Roger Pickenpaugh – författare

Contemporary reports from prisoners and witnesses humanize the grim realities of the POW camps. Perhaps no topic is more heated, and the sources more tendentious, than that of Civil War prisons and the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Partisans of each side, then and now, have vilified the other for maltreatment of their POWs, while seeking to excuse their own distressing record of prisoner of war camp mismanagement, brutality, and incompetence. It is only recently that historians have turned their attention to this contentious topic in an attempt to sort the wheat of truth from the chaff of partisan rancor. Roger Pickenpaugh has previously studied a Union prison camp in careful detail (Camp Chase) and now turns his attention to the Union record in its entirety, to investigate variations between camps and overall prison policy and to determine as nearly as possible what actually happened in the admittedly over-crowded, under-supplied, and poorly-administered camps. He also attempts to determine what conditions resulted from conscious government policy or were the product of local officials and situations.

Discusses an important yet often misunderstood topic in American History.Camp Chase, located four miles west of Columbus, Ohio, started, as did so many other prisons, as a training camp for eager Union recruits. By late 1861 it was also housing Confederate prisoners. It was also used as quarters for Union soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Confederacy and released on parole or exchanged. During the four years of the war, Camp Chase developed as a prison camp, reflecting the efforts of both civilian and military officials to fashion a coherent prison policy.Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy is a careful, thorough, and objective examination of the history and administration of the camp and is of true significance in the literature on the Civil War.

Captives in Blue, a study of Union prisoners in Confederate prisons, is a companion to Roger Pickenpaugh's earlier groundbreaking book Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union, rounding out his examination of Civil War prisoner of war facilities.In June of 1861, only a few weeks after the first shots at Fort Sumter ignited the Civil War, Union prisoners of war began to arrive in Southern prisons. One hundred and fifty years later Civil War prisons and the way prisoners of war were treated remain contentious topics. Partisans of each side continue to vilify the other for POW maltreatment. Roger Pickenpaugh's two studies of Civil War prisoners of war facilities complement one another and offer a thoughtful exploration of issues that captives taken from both sides of the Civil War faced.In Captives in Blue, Pickenpaugh tackles issues such as the ways the Confederate Army contended with the growing prison population, the variations in the policies and practices in the different Confederate prison camps, the effects these policies and practices had on Union prisoners, and the logistics of prisoner exchanges. Digging further into prison policy and practices, Pickenpaugh explores conditions that arose from conscious government policy decisions and conditions that were the product of local officials or unique local situations. One issue unique to Captives in Blue is the way Confederate prisons and policies dealt with African American Union soldiers. Black soldiers held captive in Confederate prisons faced uncertain fates; many former slaves were returned to their former owners, while others were tortured in the camps. Drawing on prisoner diaries, Pickenpaugh provides compelling first-person accounts of life in prison camps often overlooked by scholars in the field.

“This is a vivid description of conditions and events rarely described: the imprisonment of captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Its many parallels to circumstances in Andersonville are especially intriguing.” —Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United StatesCaptives in Gray is Civil War prison camp authority Roger Pickenpaugh’s acclaimed and definitive account of the Union’s POW camps. Combining his own extensive research into official records and a rich variety of letters and diaries with the best contemporary scholarship, Pickenpaugh covers every major northern camp. Because the Union won few victories in 1861 and took few prisoners, the North had time to plan and build prison camps, an opportunity it largely squandered. Pickenpaugh gives illuminating accounts of the role and leadership of thrifty Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman, the commissary general of prisoners for most of the conflict, and President Abraham Lincoln's secretaries of war, the incompetent Simon Cameron and the malignant Edwin M. Stanton. Death came in many ways. Soldiers from the Deep South had no experience with extreme cold, and they died by the hundreds each winter. In one memorable freeze, Rock Island, Illinois, saw temperatures between twenty-eight and thirty-one degrees below zero. With insufficient fuel and inadequate shelter, clothing, and blankets, prisoners there and in other camps froze to death. Food rations varied widely. A few Confederates enjoyed better rations than they had in the CSA armies, but the majority supplemented their meager rations by eating rats, dogs, cats, and seagulls. Poor medical care added to the death toll. Treatment was bad even by the standards of Civil War medicine, often due to Hoffman's reluctance to spend. Prisoners suffered from lice and scurvy, as well as pneumonia, measles, and a variety of fevers. As in both armies, diarrhea and dysentery were chronic. Smallpox epidemics killed many. Poor sanitation and drainage caused 385 deaths at Elmira, New York, in September 1864 alone. During the war, over 12 percent of rebel prisoners, or 25,976 of the 214,865, died in captivity. Together with his Captives in Blue, Captives in Gray gives the fullest account of the experiences of prisoners of war in the American Civil War.

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley held a public reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. In the receiving line, holding a gun concealed by a handkerchief, was Leon Czolgosz, a young man with anarchist leanings. When he reached McKinley, Czolgosz fired two shots, one of which would prove fatal.The backdrop of the assassination was among the largest of many world's fairs held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Exposition celebrated American progress, highlighting the new technology electricity. Over 100,000 light bulbs outlined the Exposition's building--on display inside were the latest inventions utilizing the new power source.This new treatment of the McKinley assassination is the first to focus on the compelling story of the Exposition: its labor and construction challenges; the garish Midway; the fight for inclusion of an accurate African-American display to offset racist elements of the Midway; and the impressive exhibit halls.

Prior to 1960, presidential nominees were largely selected in the infamous "smoke filled rooms" of state party conventions. In 1960 two serious contenders for the Democratic nomination, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy, realized their weaknesses with party bosses would make this path nearly impossible. For Kennedy his youth, his Catholic faith, and his aloofness toward party leaders would undermine his campaign. For Humphrey his strong positions on civil rights would cost him support in the vital SouthThis work focuses on the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries, the only two in which both candidates competed. Original manuscript sources illuminate the differences between Kennedy's well financed, well organized campaign and Humphrey's more amateurish effort. These sources, along with a wealth of newspaper sources, also offer fascinating anecdotes of life on the campaign trail.

In 1861, Lt. Col. William Hoffman was appointed to the post of commissary general of prisoners and urged to find a suitable site for the construction of what was expected to be the Union’s sole military prison. After inspecting four islands in Lake Erie, Hoffman came upon one in Sandusky Bay known as Johnson’s Island. With a large amount of fallen timber, forty acres of cleared land, and its proximity to Sandusky, Ohio, Johnson’s Island seemed the ideal location for the Union’s purpose. By the following spring, Johnson’s Island prison was born. Johnson’s Island tells the story of the camp from its planning stages until the end of the war. Because the facility housed only officers, several literate diary keepers were on hand; author Roger Pickenpaugh draws on their accounts, along with prison records, to provide a fascinating depiction of day-to-day life. Hunger, boredom, harsh conditions, and few luxuries were all the prisoners knew until the end of the war, when at last parts of Johnson’s Island were auctioned off, the post was ordered abandoned, and the island was mustered out of service.There has not been a book dedicated to Johnson’s Island since 1965. Roger Pickenpaugh presents an eloquent and knowledgeable overview of a prison that played a tremendous role in the lives of countless soldiers. It is a book sure to interest Civil War buffs and scholars alike.