While in the Hands of the Enemy

During the Civil War, nearly 56,000 of the over 400,000 Union and Confederate prisoners of war died from horrific conditions. While historians typically attribute this to uncontrollable factors, Charles W. Sanders, Jr., offers a groundbreaking, revisionist interpretation. In *While in the Hands of the Enemy*, Sanders meticulously demonstrates that leaders on both sides, including Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, deliberately ordered and systematically implemented policies designed for prisoner mistreatment. Drawing on official and personal correspondence, he reveals how evolving retaliatory practices, rooted in earlier American conflicts, transformed captives into expendable pawns. Examining major camps like Andersonville and Elmira, Sanders challenges our understanding of 19th-century warfare, proving administrations knowingly inflicted suffering and constructed justifications even as the war concluded.

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.