Civil War Prisons by William Best HesseltineMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I grew up near the Rock Island Arsenal, site of a large Northern Civil War prison. I picked up this book for the description of that prison. There are seven prisons described in this short book, from both sides in the Civil War. I grew up in the generation that considered Hogan’s Heroes POW camp to be a reasonable depiction to start to understand war prisons. This book did portray the usual muddy, drab, cold environments, with limited food. I was surprised that the prisoners had as much freedom to move around the prisons as they did. I was also extremely surprised that the officer prisoners where treated so much better than the enlisted men, often getting their own prison, and able to buy supplies from neighboring businesses. It seems to a prison the guards tended to be the soldiers that didn’t have the temperament or intelligence to be in a fighting unit. As for the staff running the prison, it was hit or miss. The North seemed to try harder to “optimize” the running of their prisons, while the South seemed to promote from the guards, or at least share the same mentality, to the prisoner’s detriment. Quite an eye opening book, and one I will remember.
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