Of the approximately two hundred thousand Black men who enlisted in the United States armed forces during the American Civil War, more than two thousand fell into the hands of Confederates as prisoners of war. Once captured, Black POWs faced violence, hunger, and forced labor at the hands of their captors. Many POWs were trafficked into the South’s internal slave trade as Confederate military and political officials sought to sustain the region’s faltering economy. But as Caroline Wood Newhall demonstrates in this compelling and innovative history, a remarkably high number of these captured troops survived. Creating hidden networks to meet their most urgent physical needs and to sustain their hopes of freedom, these brave soldiers outlasted the Confederacy to become free men once more.

Drawing together Union pension records, personal narratives, and other fragmentary sources, Newhall’s painstaking research brings this history of resilience and survival vividly to life. Though the Confederacy refused to accept the legitimacy and even the basic humanity of Black soldiers, Newhall shows how collective action allowed these men to endure imprisonment and demand rights and recognition from the federal government after the war’s end.