narrative about an enormously ugly subject. From the first prisoners of 1861 to the massive cemeteries that dot the nation's landscape, and to the question of responsibility for such suffering and death, Brundage has brilliantly illuminated this 'alien' world and written a new Civil War epic.--David W. Blight, Yale University, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Fitzhugh Brundage has taken on the fraught subject of Civil War prisons and has come out a winner. His mastery of sources, critical and balanced evaluations of Union and Confederate policies and governance of prisons and prisoners, clear and lucid writing, and empathetic treatment of prisoners' traumatic experiences lift this book head and shoulders above other works on the topic.--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era Perhaps no image of the American Civil War underscores the brutality of the conflict more than that of Andersonville prisoners. For generations, Americans have recoiled from photographs depicting these living skeletons, but few have attempted to explain how a 'civil' war became so uncivil. In powerful and moving prose, Brundage does just that. He offers the first comprehensive exploration of how and why prisoner of war camps developed, challenging the reader to consider the degree of innovation and evolution involved in the process, and shining a light on one of the darkest aspects of war.--Caroline Janney, author of Ends of War: The Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox From the pen of one of the most astute chroniclers of the past, comes the first comprehensive modern history of prisoners of war during the Civil War. Taking a long approach, Fitzhugh Brundage starts with its global history, its awful denouement in horrific Confederate camps like Andersonville, as well as the long afterlives of captivity into the twentieth century. A Fate Worse than Hell is the work of a master of the craft.--Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1870-1920 Riveting! Written like a novel and bursting with historical insight, A Fate Worse than Hell tells the story of the Civil War's POW system and the men who struggled--and often failed--to survive it. Brilliant, original, and deeply humane, this is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand war and its long-lasting impact.--Yael Sternhell, author of Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South Walt Whitman famously observed that the real Civil War would 'never get in the books.' Nevertheless, there occasionally appears a book that brings us closer to that impossible goal. Such a work is W. Fitzhugh Brundage's meticulously crafted exploration of prison life in the war, A Fate Worse Than Hell. Steadily and unflinchingly, Brundage leads us into the darkest regions of America's most tragic war, fearlessly illuminating every corner of his subject: the horrors of the camps; the valiant, if ineffectual efforts to reform them; and above all the courage and tenacity of those who found the will to survive them. A Fate Worse Than Hell deserves a place of honor on every Civil War bookshelf.--John Matteson, 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father

""Americans generally prefer to forget the horror of Civil War prisons. Fitz Brundage, one of our greatest historians in the archive and on the page, has written a masterpiece that will go a long way toward changing such amnesia. As Brundage demonstrates in a heroic achievement of research, including in photography, Civil War prisons were 'milestones in dehumanization,' but they were also an unprecedented story of law, policy, political retaliation, military 'design and resolve,' even a modern 'innovation' that brought the very concept of slavery into focus. Every chapter delves deeply into the gruesome experience of real people we get to know in what is simply a beautiful narrative about an enormously ugly subject. From the first prisoners of 1861 to the massive cemeteries that dot the nation's landscape, and to the question of responsibility for such suffering and death, Brundage has brilliantly illuminated this 'alien' world, and written a new Civil War epic."" -- David W. Blight, Yale University, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom ""Fitzhugh Brundage has taken on the fraught subject of Civil War prisons and has come out a winner. His mastery of sources, critical and balanced evaluations of Union and Confederate policies and governance of prisons and prisoners, clear and lucid writing, and empathetic treatment of prisoners’ traumatic experiences lift this book head and shoulders above other works on the topic."" -- James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era ""Walt Whitman famously observed that the real Civil War would ‘never get in the books.’ Nevertheless, there occasionally appears a book that brings us closer to that impossible goal. Such a work is W. Fitzhugh Brundage's meticulously crafted exploration of prison life in the war, A Fate Worse Than Hell. Steadily and unflinchingly, Brundage leads us into the darkest regions of America's most tragic war, fearlessly illuminating every corner of his subject: the horrors of the camps; the valiant, if ineffectual efforts to reform them; and above all the courage and tenacity of those who found the will to survive them. A Fate Worse Than Hell deserves a place of honor on every Civil War bookshelf."" -- John Matteson, 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father ""Perhaps no image of the American Civil War underscores the brutality of the conflict more than that of Andersonville prisoners. For generations, Americans have recoiled from photographs depicting these living skeletons, but few have attempted to explain how a 'civil' war became so uncivil. In powerful and moving prose, Brundage does just that. He offers the first comprehensive exploration of how and why prisoner of war camps developed, challenging the reader to consider the degree of innovation and evolution involved in the process, and shining a light on one of the darkest aspects of war."" -- Caroline Janney, author of Ends of War: The Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox ""From the pen of one of the most astute chroniclers of the past, comes the first comprehensive modern history of prisoners of war during the Civil War. Taking a long approach, Fitzhugh Brundage starts with its global history, its awful denouement in horrific Confederate camps like Andersonville, as well as the long afterlives of captivity into the twentieth century. A Fate Worse than Hell is the work of a master of the craft."" -- Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1870-1920 ""Riveting! Written like a novel and bursting with historical insight, A Fate Worse than Hell tells the story of the Civil War’s POW system and the men who struggled—and often failed—to survive it. Brilliant, original, and deeply humane, this is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand war and its long-lasting impact."" -- Yael Sternhell, author of Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South

Author Information

Guggenheim Fellow W. Fitzhugh Brundage is the William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book Civilizing Torture, he lives in Chapel Hill.

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