Captives in Blue

The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy

By Roger Pickenpaugh

University of Alabama Press

A study of Union prisoners in Confederate prisons

In Captives in Blue, Roger Pickenpaugh examines the ways the Confederate army contended with the growing prison population, the variations in the policies and practices of different Confederate prison camps, the effects these policies and practices had on Union prisoners, and the logistics of prisoner exchanges. He explores conditions that arose from conscious government policy decisions and conditions that were the product of local officials or unique local situations. He also considers how Confederate prisons and policies dealt with African American Union soldiers. Black soldiers held captive in Confederate prisons faced uncertain fates; many former slaves were returned to their former owners, while others faced harsh treatment in the camps. Drawing on prisoner diaries, Pickenpaugh provides compelling first-person accounts of life in prison camps often overlooked by scholars in the field.

This study of Union captives in Confederate prisons is a companion to Roger Pickenpaugh’s earlier groundbreaking book Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union and extends his examination of Civil War prisoner-of-war facilities into the Confederacy.

The real highlight of this volume is the author’s extensive use of prisoner diaries, memoirs, and other manuscript sources to document what they felt and thought about the conditions and circumstances regarding their stay as guests of their enemy, in virtually all of the camps operated in the Confederacy.’
—Journal of America’s Military Past

‘Captives in Blue is an excellent book that more thoroughly details life in Confederate-run prisons than anything currently available. I think it will stand as the starting place for all future studies of Southern prisoner of war facilities for a long time.’
—James M. Gillispie, author of Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners and Cape Fear Confederates: The 18th North Carolina Regiment in the Civil War

Captives in Blue will appeal to a wide audience for good reason. It is the most compressive treatment of prisoners of war to date. Generalists and an educated public audience will find it readable and not laden with jargon. For Civil War historians and graduate students, this book provides a rich documentary trail. Captives in Blue brings coherence to the complicated movements and experience of prisoners of war.’
—Civil War Book Review

Roger Pickenpaugh is author of many books on Civil War history, including Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy and Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union.

Acknowledgments

1. "We all feel deeply on their account": Richmond Prisons, 1861

2. "A very inconvenient and expensive problem": The Search for New Prisons

3. "Fresh air tastes delicious": Virginia Prisons and the Road to Exchange, 1862

4. "This prison in our own country": Union Parole Camps

5. "The most villainous thing of the war": Libby Prison, 1863-64

6. "It looks like starvation here": Belle Isle, 1863-64

7. "500 here died. 600 ran away": Danville and Beyond, 1864

8. "I dislike the place": Andersonville, Plans and Problems

9. "The Horrors of War": Andersonville, the Pattern of Life and Death

10. "All are glad to go somewhere": The Officers' Odyssey, 1864-65

11. "A disagreeable dilemma": Black Captives in Blue