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“This is a vivid description of conditions and events rarely described: the imprisonment of captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Its many parallels to circumstances in Andersonville are especially intriguing.” —Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United StatesCaptives in Gray is Civil War prison camp authority Roger Pickenpaugh’s acclaimed and definitive account of the Union’s POW camps. Combining his own extensive research into official records and a rich variety of letters and diaries with the best contemporary scholarship, Pickenpaugh covers every major northern camp. Because the Union won few victories in 1861 and took few prisoners, the North had time to plan and build prison camps, an opportunity it largely squandered. Pickenpaugh gives illuminating accounts of the role and leadership of thrifty Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman, the commissary general of prisoners for most of the conflict, and President Abraham Lincoln's secretaries of war, the incompetent Simon Cameron and the malignant Edwin M. Stanton. Death came in many ways. Soldiers from the Deep South had no experience with extreme cold, and they died by the hundreds each winter. In one memorable freeze, Rock Island, Illinois, saw temperatures between twenty-eight and thirty-one degrees below zero. With insufficient fuel and inadequate shelter, clothing, and blankets, prisoners there and in other camps froze to death. Food rations varied widely. A few Confederates enjoyed better rations than they had in the CSA armies, but the majority supplemented their meager rations by eating rats, dogs, cats, and seagulls. Poor medical care added to the death toll. Treatment was bad even by the standards of Civil War medicine, often due to Hoffman's reluctance to spend. Prisoners suffered from lice and scurvy, as well as pneumonia, measles, and a variety of fevers. As in both armies, diarrhea and dysentery were chronic. Smallpox epidemics killed many. Poor sanitation and drainage caused 385 deaths at Elmira, New York, in September 1864 alone. During the war, over 12 percent of rebel prisoners, or 25,976 of the 214,865, died in captivity. Together with his Captives in Blue, Captives in Gray gives the fullest account of the experiences of prisoners of war in the American Civil War.

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9780817362362

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“This is a vivid description of conditions and events rarely described: the imprisonment of captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Its many parallels to circumstances in Andersonville are especially intriguing.” —Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States ""The Civil War produced a seminal guide for proper treatment of POWs in the form of US Army General Orders No. 100 (24 April 1863), called the ""Lieber Code."" Bickering about application of these rules has obscured historical understanding of POW life in Union hands. Pickenpaugh shows that both sides lacked suitable personnel, food, and shelter for large catches of POWs produced by battles of unforeseen magnitude. Breakdown of parole and exchange of captives meant that thousands were held for months and years. Camps formed little communities struggling against boredom with handicrafts, hobbies, sports, gambling, escape attempts, canteens, music, and sometimes hard liquor. Hospitals of mixed effectiveness were unable to reduce a 12 percent mortality rate caused in part by unsanitary conditions in camps. Diaries of lesser-rank soldiers reflect common life in POW camps. Recommended. All levels/libraries."" —CHOICE “An ambitious examination of almost all Union military prisons, [which] . . . addresses a specific historical category that has, to my knowledge, not yet been treated.” —William Marvel, author of Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox and Andersonville: The Last Depot ""Roger Pickenpaugh has provided us with a reliable work and I highly recommend Captives in Gray to any student of the Civil War, whether professional or lay person. This is a well-written, deeply moving story and I believe will become the standard for the subject."" —Blue Gray Magazine

Author Information

Roger Pickenpaugh is the author of a dozen works of history, including Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863 and Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy.

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