Abstract
New York Tribune correspondent Albert Deane Richardson followed his December 1864 escape from a Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina, with a campaign to relieve the suffering Civil War POWs he left behind. Through testimony to Congress, articles in newspapers and magazines, and lectures on the lyceum circuit, Richardson marshaled public outrage to pressure the U.S. government to resume prisoner exchanges or use the threat of retaliation to force the Confederates to treat their prisoners humanely. Richardson's letters reveal he carefully coordinated his testimony and publication of evidence about abuses at Salisbury. Analysis of his public communication reveals he tapped the power of a storytelling genre whose history stretched from the Civil War back to the nations origins: the captivity narrative.
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