Author: Patrick Young
Paintings of Prison Life at Point Lookout by a Captive Confederate
John Jacob Omenhausser was born in 1832 in Philadelphia to a German immigrant family. When the Civil War began he was living in Richmond, Virginia….
Judge Orders Confederate Statue Near Courthouse Removed
Roanoke County Circuit Judge Charles Dorsey ordered a Confederate statue removed from next county courthouse grounds. This is the first time such an order has…
Andersonville and the Whitewashing of History
We know of the suffering and death at Andersonville prison during its fourteen months as a Confederate prison for captured Union soldiers in 1864 and…
Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp – Elmira, NY by Derick Maxfield
Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp – Elmira, NY by Derick Maxfield published by Savas Beatie (2020) 192 pages Hellmira: The Union’s…
Visiting Elmira Prison Camp and Cemetery
24 % of the Confederate soldiers held at Elmira prison camp died there. In 2019 I was moving my step-son up to college at SUNY…
Opponents of Reconstruction Used Tropes of White Victimization to Oppose Black Equality
Historian Lawrence Glickman has a fascinating article in The Atlantic on the ways modern opponents of civil rights use tropes common among the opponents of…
Data Gives Hints on Which Union Prisoners of War Survived
In 2017, Earl Hess had an interesting article in the Journal Civil War History. It focuses on the use of the Early Indicators database for…
The Business of Captivity: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison by Michael Gray
The Business of Captivity: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison by Michael Gray published by Kent State University Press (2001) If every Northerner knew…
Do We Ignore Prisoners of War When We Study the Civil War?
I was rereading the September 2017 issue of Civil War history recently. It had a roundtable discussion by academic and public historians about Civil War…
Map of Elmira Prison Made by a Confederate Soldier Imprisoned There
The treatment of prisoners of war, many of whom were not released until after the surrender of the Confederate armies, was a contentious issue during…