WAR OF VENGEANCE, Acts of Retaliation Against Civil War POWs by Lonnie R. Speer. The violent retaliation between both sides in the American Civil War was perhaps most apparent in the taking of prisoners. Often, these retaliatory measures were enacted against the innocent-prisoners who were unfortunate enough to be in wrong place at the wrong time. Each chapter of this book undertakes to describe a specific event of retaliatory action one side took against the other. Speer takes no sides as he points an accusing finger at both the Union and the Confederacy for their equal parts in treating the prisoners poorly and sometimes with just plain vengeance. Speer points out that this war was a vicious conflict that developed an intense hatred between the opposing sides, despite some historians' assertions that this was history's last great "gentleman's war," and that the conflict was anything but civil. There is ample evidence to suggest that both sides quite commonly retaliated against one another throughout the conflict, often in chillingly inhumane ways.
Speer explores this little-known wartime violence against the POWs, focusing on the most notorious and well-documented cases. (Stackpole Books, 2002, 190 pp., Notes, Bibliog., Index, Illus.) HB: $20 postpaid
