| Large concentrations of
troops, hand to hand combat, and the confusion of battle resulted in many soldiers on both
sides being captured. The average soldier showed little animosity toward his adversary.
The 20th's spy and scout C. L. Ruggles once recognized a
Confederate prisoner he had known before the war. After exchanging pleasantries, the
prisoner inquired about the Union's chances of bringing the states back together. "Do
you expect to pin the states together again with bayonets?" he asked. Ruggles
replied, "I don't know whether we shall pin the states together again or not; but
I do know one thing, we'll have the soil back again, whether we have the people or
not." Prisoner of war camps were plentiful in the north and south. Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and Andersonville, located in southwestern Georgia, were the most well-known Confederate prisons. Johnson's Island on Lake Erie, Camp Chase, just west of what is now downtown Columbus, and the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus were where many rebels were taken. Union and Confederate prisons alike were notorious for their miserable, unsanitary conditions. The captured soldiers hoped to be part of routine prisoner exchanges, which were common until General Grant ordered a halt to them in late 1864. In a speech to the Neal Post of the GAR as reported in the "Sidney Journal" on November 13, 1896, Sidney's Dr. W. H. Shaw told how he was knocked unconscious by the concussion from a bursting shell at Stones River, captured, and taken to Libby Prison for four months. He responded to the name of a dead comrade at a prisoner exchange roll call, and was released. With no money and no papers (traveling at night to avoid arrest), he walked north, eventually arriving at Crestline, Ohio. A former Sidney resident recognized him, fed him, and put him on a train for his home town. |
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