Inside the Stockade
What it Looks Like
Inside the prison, there was the “deadline”, which prevented prisoners from climbing over or tunneling under the stockade. The guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed it.
"...some had dug holes in the ground three or four feet deep and made a slanting roof over them of poles and pine top boughs. The whole camp looked like a collection of pig pens." -Robert Knox Sneden, Union Private |
The only water source for most of the prison was Stockade Branch, which was dirty and contaminated with disease. There were no trees in the stockade, and the only shade was from the low quality shelters improvised by the prisoners.
"The camp was covered with vermin all over. You could not sit down anywhere. You might go and pick the lice all off of you, and sit down for a half a moment and get up and you would be covered with them. In between these two hills it was very swampy, all black mud, and where the filth was emptied it was all alive; there was a regular buzz there all the time, and it was covered with large white maggots." -Sergeant Samuel Corthell, Company C, 4th Massachusetts Cavalry |