• Crowder College History Symposium Presents: Dr. Matthew Stith

“Busting Out of Camp Ford: Nature, Community & War at the Largest Prison Camp in the Trans-Mississippi.” Matthew M. Stith, Ph.D., is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Tyler and is the author or editor of four books. His current book project is tentatively titled, “Camp Ford’s Civil War: Community, Nature, and Captivity in the Dark Corner of the Confederacy.” Located in the piney woods of East Texas near Tyler, Camp Ford became the largest Civil War prisoner-of-war camp west of the Mississippi River that, by 1864, contained nearly 5,000 Union prisoners.