Life and Death in Civil War Prisons: The Parallel Torments of Corporal John Wesly Minnich, C.S.A. and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss, U.S.A.

The gruesome reality of Civil War prison life is found in the personal stories of those who suffered it. Two such victims were Corporal John Wesley Minnich -- a Southern teenager from Louisiana -- and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss of Massachusetts. Here, these two common soldiers become uncommon symbols of the largely untold under-life of the American Civil War.