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A Daytona Beach, Florida resident has an extraordinary set of photographs he believes come from his great-great grandfather, who fought in the Civil War and was once a confederate prisoner of war at Johnson’s Island on Lake Erie.
The collection of portraits comes with a note that asserts the images were taken illicitly and depict fellow incarcerated confederate officers. Could the author of these claims really have taken photographs with a camera he built while in the prison camp?
More questionable, even, are the claims that the chemicals he needed to develop the photographs were stolen from the camp hospital.
History Detectives heads to Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania to investigate the history of Civil War photography and discover the shocking truth of how Confederate and Union prisoners were treated during wartime.
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