Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864 by Stephen Hoy and William Smith

Abstract

Reviewed by: Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864 by Stephen Hoy and William Smith Evan A. Kutzler Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864. Stephen Hoy and William Smith. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-8814-6691-1. 234 pp., cloth, $35.00. Before reading further, one may wish to search Google Maps for "Seventh Street, Macon, Georgia," and find the point where that street intersects with multiple [End Page 310] railroad tracks. The rail crossing marks one point on the western perimeter of Camp Oglethorpe, a fifteen-acre prison and the subject of Stephen Hoy and William Smith's Camp Oglethorpe: Macon's Unknown Civil War Prisoner of War Camp, 1862–1864. In contrast to Andersonville, about sixty miles away, this prison contains no marked cemetery, no memorials, and no signs. "Overshadowed by the horrors of nearby Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia," Hoy and Smith write, "the history of Camp Oglethorpe has all but vanished from memory" (1). The industrial ruins on top of the Civil War ruins of Camp Oglethorpe are a reminder of the challenge—and the importance—of recovering the history of this place. The first challenge in writing about an individual Civil War prison is balancing a tight focus with sufficient historical context. Hoy and Smith demonstrate that Camp Oglethorpe covered multiple uses in the 1840s and '50s—from militia training ground to the space for agricultural exhibitions, picnics, and religious revivals (6, 9–12). When Georgia seceded from the United States in 1861, the site became a training camp for Confederate recruits. The rapid increase of Union and Confederate prisoners in early 1862 necessitated the repurposing of Camp Oglethorpe into a military prison (22). In some ways, Camp Oglethorpe's developmental history followed a course more similar to Northern prisons, like Camp Chase, than other Southern ones, like Andersonville. Many Civil War prisons, including Camp Oglethorpe, had disjointed histories. Camp Oglethorpe contained a large number of Union prisoners for only part of 1862 and 1864; it had no significant use as a military prison in 1861, 1863, or 1865. As the authors trace, the Emancipation Proclamation, changing prison policies, and military changes affected the use of the site. The first prisoners arrived in the aftermath of Shiloh. That spring and summer, the population at Camp Oglethorpe grew and prisoners faced a slew of problems that defined other places as well: military officials whose discipline bordered on cruelty, unpalatable food, and—as the weeks and months went on—the growing threat of so-called camp diseases (25, 31). As suffering increased, so too did the number of successful and unsuccessful escape attempts, which often involved enslaved people who provisioned and sheltered fugitive Union prisoners (34, 39). By late summer, with the "Dix-Hill" prison exchange system in place, Camp Oglethorpe began to empty (39–40). Camp Oglethorpe did not become a prison again until May 1864, when the breakdown of the prisoner exchange resulted in captive populations that exceeded early war numbers. Chapter 5, "Fresh Fish," is the second and last chapter to discuss Camp Oglethorpe as a prison; however, it is the heart of the book's contribution to site's history. While the authors tend to avoid direct comparisons, they suggest something important here. The experiences of Union prisoners were worse at camp Oglethorpe in 1864 than 1862. Still, Camp Oglethorpe—even in 1864—never [End Page 311] approximated Andersonville. As with their telling of the 1862 history, Hoy and Smith focus on prisoner resistance, especially escape attempts. Unlike Andersonville, where the US Army let the stockade rot in place, Camp Oglethorpe was neither confiscated by the US government nor long remembered at the local or national level. Hoy and Smith interpret this act of forgetting as an active decision. While Camp Oglethorpe had been the site of celebration in the 1840s and 1850s, the prison years were too difficult to remember. "The discomfort of Camp Oglethorpe's association with Andersonville," Hoy and Smith write, "prompted the city to treat the property as if haunted, as if tainted with memories that were unmentionable" (146). When railroad expansion...