S8 Ep683: 9. Fitzhugh Brundage recounts the capture of black Union sailors and the subsequent halt of Civil War prisoner exchanges. He explains how the Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war’s legal status and the humanitarian treatment.,, (9)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
9. Fitzhugh Brundage recounts the capture of black Union sailors and the subsequent halt of Civil War prisoner exchanges. He explains how the Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war’s legal status and the humanitarian treatment.,, (9)
1862 Cedar Mountain
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor. I welcome the author and professor Fitzbrundage, W. Fitzhue His new book, A Fate World |
| 0:25.0 | His New Book, A Fate World I welcome the author and professor Fitzbrundage, W. Fitzhue Brundage, his new book, |
| 0:24.5 | A Fate W. Fours than Hell, American Prisoners of the Civil War. This is a story that is at the |
| 0:30.9 | edges of all Civil War stories that Fitz has done us the favor of directly addressing it what about the POWs on both sides what |
| 0:40.3 | about the infamous liby prison in richmond what about the infamous andersonville in georgia |
| 0:46.4 | professor a very good evening to you thank you for this it did not occur to me what i didn't know |
| 0:53.0 | about the civil war and the fate of those battlefields. |
| 0:56.2 | You're looking at what comes to me now many years later as a way of learning about the proper way of treating POWs in warfare, |
| 1:07.1 | not just in the United States for the Civil War, but afterwards the decisions made in |
| 1:12.5 | Europe and eventually made in the 20th and now 21st century about the proper conduct of our |
| 1:18.8 | militaries when dealing with the captured enemy. However, we begin in your story with the |
| 1:26.2 | defeat of a union gunboat named the Isaac Smith and the capture |
| 1:31.8 | of three sailors on that gunboat, Brown, Johnson, and Wilson. What about their fate illustrates |
| 1:39.6 | this particular detail about the Civil War and enslaved peoples. Good evening to you. |
| 1:47.7 | Thank you very much for having me. And thank you also for starting with, in many ways, the fulcrum |
| 1:55.5 | of the story. When the Isaac Smith was captured in South Carolina, it created a predicament for both, of course, the prisoners who were captured, but also for the Confederacy. |
| 2:11.9 | Because on board the Isaac Smith, in addition to white officers and white sailors, were three black sailors. |
| 2:22.8 | The Union Navy had been recruiting black sailors earlier than any other part of the Union military. |
| 2:31.8 | And the three men, the three black men captured on the Isaac Smith were |
| 2:37.5 | among the earliest black captives of the Confederacy. And the Confederacy had adopted |
| 2:46.4 | the principle that black men in uniform were presumably, were presumed to have been enslaved |
| 2:55.5 | previously since the eyes of the Confederacy, the natural order was for black people to be |
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