The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

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[176] of the whites, since they were ‘distributed among the citizens or employed upon Government works. Under these circumstances they receive enough to eat and are worked no harder than accustomed to.’

Stories of placing prisoners under the fire of their own batteries occasionally occur. On the evidence of two deserters that certain captured negroes had been ordered to work on fortifications under fire, General Butler put a number of Confederate prisoners to work upon the Dutch Gap canal. On the denial of General Lee that it was intended to place prisoners under fire, and the statement of his position in regard to negro soldiers, General Grant ordered the squad withdrawn. During the bombardment of Charleston, Federal prisoners were confined there under fire, though the city was still inhabited. In retaliation, six hundred Confederate officers were sent from Fort Delaware to Morris Island, and there confined in a stockade in front of the Federal lines, where the projectiles from the Confederate artillery passed over them. Little or no damage was done. There are hundreds of other threats to be found in the correspondence contained in the ‘Official Records.’ Prisoners were often designated as hostages for the safety of particular persons, but the extreme penalty was visited on few. Many of the threats on both sides were not intended to be executed.

The most prominent figures at Andersonville, and hence in the prison history of the Confederacy, were General John H. Winder and Captain Henry Wirz. The former officer, who was a son of General William H. Winder of the War of 1812, had been graduated at West Point in 1820, and with the exception of four years, had served continuously in the army of the United States, being twice brevetted for gallantry during the Mexican War. As a resident of Maryland he had much to lose and little to gain in following the cause of the South, but, it is alleged, through the personal friendship of President Davis, was promoted early in the war to the rank