Andersonville - Paperback

by John McElroy (Author)

With over 130 illustrations, this is the complete 4 Volumes of Andersonville: A Story Of Rebel Military Prisons. The story is based upon John McElroy's lengthy confinement in the Confederate Andersonville prison camp during the American Civil War: "I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied. I am prepared for this. In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the Slavery agitation-in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred directed against all those who stood by the Nation. I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told of them. I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and calumny. But I solemnly affirm in advance the entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and description. I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration in any particular, that in no instance has the half of the truth been told, nor could it be, save by an inspired pen."

Author Biography

McElroy was born to Robert and Mary Henderson McElroy in Greenup County, Kentucky. When his father died, he traveled to St. Louis to become an apprentice in the printing business. As a sixteen-year-old in 1863, McElroy enlisted in the Union Army as a private in Company L of the 16th Illinois Cavalry regiment, having earlier served with local Union troops in operations near St. Louis. In January 1864, he was among dozens of men captured in a skirmish near Jonesville, Virginia, by Confederate cavalrymen under William E. Jones. According to his book, Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, McElroy was first sent to Richmond, then to Andersonville in February, 1864. In October, 1864 he was moved to Savannah and within about six weeks was sent to the new prison in Millen, GA (Camp Lawton); thence to several other camps before the war ended. After the war ended, McElroy was released from captivity and transported back to the North. He settled in Chicago and resumed the printer's trade. He became a local reporter and newspaperman before moving to Toledo, Ohio, to become an editor of the Toledo Blade. He married Elsie Pomeroy of Ottawa, Ohio, and raised a family. In 1879, he wrote Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, a non-fiction work based on his experiences during his fifteen-month incarceration. It quickly became a bestseller and remained popular for the next twenty years. In 1884, he moved from Toledo to Washington, D.C. to take over as editor and co-owner of the National Tribune. He was active in the local Grand Army of the Republic, serving as commander of the Department of the Potomac in 1896. In 1908, McElroy wrote The Economic Functions of Vice. The following year, he published Struggle for Missouri, a history of the bitter division over slavery that split the state's loyalties and led to armed conflict within its borders. In 1910, he wrote a Civil War novel entitled Si Klegg: His Transformation from a Raw Recruit to a Veteran.