A college graduate at 16 and a founder of the Sigma Chi fraternity, Caldwell entered the Confederate Army as an artillery lieutenant. He fought at Shiloh, Port Hudson and other campaigns before being captured in 1863 and imprisoned on Johnson's Island, in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio. He kept a daily diary for 18 months, describing the prison food and conditions, as well as his classical and intellectual interests. The book features letters, a poem, notes, and an index.

Johnson's Island, in Sandusky, Ohio, was not the largest Civil War prison in the North, but it was the only one to house Confederate officers almost exclusively. As a result, a distinctive prison culture developed, in part because of the educational background and access to money enjoyed by these prisoners. David Bush has spent more than two decades leading archaeological investigations at the prison site. In I Fear I Shall Never Leave This Island he pairs the expertise gained there with a deep reading of extant letters between one officer and his wife in Alexandria, Virginia, providing unique insights into the trials and tribulations of captivity as actually experienced by the men imprisoned at Johnson's Island. Together, these letters and the material culture unearthed at the site capture in compelling detail the physical challenges and emotional toll of prison life for POWs and their families. They also offer fascinating insights into the daily lives of the prisoners by revealing the very active manufacture of POW craft jewelry, especially rings. No other collection of Civil War letters offers such a rich context; no other archaeological investigation of Civil War prisons provides such a human story.

"Decidedly the best location": establishing the prison -- "A prison for officers alone": early days of operation -- "Everything in prison is elated": the road to exchange -- "It requires only proper energy and judgment": the second wave of prisoners -- "This horrid life of inactivity": the battle with boredom -- "A matter of necessity": prison economics -- "A guard for unarmed men": guards and commanders -- "Almost a fixed impossibility": escapes and attempts -- "The wrath of hunger": rations and Union retaliation -- "A pitiful scene": climate and health -- "Sad and glad at the same time": the road to release

I WAS captured at Gettysburg on the fifth day of July, 1863. A bullet had passed through my right knee during the fierce engagement on Culp's Hill, July 3rd, and I fell into the hands of the Federal Army. By the 6th of July Lee had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and, despite the serious nature of my wound, I was removed to the general hospital, Frederick City, Md. Here for, at least a month, I was under the charge of the regular army surgeons, at whose hands I received excellent and skillful treatment. For this I have ever been grateful. I recall, also, many kindnesses shown me by a number of Catholic Sisters of Frederick, whose special duty was the care of the sick and the wounded.

This is the most thorough study of Civil War POW camps, in which some 56,000 died. There are no villains here, though plenty of the inept, the shortsighted, the feebleminded, the sadistic. There is a chain of misperceptions leading to disaster, beginning with early expectations of few POWs and ending with both sides swamped with them and reduced to holding them in notorious pens like Andersonville in the south and Elmira in the north. Speer provides a history of each camp, however long it was in use; portraits of key figures and units; frequently grisly statistics and descriptions of camp life and conditions that are even grislier; and notes on the present condition of major campsites. No story for the weak-stomached, this is a telling indictment of how negligence led to mass death.