Prison Life Among the Rebels: Recollections of a Union Chaplain

Book by White, Henry S.

Union Army chaplain Henry S. White was shuffled among Confederate prisons from May to September 1864. After his release, he descibed his experiences in 18 letters, published in Zion's Herald , a Methodist newspaper in New England. White's anti-Southern biases are an integral part of the account. He tells his Northern audience that his captors are godless tyrants, that they steal from the POWs and that their armies have only the loosest kind of discipline. Confederate currency is "bogus," Southern women are "saucy," and "impudent" children yell out, "O, see the blue bellies." Yet he also recalls lively political debates between captives and guards, musing that it may not have been prudent to argue with "men who were full of fire and armed to the teeth." Also related are the horrors of incarceration: inadequate water supplies, constant battle with vermin, obsession with the scarce rations. Jervey is professor of history at Radford University in Virginia.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Few chaplains were incarcerated during the Civil War and even fewer recorded their experiences. White, attached to the Fifth Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, was captured in May 1864 and remained a prisoner of war for five months. After his release he wrote a series of letters to Zion's Herald , a New England Methodist newspaper, in which he described in detail his capture and transportation to the infamous Andersonville and then to the officer's prison in Macon. The 18 letters published here discuss, besides prison conditions, the author's views on slavery, the war, the Confederacy, and theology. Significant portions of White's account have appeared previously in the Georgia Historical Quarterly and Civil War History , undermining the volume's value for specialists. The introduction, epilog, and index are very brief, weakening the importance of the letters. Only for libraries with extensive and specialized Civil War collections.
- Jason H. Silverman, Winthrop Coll., Rock Hill, S.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.