Dr. Caroline Wood Newhall

Hello! I'm Caroline Wood Newhall, an Assistant Professor of History at Oberlin College in Ohio. I specialize in nineteenth-century United States history, with a particular focus on North American slavery, African American military history, the American Civil War, and the relationship between slavery and warfare.

My forthcoming book, Every Thing but Death: How Black POWs Survived the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2027), examines the experiences of Black Union soldiers who were captured and imprisoned by the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Drawing on extensive archival research into military service records and veterans' pensions, the book reconstructs the experiences of more than 2,200 Black prisoners of war (POWs), exploring how they endured captivity (including their enslavement through reclamation and sale), and how so many survived despite Confederate policies designed to deny them recognition as legitimate prisoners of war.