By Kevin Seabrooke
In January 1864, with the Union’s Army of the Potomac in winter quarters about 80 miles north the Confederates decided to move many of the Union prisoners of war out of Richmond, Virginia. Construction of a military prison camp for 10,000 men in Sumter County, Georgia, was begun. In late February, some 400 POWs a day began arriving until there were 26,000 in June and 33,000 by August. Only open 14 months, nearly 13,000 POWs died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure out of the 45,000 who passed through the camp better known as “Andersonville.”
Based on first-person prisoner accounts, photographs, and contemporaneous journalism, this comprehensive work shows how Andersonville, Elmira, and Point Lookout prisons brought forth first formal laws of war in the U.S., forming the bedrock for international law.
A Fate Worse than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War (W. Fitzhugh Brundage, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 464pp., February 24, 2026 $38.99 HC)
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