The Galvanized Yankees was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1963. The book recovers one of the most peculiar episodes of the Civil War and its aftermath: the recruitment of Confederate prisoners of war into Union service.
By 1864, Union prison camps — particularly Rock Island, Illinois, and Point Lookout, Maryland — were overcrowded and deadly. Disease, starvation, and exposure killed prisoners at appalling rates. The Union Army, meanwhile, desperately needed soldiers for garrison duty on the Western frontier, where regular troops had been withdrawn for service in the East. The solution was cynically practical: offer Confederate prisoners the choice between probable death in prison or enlistment in Union service with the guarantee that they would never fight against the Confederacy — they would be sent west to guard the overland trails, fight Indians, and protect telegraph lines.
Approximately 6,000 men accepted. They were organized into six regiments of U.S. Volunteers and sent to posts across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain territories. Their fellow Union soldiers despised them as turncoats; their former Confederate comrades regarded them as traitors. The Native peoples they fought had no interest in the political complexities of their situation.
Brown tells their story with characteristic sympathy for people trapped by history. Many of the Galvanized Yankees served honorably, some deserted, a few distinguished themselves, and most disappeared from the historical record entirely after mustering out.
Collecting The Galvanized Yankees
First edition (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1963): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$80
- Very good/very good: $10–$30