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 Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp – Elmira, NY by Derick Maxfield is the first installment in the Emerging Civil War series to look at a prisoner of war camp. Like the other entries in this series, Hellmira is short and factual with a lot of illustrations. As with other Emerging Civil War volumes, it has a neat tour of the sites associated with the prison at the end of the book.

The book does a good job of telling the story of the events that led up to the establishment of the camp in 1864. The Emancipation Proclamation’s 1863 authorization to begin the enlistment of Black men as Union soldiers was countered by Confederate proclamations that captured African Americans would not be treated as lawful prisoners and might be sold into slavery, or worse than that. White officers commanding Blacks would be treated as incendiaries inciting slave insurrection. The refusal of the Confederate government to exchange captured Blacks for white Confederates held by the Union forces resulted in the collapse of the prisoner exchange cartel. The cartel had established a regularized and almost bureaucratic system for exchanging prisoners, often within weeks of their capture. Now tens of thousands of men faced the grim prospect of being held captive until the end of the war.

Hellmira describes the creation of the camp, its physical layout, its commanders and medical staff. There are two good chapters on the lives of the prisoners, including the prison economy in which tobacco was a form of currency. Although the book is short, we do get some insights into individual prisoners like the famous escapee Berry Benson and the future Klansman Marcus B. Toney. While it is not mentioned in the book, Benson became a sort of anti-Toney. He associated with the New South tendency in Augusta and he would later defend Leo Frank, the Georgia Jewish victim of a lynching.

I have been to the site of the Elmira prison camp several times, beginning when I was a boy even though it is more than six hours by car from where I live on Long Island. My last visit was just months before the publication of this book and I wish I had it with me at the time. It is particularly useful, in addition to its driving tour, for its description of the effort by local history enthusiasts over the last two decades to memorialize the site and to increase awareness of what happened there among the general public. I have seen some of the fruits of that work and I greatly appreciate that I was able to get much more from a visit in 2019 than I did in the 1960s.

The only sour note in the book was a one-page description of the impact of the memory of Civil War prisons on Reconstruction. Maxfield is correct in citing recent work by Benjamin Cloyd saying that the mass dyings at Civil War prisons North and South impacted how white people in each section viewed one another. However he also writes:

One need not look much further for the truth in Cloyd’s argument than military reconstruction of the South from 1867 to 1877. Radical Republicans in control of the U.S. Congress, who sought to punish the South for its treasonous rebellion, quickly “waved the bloody shirt” in defense of its policies. Meanwhile, carpetbaggers pillaged the South. (p. 90)

Radicals in Congress really only gained steam for their program of Reconstruction when newly freed slaves were condemned to near slavery conditions by the post-war Black Codes passed in 1865 and 1866 by all-white Southern state legislatures that let former Confederates hold seats but barred Blacks from even voting. Characterizing the legacy of the Radicals as the pillaging of the South by carpetbaggers, instead of, say, ending slavery, passing the nation’s first Civil Rights Bill, recognizing Blacks as citizens under the 14th Amendment, and barring racial discrimination in voting under the 15th Amendment is an outdated holdover. We know that at least some of the prisoners sent home at the end of the Civil War violated their amnesty oaths by joining terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan that sought to return Blacks to a state of servitude. This betrayal of loyalty oaths played a large part in stirring up feelings for a more direct Federal hand in Reconstruction as did the mounting lists of Blacks murdered and tortured after the war.

In addition to the driving tour, Hellmira has several useful appendices. One focuses on John Jones, the man who buried so many of the Confederates who died at Elmira. Jones was enslaved from birth in Virginia. He and two family members armed themselves and made an escape to the North, soon settling in Elmira.  Jones became a leading figure in the local anti-slavery movement and is said to have assisted a large number of escaped slaves on their way to Canada. During 1864 and 1865 he contracted with the Federal government to bury the prison’s dead. By all accounts that I have seen he did good, and did well. He was careful to identify each body under his care and to keep records that are still relied on today. If you visit the cemetery in Elmira you will be surprised to see that nearly every name of every unfortunate soldier is on the headstone. Sexton Jones did well, because his contract paid him per body buried and he earned the equivalent of over $150,000 in today’s money for his year of work. Hellmira not only gives a useful biography of Jones, it also looks at the laudable effort to preserve his home near the men he buried and turn it into a museum.

There is also an appendix on the Shohola Train Wreck of 1864. This wreck killed at least 48 prisoners and 17 guards on a train taking them to Elmira.  The story is economically told in Hellmira and will be useful to the many New Yorkers who travel to the Delaware Water Gap for rafting and want a little historical side-trip. The site is right by the Delaware River and is passed every summer day by hundreds of rafters and tubers. There is also a short biography of Berry Benson, possibly the most renowned Confederate escapee from a Union prison. Benson is an interesting character and this appendix is useful.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile book. Michael Gray’s The Business of Captivity: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison has become the standard scholarly work on the subject, but Hellmira is a good short read that is reliable. Derick Maxfield’s scholarship presents a clear picture of the camp and is fairly complete in its coverage and missing only the experiences of the guards. He also writes knowing that many people will buy this book in anticipation of a trip to Elmira and he makes sure to discuss how different sites can be accessed and he offers modern photos to go along with the 19th Century illustrations. If you are driving up to Niagara Falls, Corning Glass Works, or dropping a kid off at one of the many nearby colleges (Cornell University, Ithaca College, Binghamton University, Elmira College, State University College Cortland) you can read this book and bring it along as a guide. One piece of advice: Check with the THE FRIENDS OF ELMIRA CIVIL WAR PRISON CAMP to see when the reconstructed and restored buildings are open.

[Disclosure: I write a monthly article at the Emerging Civil War blog. I receive no compensation for it and I have no financial interest in the blog or the book series.]

 

 

 

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