Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy

by Roger Pickenpaugh

Overview

Discusses an important yet often misunderstood topic in American History

Camp Chase was a major Union POW camp and also served at various times as a Union military training facility and as quarters for Union soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Confederacy and released on parole or exchanged. As such, this careful, thorough, and objective examination of the history and administration of the camp will be of true significance in the literature on the Civil War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817380359
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	04/08/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Roger Pickenpaugh is the author of Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union and Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Training Camp
2. Improvised Prison Camp
3. Parole Camp
4. Exchange and Escape
5. The Search for Stability
6. The Lives of the Prisoners
7. The Health of the Prisoners
8. “i think i feel a change”
Afterword: Keeping Alive the Memory
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Editorial Reviews

Perhaps historians have largely failed to investigate military prisons and prisoners because these subjects have always been the most controversial aspect of the Civil War. Traditionally scholars have focused on battles and leaders, parties and political figures, although some have dealt with the common soldier, the home front, diplomacy, and the economic impact of the war. More recently, a handful of new social historians have taken a belated interest in the war, but their studies deal almost exclusively with the roles of women and African Americans. Prisoners of war continue to be neglected by military historians (having been removed from the battlefield) and by social historians (as being too closely related to military history), just as they were neglected, and sometimes seemingly forgotten, by their respective governments and captors.”
—Michael B. Chesson, editor of The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon among other publications


“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

From the Publisher