Truth about North's role in slavery

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DEN OF MISERY: INDIANA'S CIVIL WAR PRISON

By James R. Hall, Pelican Publishing Co., $25, 160 pages, illustrated

COMPLICITY: HOW THE NORTH PROMOTED, PROLONGED, AND PROFITED FROM SLAVERY

By Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, Ballantine Books, $25.95, 274 pages, illustrated

Ever since the "late unpleasantness" came to a conclusion, Southerners have endured two never-ending accusations that, despite their inaccuracy, have made those from the region feel inferior because of their moral implications.

However, with the recent release of two books, the truth finally is available to all who are willing to examine the facts objectively. What makes these two books so compelling is that they were written by Northerners. (Full disclosure: I am a native Southerner and have a personal connection to the subject of one of the books.)

The charge addressed in the first book is that only Southerners mistreated their prisoners of war -- most notably at Andersonville.

James R. Hall's "Den of Misery: Indiana's Civil War Prison" is about the infamous Union POW camp known as Camp Morton, located in what today is Indianapolis. My own great-great grandfather, John Meredith Crutchfield, spent about eight months there after being wounded at the Battle of Piedmont in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley on June 5, 1864. He was part of a prisoner exchange on Feb. 2, 1865, and then entered Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond on March 10, 1865. He died shortly thereafter, evidently from the mistreatment he had received at Camp Morton.