John McElroy

Born in Kentucky in 1846 and raised in part in the Midwest, John McElroy served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was captured in 1864 and spent many months in Confederate prisons, including Andersonville, an experience that shaped the writing he would later become known for.

After the war he worked as a printer, journalist, and newspaper publisher. He wrote fiction as well as nonfiction, but his lasting reputation rests mainly on Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, a four-volume account based on his imprisonment. The book helped fix Andersonville in the public memory as one of the war's harshest prison camps.

McElroy remained active in veterans' journalism and historical writing for decades. Readers often turn to him not just for facts, but for the immediacy of someone who lived through the events he described.