We Can Forgive, But Never Forget: Prisoner of War Flags

Brief Description of Prisons Listed on the Ex-POW Flag

View of Andersonville Prison from the stockade, including tents and latrines. From Archives/Library collection SC 1.

Prisoners were forced to create their own shelter, many resorted to digging holes and covering themselves with blankets and clothing as protection from the elements. The harsh conditions and desperate fight for survival brought out the worst in some prisoners. Groups of soldiers robbed new arrivals and bullied, abused and even murdered for the few amenities available in the camp. Although the maximum capacity of the prison was 10,000, up to 32,899 men were held at one time. At the end of the war, Captain Henry Wirz, the Commandant of Andersonville Prison, was sentenced to death by hanging at a United States war trial.

Belle Isle (Virginia)

Union Prisoners at Belle Isle. From Harper's Weekly, v. 7, 1863.

Blackshear Prison (Blackshear, Georgia)
Blackshear Prison was originally an open-air camp in the backwoods of Pierce County, Georgia. Only in operation from November 1864 to January 1865, the prison housed more than 5,000 men. The prison camp served as a stopping point for many Union prisoners as they were shipped between several different Georgia and South Carolina prisons. Many prisoners arrived in poor health, with little clothing and close to starvation. Blackshear Prison did not improve their situation. Shelter, food and sanitation were inadequate in the open camp. The exact number of deaths in Blackshear Prison is unknown.

Cahaba (Alabama)
The prison in Cahaba, Alabama was converted from an unfinished cotton warehouse to a facility for 500 Union soldiers in January 1864. During its two years of operation, the prison held as many as 3,000 men. The building was merely a shell, with a roof and four walls. The prisoners slept on bunks made of rough lumber or on the ground. The only supply of water was an open trench that ran from a well located outside the prison walls. The water was used for everything from cleaning animals to emptying sewage before reaching the men. At least 225 men died from sickness and disease caused by overcrowding, poor sanitation and malnutrition.

Camp Ford (Tyler, Texas)
Camp Ford Prison was located near Tyler, Texas, in the northeastern part of the state. The camp was opened in 1863 to alleviate overcrowding in the Camp Groce prison, 160 miles away. The prison began as an open area patrolled by guards. Eventually it was surrounded by a stockade. Prisoners were left to provide their own shelter, ranging from wood shanties to holes in the ground. The camp held between 5,000 and 5,500 Union prisoners at one time. During the three years Camp Ford was in operation, approximately 232 men died at the prison.

Camp Lawton (Millen, Georgia)
The prison camp in Millen, Georgia was used in October 1864 to handle the overflow of prisoners from Andersonville and Savannah. Camp Lawton was arranged on twenty-three acres of land surrounded by a stockade. Its layout was similar to that at Andersonville. More than 10,000 soldiers were sent to the open-air camp during its six weeks of operation. Weak and sick prisoners continued to decline and many died in the camp, although the exact numbers are not known. The Confederate Commandant of the camp, Captain D. W. Vowles was later accused of selling the names of prisoners scheduled to be released to the healthier inmates, leaving the sick and dying to meet their fate in the camp.

Camp Oglethorpe (Macon, Georgia)
The prison camp in Macon, Georgia was located on the old fairgrounds outside the city and consisted of a large building and several sheds and stalls surrounded by a high fence. It was in use during the first four years of the war. The camp was originally intended for an estimated 600 prisoners, although the camp held triple that number at times. Union prisoners suffered from overcrowding, poor food and exposure and many men died from dropsy, scurvy, and chronic diarrhea. The exact number of deaths is unknown. In 1864, the prisoners were transferred to Charleston and Savannah as the Confederate troops scrambled to avoid George Stoneman and his troops.

Camp Davidson (Savannah, Georgia)
The prison camps in Savannah, Georgia opened in 1864 as prisoners were transferred from Andersonville and Macon. The prison began on the grounds of the U.S. Marine Hospital with a stockade surrounding the area. Another stockade was hastily erected around the city jail to handle the large number of prisoners. Six thousand men were eventually housed in the makeshift prison buildings and open-air camps. The majority of prisoners arrived starving, weak and ill from their stay in Andersonville. Several hundred Union prisoners are estimated to have died while in Savannah. They were buried in unmarked graves.

Camp Sorghum and Camp Asylum (Columbia, South Carolina)
The Confederate prisons in Columbia, South Carolina were established in 1864 in the Richland County Jail. The jail soon became overcrowded, so the soldiers were moved to a four-acre plot of land west of the city. The camp, called Camp Sorghum by the prisoners, was open air, with no stockade or shelter for the prisoners. As winter approached, prisoners were allowed to gather firewood in the nearby woods under heavy guard. This opportunity to escape was hard to resist. Nearly four hundred Union soldiers were recorded as having escaped from the camp in December alone. The prison was soon moved to the grounds of the state mental asylum where it remained until the end of the war. The number of Union prisoners who died in Camp Sorghum or Camp Asylum is not known.

Castle Thunder (Richmond, Virginia)
Three brick factory buildings in Richmond, Virginia were converted into Castle Thunder prison in 1862. The prison housed Confederate deserters, political prisoners (including black and women inmates), and Union prisoners of war. The prison originally had a capacity of 1,400 inmates, but eventually held more than 3,000 Union soldiers. In addition to the familiar problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and lack of food, Castle Thunder also had an "inner room" of balls and chains that the brutal Confederate Captain George Alexander used on the Union prisoners. The number of Union prisoners who died during the four years Castle Thunder was in existence is not known.

Charleston (South Carolina)
Charleston, South Carolina housed more than 2,000 Union prisoners during all five years of the war. Prisoners were kept in the city jail, guard house, hospital, race track, and a private residence. Starvation, exposure to the elements, and an epidemic of yellow fever killed many of the prisoners. It is not known how many Union soldiers died in the Charleston prisons.

Danville (Virginia)
The prison in Danville, Virginia consisted of six tobacco and cotton warehouses in the downtown area. The prison was intended to hold 3,700 prisoners and was overcrowded within weeks. Prisoners were allotted four square feet each, given very little firewood for heat and plagued by vermin. Food rations were gradually reduced to a pound and a half of cornbread per man. The prisoners boiled wood from the rafters for "coffee." A smallpox epidemic eventually decimated the prison population. More than 1,200 Union soldiers died from illness and malnutrition.

Florence (South Carolina)
The prison camp in Florence, South Carolina, eighty miles east of Columbia, was hastily erected in September 1864 after Andersonville was threatened by Union troops. The camp consisted of twenty-three and a half acres surrounded by stockades. A small creek, five inches deep, ran through the center of the camp and provided the only source of water for the inmates. Prisoners transferred from Andersonville and other prisons swelled the camp population to more than 13,000 within weeks. The Florence stockade was one of the worst Confederate prison camps. Prisoners suffered from exposure, poor sanitation, overcrowding, starvation and disease. More than 2,800 Union soldiers died at Florence and are buried as unknown soldiers in the Florence National Cemetery.

Libby Prison (Richmond, Virginia)

Exterior of Libby Prison. From Archives/Library collection OVS 3234-A.

Pemberton's Warehouse (Richmond, Virginia)
The Pemberton Warehouse in Richmond, Virginia was used as a prison facility for the first two years of the war. Little is known about the living conditions and the number of prisoners or deaths.

Salisbury (North Carolina)
The Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina was a converted cotton factory. The prison was used throughout the war and housed a maximum of more than 10,000 men in an area originally intended for 2,000. The prison began as a humane confinement with adequate space, food and even a baseball team. However as the number of prisoners increased and the war progressed, the inevitable lack of supplies led to illness and death. Prisoners died from exposure, starvation and illness, including a typhoid epidemic caused by poor sanitation and contaminated water. The dead were stripped of their clothes and buried in pits in a cornfield nearby. During the five years of its operation, at least 3,700 Union prisoners died at Salisbury.

Cynthia Ghering is a co-leader of the Archives Library Museum Automation (ALMA) team, which was responsible for the Battle Flag cataloging and digitization project. Cynthia received a bachelor's degree in English from Western Michigan University and a master's degree in information science, with a specialization in archives and records management, from the University of Michigan School of Information.