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Yet what would happen if either side learned of significant atrocities committed against its soldiers? Would the "limits of destruction" then be traversed? News of the shocking treatment of Union prisoners at the infamous Andersonville prison camp, where almost 13,000 eventually perished, created just such a situation. Calls for retaliation reverberated across the North, and especially in the halls of Congress. "Now sir," an Indiana Republican thundered, "if this is to be a war of extermination, let not the extermination be all upon one side." In the end, however, the retaliatory impulse failed to generate action. Opposition came, as might be expected, from northern Democrats and conservative Republicans who were eager to repair the divisions of Civil War- era America. More surprisingly, it came also from Radical Republicans such as Charles Sumner--not to mention from Lincoln himself, who, according to Neely, never really believed in retaliation. Only the superintendent of Andersonville, Henry Wirz, suffered punishment; he was hanged in November, 1865.
Retaliations and atrocities against soldiers in uniform did occur, but the targets were mostly African Americans who had enlisted in the Union Army. The Battle of Fort Pillow, in which scores of black soldiers who had surrendered to the Confederates were summarily executed, is only the most notorious of many examples. And although Neely does not give much attention to this, it supports his overarching conclusion that "racial belief" and "racial identity" were the most important factors in limiting the war's destructiveness. When white soldiers faced each other, they seemed to observe the rules of "civilized" war- making; when they faced the racial "other," whether black, Mexican, or Indian, no rules applied.
