This is John Batchel. Speaking with the author Fitzhue Brundage, his new book,

Fate Worse Than Hell, about the prisoner of war camps in the Civil War, Andersonville,

the infamous, the notorious Andersonville. There are photographs, 16 photographs, and the professor

reproduces them in his book, and here describes how we know very little about why those

photographs were taken and why they're so important.

Fitzhue Brundage, much more of this tonight.

No, those photographs and the riddle is an enigma in the sense that have no idea why he took those pictures.

And we, as a historian, I think as a nation, his intent was not to, I should say we don't know his intent.

I have to assume because he was employed by the Confederacy,

his intent was to capture this unprecedented prison, not so much to arouse controversy. But in any case,

those photographs did not circulate until immediately after the war.

And they did become known in 1865.

And thereafter, they circulated quite widely.

And they became, the photographs themselves probably weren't seen that widely, but as often happened in that era, as you mentioned, photography was still, so we say, a luxury.

Many artists then use those photographs to inspire etchings.

And the etchings were widely published in newspapers and journals and magazines of the day.

So the images that he created have ended up becoming, they are the iconic images of Andersonville.

And put it this way, other than the drawings made by prisoners themselves that were preserved,

the only way we know what Andersonville looked like is thanks to 16 photographs that Andrew Riddle took in August of 1864.