A Captive of War: Hospital Steward 17th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry

Rich with insight, Hospital Steward Solon Hyde’s rare account goes far beyond most histories of the Civil War. The conversations he records match his vivid descriptions of his fighting in the Civil War, and subsequent capture and imprisonment by the Confederacy. Hyde, of the 17th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, fought at Chickamauga, where Nathan Bedford Forrest’s famous cavalry picked him up.
He spent the next seventeen months in Libby, Pemberton, Danville, and ultimately Andersonville prisons. Assigned to the dispensary, Hyde was well placed to see both what was happening around him in the prisons and in the larger Southern society. Going beyond the medical care, death, and funerals that were his daily routine, Hyde shows us the almost modern nature of life inside Andersonville. As prisoners, named the “raiders,” began to prey on their fellow soldiers, an inmate police force sprang up and dealt with them by forceful means including executions where necessary.
As a pharmacist (a profession he was to pursue after his liberation), Hyde met the local civilians both inside and outside Andersonville. Those chance encounters and Hyde’s innate curiosity led to his probing questions and deep discussions with those he met. Thus, A Captive of War is not only a major contribution to American prisoner of war literature, but also is a landmark contribution to our knowledge of what everyday Southerners were doing and thinking as the war came ever closer to their homes.