26 July 2013

More Crowded Than Andersonville


Castle Morgan was a Civil War Prisoner Of War camp situated at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers in the town of Cahaba.  

Now a ghost town, Cahaba was the capital of Alabama in an earlier incarnation.  

The capital had already been moved when "the old brick cotton shed of Colonel Samuel M. Hill was transformed into a prison for captured Federals...," 

The "actual size of [the] brick shed [was] 193 feet long, 116 feet wide."  "[The] Number of prisoners through winter of 1864-65 was 3000, five times more crowded than Andersonville."



The sketch of Castle Morgan POW prison was drawn from memory 
by the author of Cahaba [Dr. Jesse Hawes, 9th IL Cav.]


"The writer [Jesse Hawes] first saw Castle Morgan July 26, 1864... ."

No comments: