CAPTURED FREEDOM

A Civil War–era photograph reveals a sprawling true story of suffering and survival in Procko’s nonfiction work.

In January 1865, Knoxville, Tennessee–based photographer Theodore M. Schleier captured an image of 12 men: nine Union officers who’d escaped Confederate prisoner-of-war camps and three Unionist civilian guides who’d risked their lives to aid the officers in their flight to freedom. The officers, who’d been taken captive over the previous year and a half, had been shuffled between several POW camps in Virginia and Georgia, including Richmond’s notorious Libby Prison, where they’d contended with insufficient rations and the proliferation of diseases such as dysentery and typhoid. Multiple escape attempts, including the excavation of a tunnel beneath Libby Prison, resulted in recapture and severe punishment. In October 1864, the officers were sent to Camp Sorghum, a hastily prepared three-acre camp in Columbia, South Carolina. Taking advantage of the inexperienced state militia guard, dozens of officers escaped, starting the next month, traveling northwest through swamps along the Saluda River. They were hidden and fed by others along the way (“The charity of the enslaved people forever changed each escapee so desperate to get home”), and they managed to evaded pursuit, finally reaching the mountains of western North Carolina, where Unionist sympathizers guided them over the state line to safety.Filmmaker and photographer Procko’s exhaustive research includes biographical sketches of the officers’ lives and service prior to, and after, their imprisonment as well as quotes from their own accounts. Although the author refers to the book as a work of narrative nonfiction in the introduction, imaginative descriptions are sparingly used, and they effectively enhance a small number of pivotal moments: “He was witnessing a near total lunar eclipse—an ominous sign at the start of a long and eventful twenty-seven hours that he would remember for the rest of his life.” The majority of the work, though, is a straightforward factual relation of the men’s harrowing experiences and of the toll on their physical and mental well-being—and it’s compelling enough to require no embellishment.

A thoroughly engaging account of trauma and resilience during the Civil War.