The types of prisoners at Salisbury Prison

   Recently, The Scuppernong Press released a small book, edited by Donna Peeler Poteat, on Salisbury Prison. It is actually a post-war reminiscence of Dr. Adolphus W. Mangum. Born in 1834 in Orange (now Durham) County, North Carolina, Mangum was a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, who was also in the ministry, riding circuit in Hillsborough, and then pastoring a church in Chapel Hill. He was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1860, he moved to a church in Salisbury. When the war came, Magnum became chaplain of the 6^th North Carolina State Troops, but later in 1861, resigned due to poor health. Back in Salisbury, he worked with prisoners at Salisbury.

   Magnum wrote his reminiscences in 1893, and they appeared as two separate articles in the Charlotte Observer in May and June. He provides some interesting information regarding the prison. The site, an old cotton factory, was conveyed to the Confederate States on November 2, 1861, as a prison “for Confederates under sentence of court martial, and those arrested for alleged disloyalty, for deserters from the Federal army and for prisoners of war.” Those are four different groups of men: court martialed Confederates; disloyal Southerners; Federal deserters; and, Federal prisoners of war.[1]

   Court Martialed Confederates: The number of Confederate soldiers court martialed for some infraction of the Articles of War is unknown. One historian estimated the number at 20,000, based upon ledgers that survived the fires in Richmond on the night of April 2, 1865. Many of those found guilty were sentenced to loss of pay, reduced back to the ranks if a non-commissioned officer, company punishment, or if an officer, cashiered from the service. Or punishment could be confinement or hard labor. There were two places where these periods of confinement were conducted: Castle Thunder in Richmond, and Salisbury. There were Confederate soldiers confined at Salisbury. Pvt. Samuel S. Bryant (57th Virginia Infantry) was one such prisoner. Bryant was absent from his command from June 1863 until March 1864. He was tried for desertion, found guilty, and ordered to be confined on bread and water.[2] It is unclear just how many Confederate soldiers were confined at Salisbury over the course of the war. On December 1, 1864, the Adjutant and Inspector General’s office issued an order releasing all of those court martialed and ordering them to return to their regiments. Bryant was one of them, along with 155 others at the Salisbury Prison Camp.[3]

   Disloyal Southerners: While for generations writers portrayed the South as one big happy family, there were many who objected to secession and to the Confederate government. One conservative account places the number of political prisoners, those arrested for being disloyal, at 4,108 civilians.[4] In February 1863, at the bequest of the Confederate Congress, the commandant prepared a list of political prisoners then confined at Salisbury. The list contains 131 names. They included C.C. Sheets, a Winston County, Alabama, law student, suspected of “treasonable conduct”; R.B. Elliott a overseer from Tarboro, North Carolina, suspected of being a spy and “trading with the enemy”; and, George Billingsly, a Claiborne County, Tennessee, blacksmith, charged with “aiding and supplying stock for the enemy at Cumberland Gap.” [5] It is unclear just how many political prisoners passed through the Salisbury prison camp.

   Federal deserters: There were roughly 2,000 Federal deserters confined at the Salisbury prison. Many of them simply walked off picket post and into the Confederate lines. An interesting case is that of Peter and Jacques Sneyers, members of the 35^th Massachusetts Infantry (substitutes). They were captured on September 30, 1864, near Petersburg. Both of their Compiled Service Records contain “Memorandum from Prisoner of War Records” and both state that they “joined the Rebel army while a Pris of war at Salisbury, N.C. date not given.” Mangum tells us that “A Col Tucker came there for the purpose of getting recruits from their number for the Confederate army. Only foreigners were allowed to enlist. Nearly eighteen hundred took the oath. . . Some may have taken this step in good faith. . . but the greater number chose it as the only means of escape from their terrible den. They were called ‘galvanized Yankees,” and though most of them made scarcely a show of fighting when the test came, a few stood their ground and fought with true courage.”[6]

   Federal prisoners of war: Mangum tell us that the first prisoners of war arrived on December 9, 1861, numbering 120. An additional 176 arrived on December 26, and 80 more on February 7. “These different installments came from various points – some being captured in Virginia, some on the coast of North Carolina and some by the Army of the west in Kentucky. By the middle of March, 1862, their number aggregated nearly 1,500.” [7] Over the course of the war, a little over 10,000 men were incarcerated. An estimated 4,500 died.[8]

   Mangum talked about many other issues, such as prison escapes, the death of a Confederate surgeon, African-American prisoners brought in during the last months of the war, along with the horrors of the prison itself. He considered his story one of “dark history of this great reservoir of misery and death.”[9] If you would like to read more of Dr. Adolphus W. Mangum’s account, check out the book through The Scuppernong Press:

 

 

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[1]  Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 3.

[2] Bunch, Military Justice in the Confederate States Army, 8, 70.

[3] Brown, The Salisbury Prison Camp, 259-260.

[4] Neely, Southern Rights, 1.

[5] Brown, The Salisbury Prison Camp, 233.

[6] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 32.

[7] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 5.

[8] Speer, Portals to Hell, 339

[9] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison, 36.