" More than 100,000 Union soldiers spent time during the Civil War in Richmond warehouse prisons with the names of Libby, Pemberton, Scott's, Ligon's, Howard's, and Harwood's and on Belle Isle. An estimated 1,000 died, most of them on Belle Isle. From over 1,000 diaries, letters and official publications in here told their story. Told, too is the part played by Thomas McNiven, a Union spy who was set up in a Richmond bakery by the Union Secret Service and recruited more than 300 loyalists, including three City Councilmen, to spy on, bribe and sabotage the Confederate effort."--Book Jacket.