A Hard Looking Set of Men and Boys: the North meets the Fort Donelson prisoners

When General Simon B. Buckner unconditionally surrendered the Fort Donelson garrison to General U.S. Grant on February 16, 1862, the estimated 12,000-man Confederate garrison constituted the largest mass surrender in U.S. military history to that time. [This would be eclipsed by the Federal surrender of the Harper’s Ferry garrison in September 1862 and by the Confederate surrender at Vicksburg in July 1863.] The last time the U.S. Army had to handle that many prisoners went back to the days of Lord Cornwallis surrendering his army to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781. A group of Confederate prisoners of war pose in front of their barracks at Camp Douglas in Chicago. As all four of these men are wearing overcoats, they are probably from a later group of prisoners that were housed at the camp. The initial Confederate occupants in February 1862 were noted for the absence of overcoats, the men using blankets, carpets, and other cast-off bits of cloth to help shield