Portals to Hell

Despite holding over 400,000 soldiers and causing 56,000 deaths, the Civil War's military prisons—a vital political and military enterprise—have been largely forgotten. Lonnie R. Speer's *Portals to Hell* is the first comprehensive study to resurrect these untold stories. Drawing on scores of previously unpublished firsthand accounts, Speer provides an impartial, detailed chronicle of all major Union and Confederate prisons, revealing the prisoners' "hell on earth" experiences and analyzing the complex relationships among captives, guards, and leadership.

Archival Categorization Notes

This literature has been indexed under the primary pillar of American Civil War. It was manually vetted for the Read For Truth database because it provides educational insights into Beyond the Combat, assisting researchers in locating established secondary research within this specific taxonomy.