Robert Crickenberger’s Point Lookout, Maryland: The Largest Civil War Prison is perhaps the most detailed work on a single Civil War prison site ever written. A student of the site since 1978, Crickenberger compiles decades of academic and public history experience into one comprehensive volume.
Building on established knowledge of Point Lookout (officially called Camp Hoffman), the book covers everything from prison administration to the day-to-day tedium of prison life. Point Lookout is organized chronologically, from the prison’s inception to its dismantling. Seemingly no topic is left unaddressed: prisoner mail, the gathering of firewood, how prisoners arrived, who guarded the prison, the role of civilians and locals, and much more. Crickenberger also discusses how food was prepared onsite, how it was rationed and treated like currency, and the prisoners’ relationship to nourishment and nutrition.
Crickenberger relies on the prison’s extensive archival record and the thousands of personal diaries and letters left behind by former prisoners. Artwork, navigational charts, and quantified tables are sprinkled throughout to round out the tale of life under Union imprisonment.
The experiences of minority groups at the prison, such as formerly enslaved and free African Americans and the United States Colored Troops, are prominently featured. It often becomes a habit to relegate discussion on diverse perspectives to one chapter or section of a work, rather than reaffirm their realities throughout the text. In this book, however, this tendency is thankfully avoided.
What is refreshing in a narrative on a facility as large and complex as Camp Hoffman is the consistent honesty about its conditions. Crickenberger shows that there were times of joy, horror, and sheer boredom at Point Lookout. Avid readers of daring escapes and prison dramas, however, will be happy to know there is an entire section dedicated to the dangerous side of the facility.
In sum, Crickenberger relates the true story of Point Lookout: one that does not glorify or exaggerate. This is a necessary and welcome addition to the literature on wartime imprisonment and prison culture.
Madeline Feierstein is the founder of the educational & historical consulting company Rooted in Place, LLC. Her first book, Occupied Alexandria: How the Civil War Transformed a Southern City, will be published by Arcadia this fall.
