Immortal Captives: The Story of 600 Confederate Officers and the United States Prisoner of War Policy [Hardcover]

Mauriel Phillips Joslyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1996

In 1864, the prisoner exchange program had collapsed, a failure politically motivated by Abraham Lincoln's war council. Some victims of the program's failure were 600 Confederate officers from all 14 Southern states who were denied parole. In Charleston Harbor, 50 officers were held as human shields against the artillery fire of their comrades. Elsewhere, Confederate officers were forced to suffer through a winter during which they were deprived of medical care, food, and warmth. The soldiers slowly died from malnutrition, exposure, untreated wounds, and disease although food and medicine were available in abundance to their captors. Officers in charge of overseeing the prisoners were embarrassed by this treatment, but were forced to obey orders.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Using diaries and official correspondence, Joslyn, a librarian, teacher, and Civil War reenactor who has studied the period for over 20 years, relates the courageous story of the 600 Confederate prisoners of war singled out for "retaliatory" treatment similar to that suffered by Union prisoners in Confederate prisons. Reacting to horror stories of Andersonville, the North began to treat Confederate prisoners as it believed Union prisoners were being treated. It finally ceased all prisoner exchanges to deny the South valuable fighting men. The "immortal 600" bore the brunt of "retaliatory" cruelty, often surviving on only a few wormy crackers and pickles as a daily ration. Joslyn painstakingly portrays the deprivation and psychological torture the Confederates suffered as they were shuffled among prisons at Morris Island, Fort Pulaski, and Fort Delaware. Time and again, they were told they would be exchanged only to face bitter disappointment caused by bureaucratic bungling and bad luck. Only the war's end brought freedom to those of the 600 who hadn't succumbed to dysentery, scurvy, or a host of other maladies. The author paints a detailed portrait of prison life during the Civil War. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.
Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

Told through the personal letters, diaries, and written testimonies of Confederate heroes, this is the story of six hundred Southern officers who were denied parole by the North and forced to endure months of unjustified suffering. In 1864, Lincoln and his war council canceled the prisoner exchange program, and the Union army refused to release hundreds of captured Confederates. Instead, they chose to make examples of these men by imprisoning them in unthinkable conditions. Many were tortured and killed. Others were not released until July 1865, months after the end of the Civil War. Mauriel Phillips Joslyn includes excerpts from the officers' journals, written in their own compelling voices, and describes the horrendous treatment of these soldiers in gripping detail. Joslyn also gives accounts from both Union and Confederate points of view to illustrate how Yankee prisoners were treated in comparison to the unbelievable suffering endured by Confederate soldiers in Northern camps. This is the story of how the U.S. prisoner of war program crumbled under Lincoln's control and redeveloped into the U.S. policy of retaliation. The brutal consequences of the Union's actions are shown through the personal accounts of those six hundred captives who faced pain and death for their loyalty to the South and earned immortality. [ Back flap ] Mauriel Phillips Joslyn was born in Manchester, Georgia. She received her bachelor of arts degree in history from Mary Washington College in Virginia, where she studied local Civil War battlefields. She went on to earn a masters in history from Georgia College and State University. Joslyn has worked as a horse-riding instructor and as a librarian at Virginia Tech. She is the author of Confederate Women, published by Pelican, and has had Civil War articles published in Gettysburg Magazine, United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, and Military Heritage. She lives in Sparta, Georgia, where she spends her time restoring an 1822 house and participating in Civil War reenactments. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 344 pages
• Publisher: White Mane Pub (June 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942597966
• ISBN-13: 978-0942597967
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,332,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mauriel Phillips Joslyn was born in Manchester, Georgia. She received her B.A in History from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va. and M.A from Georgia College and State University, and is an adjunct professor at Georgia Military College. Mauriel has been a history buff all her life, and combined that passion with writing and reenacting the periods of American Civil War, World War I and World War II. Author of several non-fiction books on Confederate history, she has lately turned her attention to films (My Christmas Soldier) and novels set in the period of World War II. She has contributed to encyclopedias, and noted magazines such as America's Civil War, North and South Magazine, Cross and Cockade International Journal and Military Heritage. She received Author of the Year in 1998 for A Meteor Shining Brightly. "Check out my Facebook page for more about my interests and being my friend."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A badly needed tonic, January 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Immortal Captives: The Story of 600 Confederate Officers and the United States Prisoner of War Policy (Hardcover)

As a collateral descendant of one of the Immortal 600, Captain Harris Kollock Harrison, I am pleased to see this shameful episode of American history documented. Mauriel Phillips Joslyn has performed a very scholarly investigation not only into the treatment of the Immortal 600 but also into the fanatical thinking that was responsible for Federal prisoner policies during the war. Given the increasingly plastic and shallow views of the war being fed by the mainstream media and academia to the public about the war, "Immortal Captives" is a badly needed tonic, and, moreover, a reminder that Lincoln's war to preserve the Union by force was no altruistic exercise in human rights.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Americas Buchenwald or Concentration camps, June 15, 2003

By 

Lamont G. Sible Jr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Immortal Captives: The Story of 600 Confederate Officers and the United States Prisoner of War Policy (Hardcover)

If you want to buy just one book about American POW camps during the Civil War, this would be an excellent one.
Using primary sources, the Federal Official Records ( O.R), 60 pages of footnotes and bibliographies, the mountain of evidence is overwhelming.
Why did the Union force the Confederate POWs to slowly die from staravation, is found in this book.
Why did Lincoln allow the Union to use these 600 Confederate POW officers to be used as HUMAN SHIELDS is also answered.
No this book isn't fiction; it is part of Americas shameful past it tries to keep hidden.
The truth will always come to the surface.
Mauriel Joslyn has done an excellet job with this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The diaries and letters are powerful and evocative., September 27, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Immortal Captives: The Story of 600 Confederate Officers and the United States Prisoner of War Policy (Hardcover)

Any book that casts Southerners in a favorable light and especially any book that criticizes the Yankee victors is immediately suspect. As a Southerner, even one whose great grandfather served under one of the Immortal 600, I must confess to having held this book suspect. The book is not great literature as Ms. Joscelyn's connective prose is oftimes laborious. That said, the quotes from the officers' diaries and letters are powerful and evocative. I consider myself a thorough student and hardened reader of War Between the States literature and must confess to having failed to supress a tear from time to time. It is inconceivable to the modern American that the United States would have willfully and maliciously treated fellow human beings the way these men were treated The book will never be a best seller, but should be a must read for the student of the formative event of modern America.