U.S. Civil War - Confederate Soldiers - Military Biography, Confederate States of America - General & Miscellaneous, Virginia - State & Local History, Confederate States of America - Armed Forces, U.S. Civil War - Union Soldiers - Military Biography, Conf
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Overview
Before Andersonville, there was Belle Isle.Stories about the horrors of the Confederate Civil War prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia are legion. Often overlooked are the earlier sufferings - and deaths - of thousands of Northern captives imprisoned on Belle Isle in Richmond, Virginia. Now from Faded Banner Publications comes Hell on Belle Isle: Diary of a Civil War POW. A compelling human drama of the Civil War, Hell on Belle Isle is based on the journal kept by Sgt. Jacob Osborn Coburn of the 6th Michigan Cavalry, a unit in the famed Michigan Cavalry Brigade of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Much of Coburn's time as a captive was spent in Richmond's Belle Isle prison camp. Although not so well known as the infamous Andersonville, Belle Isle rivaled Andersonville in terms of the squalid conditions of neglect and starvation endured by its prisoners. Hell on Belle Isle features editing and illuminating narration by award-winning journalist Don Allison, supplemented by letters Coburn wrote before his capture detailing life and battles with the 6th Michigan Cavalry.
This softcover 192-page book contains maps and illustrations, notes and bibliography, appendix, index, and biographical listings.
Editorials
Darlene Prince
"Allison's book, 'Hell on Belle Isle', grimly records the capture, imprisonment and slow descent into hell that Coburn and thousands of other captured Union soldiers endured at the Belle Isle prison camp...Allison's narrative takes the reader from Coburn's rather ordinary start in life through his battles in the Civil War to his final fate at Belle Isle. In between, the soul of a brave and courageous man who only wanted to serve his country and return home to his fiancee is forever illuminated." -Defiance, Ohio, Crescent-News, October 2, 1997Lawrence Lee Hewitt
" Based on the journal of Sergeant Jacob Osborn Coburn, a member of the 6th Michigan Cavalry who was captured at Charles Town, Virginia, Oct. 18, 1863, this firsthand account of the horrors of prison life was sent to his parents by a Union hospital steward after Coburn's death in a prison hospital in Richmond on March 8, 1864; a rare and valuable source for those interested in prison life." - North & South, The Magazine of Civil War Conflict, November 1998Linda Freed
"`Hell on Belle Isle' tells the story of the life and suffering of a soldier, whose heart Don came to know -- but whose face he had never seen. In all of his searching, Don was never able to find a picture of Sgt. Coburn. "One weekend, Don and his wife, Diane, were traveling through Southern Michigan visiting antique shops. They were nearly back home in Ohio when they noticed a small antique shop along the road. "Was it divine intervention that made them pull into the parking lot even though they had said they were too tired to stop and anxious to get home? "Was it just luck, that as they prepared to leave the shop after a brief visit, Don's eyes made contact with eyes of a Civil War soldier's picture that turned out to be Osborn Coburn?"He knew it was time to finish the book." -Bryan, Ohio, Times, September 13, 1997
Book Details
Published
September 1, 1997
Publisher
Bryan, Ohio : Faded Banner Publications, c1997.
Pages
192
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780965920100