During the Civil War tens of thousands of soldiers died in prisons. In Andersonville Prison Pen alone over 11,000 soldiers of the 33,000 died of starvation, exposure and consumption or other disease.
Warren Lee Goss, a member of the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment of Heavy Artillery during the war. In "The Soldier's Story" Goss writes of his captivity at Andersonville and Belle Isle prisons. Goss was a prisoner twice, once in 1862 for four months and in 1864 for nine months. His experience in these prisons was of a kind that few endure and live to write about. Although he attempts to relate the tale of horrors experienced in these prisons without exaggeration, he realizes that it is hard to comprehend that men can live through some of the cruelties of which he writes, to understand man's inhumanity to man.
The Appendix contains the names of the Union soldiers who died at Andersonville with the number of their graves, their rank, the companies and regiments to which they belonged, the dates of their decease, and the diseases of which they died. The numerous accurate illustrations of prison life were taken from actual Rebel photographs.