Angela Zombek
Angela Zombek is Professor of History and Graduate Coordinator at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She earned her BA at the College of Wooster, MA at the University of Akron, and PhD at the University of Florida. She taught at St. Francis High School and at St. Petersburg College prior to joining the History Department at UNCW in 2018. While in graduate school, Angie worked for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. She has also served as a Copie Hill Fellow at the American Battlefield Trust. Angie has published widely on prisoners of war, Civil War prisoners and the press, and Florida’s Civil War history.
Any views or opinions that Angie expresses as Chief Historian at Emerging Civil War are solely her views and do not reflect the opinions of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
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Angie is also a member of the Emerging Civil War Speakers Bureau. Her available presentations are listed below:
“Treated Worse Than Felons Before Prisons Were Reformed”: The Civil War’s Crisis of Imprisonment
During the Civil War, Union and Confederate officials detained thousands of enemy prisoners of war, but neither side had any experience overseeing prisons. U.S. and Confederate officials hastily constructed military prisons and relied on practices that were used to govern state penitentiaries to manage them. This talk explains how the penitentiary program influenced the administration of military prisons and shaped the identity of prisoners of war in Civil War prisons, including North Carolina’s Salisbury Prison.
Suspicious Characters & Captured Combatants: Prisoners’ Experiences during the Civil War
Over 410,000 individuals from were held in military prisons, North and South, during the Civil War. Those imprisoned included not just enemy soldiers, but also men and women accused of suspicious behavior or suspected of treason. This talk outlines how Union and Confederate officials defined prisoners of war, how captivity altered their identity and their relationships with family, and how they either withstood captivity or attempted to relieve themselves of it through escape.
“The Duty of the Prisoner to Escape”: POWs’ Escape Attempts, Plots, and Ideological Flight
Union and Confederate soldiers perhaps dreaded imprisonment more than battlefield conflict since it meant the loss of freedom and opportunity for battlefield glory. General Order No. 100 (the Lieber Code, 1863) did not consider POW escape attempts to be a crime, so Union and Confederate prisoners plotted in mass escape attempts, identified and bribed sympathetic guards, or escaped on their own and collaborated with civilians or soldiers to reach their own lines. POWs’ thoughts of escape more often led to psychological comfort than actual emancipation from prison, but the prospect of freedom often helped them to withstand captivity.
Finding God at Andersonville
Given notorious suffering, the stockade at Andersonville Prison might seem like the last place where God could be found. Union POWs, however, clung to faith to withstand captivity through personal observance of religious practice, meditation on the Bible, and with the help of Catholic clergy who visited the prison in 1864. Faith in God either helped POWs endure until release or eased their transition into the afterlife.
Stronghold of the Union: Key West Under Martial Law
Despite Florida’s secession from the Union, Key West remained in Union hands for the Civil War’s duration after Captain John Brannan of the 1st U.S. artillery occupied Fort Taylor and put the island under martial law in January 1861. Union officers commanding at Key West shaped martial law throughout the war by responding to Confederate sympathizers on the island and to the war’s broader dynamics, implementing pioneering use of tactics like expulsion, the oath of allegiance, confiscation of property, undermining slavery, and enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation on the island.
The Civil War History of Fort Jefferson, Florida
Fort Jefferson was constructed as part of the Third System of Defense, which aimed to reduce the need for a standing army, protect American commerce, and defend the nation from foreign adversaries. No one anticipated that, come the 1860s, Ft. Jefferson would be used to suppress a domestic rebellion. This talk examines the experiences of Union soldiers assigned to garrison duty at Ft. Jefferson during the Civil War, and gives an overview of the fort’s wartime purposes, which ranged from defending the Florida Straits, to serving as a coaling station for naval vessels, to imprisoning Confederate POWs and Union soldiers who violated army rules and regulations while in the ranks.
Secessionists, Union Sympathizers, and Sugar Sand Beaches: Tampa Bay During the Civil War Era
Few tourists, not to mention Tampa Bay Area residents, ponder the region’s Civil War history. The Tampa Bay area witnessed no major battles and hosted few famous persons, but it, and Egmont Key which guards the mouth of the bay, provides testimony as to how the Civil War reached the remote region. Residents supported and resisted both the Union and Confederate causes while enduring disease and other wartime deprivations. Tampa’s Civil War history reflects the Union blockade’s economic stranglehold on the South and inhabitants’ struggle for survival far removed from the main theaters of war.
Competing Visions of the Post-war World: Military Reconstruction & Southern Resistance in North Carolina
Questions swirled in the Civil War’s aftermath about what the process of bringing the former Confederate states back into the Union would entail, what freedom for formerly enslaved persons would mean, and about what role the federal government would play in binding the nation’s wounds. Learn about how these dynamics played out in North Carolina.
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Publications
Books:
Under Contract: Stronghold of the Union: Key West Under Martial Law, University Press of Florida.
May 2018: Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War, Kent State University Press (Honorable Mention, Civil War Monitor’s Best Civil War Books of 2018).
Articles & Book Chapters:
Oct. 2024 ““I Have Never Seen the Hour in Which I Regretted Having Enlisted”: The Motivation Bolstering Union Occupation Troops at the Dry Tortugas and Key West, Florida, 1862-1864,” Journal of Military History, Vo. 88, No. 4
Mar. 2023 “The Popular Press and the Personal Experiences of Civil War Prisoners,” in David Sachsman and Katrina Quinn, eds., Civil War Soldiers and the Press (Routledge Press)
Sept. 2020 “The Power of the Press: Defining Disloyalty at Old Capitol Prison,” Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 10, No. 3
Nov. 2018 “Catholics in Captivity: Priests, Prisoners, and the Living Faith in Civil War Military Prisons,” in Michael P. Gray, ed., Crossing the Deadlines: Civil War Prisons Reconsidered, Kent State University Press
May 2018 “Citizenship – Compulsory or Convenient: Federal Officials, Confederate Prisoners, and the Oath of Allegiance,” in Paul J. Quigley, ed., The American Civil War and the Transformation of Citizenship, Louisiana State University Press
Sept. 2017 “Paternalism and Imprisonment at Castle Thunder: Reinforcing Gender Norms in the Confederate Capital,” Civil War History, Vol. 63, No. 3
2011 “Camp Chase Prison: An Examination of Power and Resistance on the Northern Home Front, 1863,” Ohio History Vol. 118
Web Publications:
July 2024 “The Civil War in Florida: The Service and Death of Maj. Benjamin C. Lincoln,” Blue and Gray Dispatch newsletter: https://t.e2ma.net/webview/383hag/de7496e78addd0cf822c18c356cd9e0b.
Jan. 2023 “Haunted by Death: Garrison Duty at Key West, Florida,” Emerging Civil War Blog https://emergingcivilwar.com/2023/01/30/haunted-by-death-garrison-duty-at-key-west-florida/.
Sept. 2022 “The Battle of Olustee,” American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/battle-olustee.
Feb. 2022 “Canals in the Civil War Era,” American Battlefield Trust https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/canals-civil-war-era#:~:text=The%20Erie%20Canal%20and%20the,the%20Potomac%20River’s%20Maryland%20shore.
Feb. 2022 “The War That Almost Started at Pensacola,” American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/war-almost-started-pensacola.
Dec. 2021 “Fort Taylor, Key West: Imprisonment in Paradise,” American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/fort-taylor-key-west-imprisonment-paradise.
Oct. 2021 “Florida’s Forts: Fortifying the Sunshine State,” American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/floridas-forts.
Sept. 2021 “The Role of Florida in the Civil War,” American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/role-florida-civil-war.
Dec. 2018 “Interview with Angela Zombek: North & South Behind Bars,” Civil War Times Magazine https://www.historynet.com/interview-angela-zombek.htm.
Oct. 2018 “The Silent Threat: Key West, Yellow Fever, and the Union Volunteers, 1861-1862,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine Blog: http://www.civilwarmed.org/yellowfever/.
Aug. 2016 “Paradise Lost: Florida’s Egmont Key during the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era “Muster” blog http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/2016/08/paradise-lost-floridas-egmont-key-civil-war/.
July 2016 ““History Hides the Lies of Our Civil War”: The Forgotten Battle of Pickett’s Mill,” Emerging Civil War https://emergingcivilwar.com/2016/07/07/history-hides-the-lies-of-our-civil-war-the-forgotten-battle-of-picketts-mill/.
June 2013 “Oh Lord, Where Art Thou?: Civil War Guards, Prisoners, and Punishments,” The Civil War Monitor http://www.civilwarmonitor.com/front-line/oh-lord-where-art-thou-civil-war-guards-prisoners-and-punishments.
