To The Letter S2 E5: Prisoner of War

To The Letter

In today’s episode we discuss the capture of the 19th Michigan Infantry by Confederate troops near Brentwood, Tennessee and how prisoners of war were treated during the Civil War.

To the Letter is a podcast brought to you in collaboration with University Libraries and the eLearning and Emerging Technologies Department’s Digital Studio at GVSU. On this podcast, we bring correspondence from GVSU’s Special Collections alive. In each episode you will hear (in their own words!) letters written by the people who lived through history and the stories behind them. John Bennitt is voiced by Matt Ruen, Scholarly Communications Outreach Coordinator at University Libraries.

Letters featured in Episode 5 are available in full below:

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Letter from John Bennitt to his wife Lottie, March 28, 1863

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Letter from John Bennitt to his wife Lottie, April 26, 1863

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Additional research for this episode:

• Civil War Fact: The Prison Camps Were Total Hell
• Andersonville Prison
• History of the Andersonville Prison
• Union Civil War Prison Camp an All-but-Forgotten Relic of Brutality
• Civil War Prison Camps
• Inside Andersonville Prison, The Civil War’s Most Brutal POW Camp
• ‘We did this to ourselves’: Death and despair at Civil War prisons

Questions? Comments? Let us know!