Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union [Hardcover]

Roger Pickenpaugh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2009

Contemporary reports from prisoners and witnesses humanize the grim realities of the POW camps.

Perhaps no topic is more heated, and the sources more tendentious, than that of Civil War prisons and the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Partisans of each side, then and now, have vilified the other for maltreatment of their POWs, while seeking to excuse their own distressing record of prisoner of war camp mismanagement, brutality, and incompetence. It is only recently that historians have turned their attention to this contentious topic in an attempt to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of partisan rancor.

Roger Pickenpaugh has previously studied a Union prison camp in careful detail (Camp Chase) and now turns his attention to the Union record in its entirety, to investigate variations between camps and overall prison policy and to determine as nearly as possible what actually happened in the admittedly over-crowded, under-supplied, and poorly-administered camps. He also attempts to determine what conditions resulted from conscious government policy or were the product of local officials and situations.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

“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

“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

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: University Alabama Press; 1 edition (March 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0817316523
• ISBN-13: 978-0817316525
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,163,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roger Pickenpaugh recently retired after a thirty-year teaching career at Shenandoah Middle School in Sarahsville, Ohio. His books include studies of outstanding weather events in Ohio and the Civil War. His first book in the latter category was "Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863." In recent years he has studied Civil War prisons. His first book on that topic was "Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy." This was the study of a major Ohio prison. Last year the University of Alabama Press published "Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union." Pickenpaugh is now completing a companion volume, "Captives in Blue."

Pickenpaugh lives in Noble County Ohio with his wife and co-researcher, Marion.