"Out of the Mouth of Hell"

Many Civil War prisoners, Confederate and Federal, came to feel that a quick death from a bullet would have been better than slowly starving in a cold, crowded, filthy prison. The hope of freedom was sometimes the only thing that kept a prisoner alive and he tried every way possible to escape. Here are histories of 27 of the most significant locations used to hold soldiers captured on the battlefield as well as political prisoners suspected of disloyalty. They focus especially on the desperate a