The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners and the Collapse of the Confederacy

摘要

In September 1864, Confederate officials relocated Union prisoners of war from stockades in Georgia to open fields in South Carolina. They escaped by the thousands and fanned out in different directions. In this astute study, Lorien Foote argues that the "Yankee Plague" of escaped prisoners created panic in the South at the precise moment that it was facing setbacks on the battlefield, and that the fugitive soldiers played an underappreciated role in hastening the collapse of the Confederacy.