ALGENEVA-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: Prison Hostages
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 12:02:57 EDT

Throughout the war, the Union and Confederacy occasionally held prisoners of
war as hostages sentenced to death in retaliation for some action taken by
the other side. At the beginning of the war, the Confederate privateers
Jefferson Davis and Savannah were captured, and the United States sentenced
the officers and crew to be executed for piracy, even though international
law considered privateering legal during time of war. The Confederacy
retaliated by selecting the same number of Union prisoners, officers of the
highest rank, from Castle Pinckney prison in Charleston Harbor, and placed
them in close confinement, sentenced to death.

When two Rebel officers in Kentucky were executed by federal forces for
spying, the Confederate government chose two Union officers from Libby Prison
and sentenced them to the same fate. The United States promptly notified
Richmond that it held Confederate General Robert E. Lee's son, General
W.H.F."Rooney" Lee, prisoner and would hang him if the sentence against the
Libby prisoners was carried out.

Union forces at Charleston Harbor had bombed the civilian population of
Charleston, the Rebel commander notified his Yankee counterpart that 50 Union
prisoners had been taken from their cells and placed in a part of the city
that frequently received the federal fire. The United States retaliated by
selecting 50 high-ranking Confederate prisoners and placing them in exposed
positions on the gunboats at Charleston, where they could be hit by fire from
the Rebel Batteries.

These example of hostage taking ended with an exchange of prisoners, but not
all hostages were so fortunate. When General Ulysses S. Grant ordered the
Colonel John S. Mosby's partisans be hanged when captured, seven were
executed. In turn, Mosby had his Union prisoners select seven from among
their ranks and had them executed.

Margie

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