Salisbury Stockade
Till*» Confederate Civil War prison
wasn't exactly a striking demon¬
stration of Southern hospitality.
Disease, death and finally disorder
all had llieir day.
By HILLY CARMICHAEL III
ONE OF the largest prisons
operated by the Confederate
army during the Civil War
was located in Salisbury. The
picture shown above is a sketch of
this so-called prison pen. where
during the war years no less than
5.000 Federal prisoners at any
time were quartered.
The prison area covered four
full blocks or some forty acres
within the city limits of Salisbury.
Before the war a cotton mill (des¬
ignated by i 1 ) in the accompany¬
ing sketch i had been located on the
site, but at the beginning of hos¬
tilities, the Confederate Govern¬
ment took over the plant and con¬
verted it into a meat processing
point for the army.
After the first battle of Bull
Run. the Southern armies began
to acquire Yankee prisoners in
large numbers and for lack of
somewhere else to send them, a
stockade about eight feet high was
built around the entire area, and
the enclosure became one of the
major Confederate prisons.
At first the prison facilities
Kved quite adequate. An old
rksmith shop < 2
»
was turned
into a guard house. A well (3>
gave the inmates a sufficient
supply of fresh, pure drinking
water. Brick houses (4. 5, 6.
7. 8. 9 i, formerly built as homes
for the mill workers, were used for
officers’ prison quarters. The Con¬
federate headquarters <101 were
located outside the walls, adjoin¬
ing the camp.
But as the numbers of Union
prisoners increased, conditions at
the pen became quite acute.
Though the camp was in command
of a group of Southern Officers
quite sympathetic to the growing
sufferings of the prisoners, their
facilities and supplies made it im¬
possible to do much more than try
to keep their charges alive.
Even at this, they were not too
successful. Disease began to take
hold of the camp, especially
malaria, and quinine necessary to
combat this sickness was impossi¬
ble to secure.
The guard-house < 2 * was turned
into a death-house where bodies
remained until they could be
moved from the stockade and
buried in common graves in a near¬
by cornfield. In all, 12.391 Federal
soldiers died at the prison.
In the late years of the war. food
became scarcer and scarcer not
only at the prison, but among the
townspeople. Salisbury at the time
had a population of only 4.000.
while the pen at all times con¬
tained at least 5,000 prisoners, and
at various periods a great many
more.
The prisoners, officers and men
alike, ate together in a large shack
that stood behind the mill building.
A soup house (11) was in constant
operation preparing soup for the
sick and wounded.
So crowded did the prison be¬
come that there were simply not
enough housing facilities to meet
the demand, and many were forced
to resort to burrowing into the
earth to keep warm. These bur¬
rows were dug as close to the fence
as the guards would permit, but
some prisoners did succeed in
taking advantage of this fact and
tunnelled under the fence to
freedom.
Thirteen prisoners made their
escape in this manner before their
strategy was discovered. Then a
ditch four feet wide and six feet
deep was dug around the inside of
the prison fence to prevent other
escapes.
In early 1864, the majority of
the garrison guarding the prison
was called to the front as the Con¬
federates prepared their last-ditch
stand. News of their departure got
around the camp in a hurry and
soon a mass break occurred. The
few remaining guards could not
stem the tide of the escape, but
were able to dispatch riders to re¬
call the departed soldiers.
At their return a furious hand-
to-hand fight ensued in which 506
prisoners were killed and 810 ol
the garrison were bavonetted.
Where the Fcderals got the
bayonets was never discovered.
Though the break was squelched,
the end of the camp, like the end
of the war, came soon after. Stone-
ham’s men were advancing on
Salisbury for the express purpose
of freeing the occupants of the
prison.
The Confederates were able to
prevent this by moving the
majority of the prisoners away
from the town, only to have then-
fall into other enemy hands shortly
thereafter.
Today, only one cottage remains
standing to identify the site of the
camp. The old cornfield in which
so many of the Federal dead were
buried is now a spot of beauty ac¬
centuated by a small stream and
tall trees casting shadows upon
the well-kept sod.
THE STATE. July B. 1950