Ladd Family

"Stormy and disagreeable weather. From fifteen to twenty and twenty-five die every day and are buried just outside the prison with no coffins- nothing but canvas wrapped around them." So wrote captured Union soldier John Ransom in his November 27, 1863, diary entry from Belle Island Prison. On February 11, 1864, the 20-year-old brigade quartermaster wrote that there was "a good deal of fighting going on among the men;" they were "just like so many hungry wolves penned together." Bands of predatory prisoners roamed the encampment, robbing their fellow prisoners of rations, blankets, and anything else they wanted. The commandant admitted that he could do nothing to stop the gangsters, as he had only enough men to try to prevent escapes.

Beautiful Belle Isle, in the James River at Richmond, became a Confederate prison after 1st Bull Run, confining Union noncommissioned officers and enlisted men. No barracks were erected; Belle Isle and the Union prison at Point Lookout, MD, were the only major Civil War prisons that were made up of clusters of tents. Although Belle Isle Prison was intended to hold only 3,000 men, with tents provided to house that many, its population swelled to double that number and more. The island's location in the rapids of the James River made escape very perilous. Many of the men who tried it drowned before reaching safety.

This is a "Birds Eye View" of the Salisbury Prison Compound.  This painting was made in 1864 and details the entire facility.

The only Confederate Prison that was located in North Carolina was in the town of Salisbury. The prison was established on November 2, 1861. The site consisted of sixteen acres within and contiguous to the town of Salisbury, and contained a principal 3 story cotton factory building, about ninety by fifty feet constructed of red brick; also six brick tenements with four rooms each, and a larger superintendent's house of framed materials, with smith shop and two or three inferior buildings.

A lack of water at Salisbury brought conditions of filth and unbearable stench. The daily ration there for both prisoner and guard was soup and twenty ounces of bread without meat or sorghum. Many internees lacked clothing or shelter and "muggers" among the prisoners robbed their comrades. The disease rate soared. From October 1864 to February 1865, 3,479 prisoners died out of the 10,321 confined there, or over one third of the total.

The real misery for the prisoners at the Salisbury Confederate Prison began in the fall of 1864. The Prison compound designed for 2,500 men was forced to handle four times that many. Due to the Union Naval blockade there was a shortage of medicine and medical supplies which resulted in terrible suffering of the prisoners and needless deaths. Throughout the South there was a shortage of food and the Prison was no exception. Eventually, all the buildings were taken over for hospital use, and the men were forced to seek shelter that cold, wet winter under the buildings, in overcrowded tents, and in burrows dug into the hard red soil.

Due to the large number of men dying daily after October 1864 a mass burial system was initiated. The bodies were collected daily and taken to the “dead house” to be counted and loaded onto a one-horse wagon. At 2:00 PM each day this wagon of the dead would be taken about ¼ mile to an abandoned cornfield where the men were buried. Eighteen trenches of approximately 240 feet each were eventually needed.

The 24th Michigan, also known as Detroit and Wayne County Regiment, was originally composed of volunteers from the Detroit Area. Recruiting began on July 26th, 1862 and in less than 2 weeks, the ranks had been filled. It served in the Army of the Potomac, and was assigned to the famous Iron Brigade. While not one of the original regiments, the 24th Michigan quickly earned the respect of the hard fighting westerners. Not heavily engaged at Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville, the Regiment marched to Gettysburg some 493 strong. By the end of the first day's battle fewer than 100 men answered roll call, having incurred approximately 80% casualties. The Regiment has the dubious distinction of having the highest losses of any of the 400 union regiments engaged at Gettysburg. The regiment played an important role in Grant's 1864 campaign, and was engaged heavily at Wilderness, Spottsylvannia, and Petersburg. In the spring of 1865, the regiment was assigned to duty at Camp Butler Illinois. The governor of Michigan authorized the Regiment to recruit up to full strength, which was quite unusual and an indication of the reputation that that the men had fought so hard to earn. The regiment was part of the honor guard at Lincoln's Funeral in Springfield, Illinois. A month later, the regiment returned to Detroit and was mustered out on June 30, 1865.