Well-known historian Douglas Brinkley was writing a biography of Jimmy Carter in 1993 and he met with the former president. He asked him what were his reading habits. Carter loved reading but on historical works, he devoted himself to studying the Civil War. Here is what Brinkley learned from Carter:
“When it came to American history, Carter’s abiding passion was the Civil War. He was a fan of historians, and Shelby Foote, James McPherson and John Hope Franklin were his favorites. And Carter advocated, like a publicist, on behalf of Eric Foner’s seminal “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877” (1988). When I unfairly pushed him to recommend a single Civil War-era book, he unhesitatingly said “The Southern Side; or, Andersonville Prison,” by R. Randolph Stevenson. At Andersonville, Ga., 45,000 Northern prisoners of war were held during the last 14 months of the war in conditions so inhumane that 13,000 died. Stevenson was the doctor in charge.
“He tabulated every death that occurred in Andersonville,” Carter explained, “and there is a narrative with it.” Stevenson points out that Robert E. Lee tried to swap prisoners because he couldn’t feed them. He just didn’t have any money, and Grant refused to swap. Then Lee offered to swap two prisoners for one just so he wouldn’t have to see them suffer. Grant still refused, possibly because he thought at one time feeding 30,000 prisoners was a great burden on the South. The commandant of the prison was court-martialed and executed at the end of the war.
“When I read that book,” Carter said, “I went over to Andersonville to try and interpret where the events took place.””
Unfortunate that Carter missed in the lessons of Andersonville that the whole prisoner exchange dilemma was spawned by the CSA when they refused to treat black Union soldiers as prisoners of war. By the end, Grant would not swap because it would put rebel soldiers back in the field and prolong the war. As enlightened as Carter was, he was still a prisoner to the southern mythos to some degree.