Libby Prison

A photo of the prison-Libby prison misidentified as "Old Capital Prison"

Libby Prison was a Confederate Prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. It gained an infamous reputation for the harsh conditions under which prisoners from the Union Army were kept.

Overview

The prison was located in a three-story brick warehouse on Tobacco Row. Prior to use as a jail, the warehouse had been leased by Capt. Luther Libby and his son George W. Libby. They operated a ship's chandlery and grocery business. Libby Prison, used only for Union officers, opened in 1861. It contained eight rooms, each 103 by 42 feet (31.4 by 12.5 metres). Lack of sanitation and overcrowding caused the death of many prisoners between 1863 and 1864. Because of the high death toll, Libby Prison is generally regarded as second in notoriety only to Andersonville Prison in Georgia. In 1864, the Union prisoners were moved to Macon, Georgia, and Libby Prison was then used for Confederate military criminals.

After the occupation of Richmond in 1865 the prison was used by Union authorities for detaining former Confederate officers. Conditions were reportedly less harsh than they had been for Union officers or prisoners of both sides generally during the war.

In 1880, the building was purchased by Southern Fertilizer Company. Nine years later, it was bought by candymaker Charles F. Gunther, disassembled, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where it was rebuilt to serve as a war museum. After it failed to draw enough crowds the structure was again dismantled, this time to be sold in pieces as souvenirs.

“The building is of brick, with a front of near one hundred and forty feet, and one hundred feet deep. It is divided into nine rooms; the ceilings are low, and ventilation imperfect; the windows are barred, through which the windings of James River and the tents of Belle Isle may be seen.”

Prisoner conditions

Depiction by David Gilmour Blythe, 1863

A group of surgeons, upon their release from Libby, published an account of what they experienced treating Libby inmates in the attached hospital:

Thus we have over ten per cent of the whole number of prisoners held classed as sick men, who need the most assiduous and skilful attention; yet, in the essential matter of rations, they are receiving nothing but corn bread and sweet potatoes. Meat is no longer furnished to any class of our prisoners except to the few officers in Libby hospital, and all sick or well officers or privates are now furnished with a very poor article of corn bread in place of wheat bread, unsuitable diet for hospital patients prostrated with diarrhea, dysentery and fever, to say nothing of the balance of startling instances of individual suffering and horrid pictures of death from protracted sickness and semi-starvation we have had thrust upon our observation.

The first demand of the poor creatures from the island was always for something to eat. Self respect gone, hope and ambition gone, half clad and covered with vermin and filth, many of them are too often beyond all reach of medical skill. In one instance the ambulances brought sixteen to the hospital, and during the night seven of them died. Again, eighteen were brought, and eleven of them died in twenty-four hours. At another time fourteen were admitted, and in a single day ten of them died. Judging from what we have ourselves seen and do know, we do not hesitate to say that, under a treatment of systematic abuse, neglect and semi-starvation, the numbers who are becoming permanently broken down in their constitutions must be reckoned by thousands.

Shortly after the battle of Chickamauga about two hundred wounded prisoners arrived at Richmond from the field. They were almost all in a famishing and starving condition. They were three days on the road between the two points, and all they had to eat during that time was four hard crackers each. On their arrival at Richmond they were taken to the Libby prison, where they laid two days longer without having their wounds dressed, and during all which time they had not a mouthful to eat.

An article in the Richmond Enquirer vividly described prison conditions:

Libby takes in the captured Federals by scores, but lets none out; they are huddled up and jammed into every nook and corner; at the bathing troughs, around the cooking stoves, everywhere there is a wrangling, jostling crowd; at night the floor of every room they occupy in the building is covered, every square inch of it, by uneasy slumberers, lying side by side, and heel to head, as tightly packed as if the prison were a huge, improbable box of nocturnal sardines.

The windows which had no glass, just heavy iron bars, constituted the dead line at Libby Prison. Anyone leaning out of a window or even putting their hands on the sill or bars was shot. On April 13, 1864 one soldier, John Forsythe of the 100th Ohio Volunteers, was shot dead while standing by one of these windows. The shot passed through Forsythe, killing him, and hit Douglas O. Kelley in the throat. It took weeks for him to recover. Kelley served in the 100th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, was captured at Charleston, escaped, and two weeks later was recaptured at Hendersonville before being sent to Libby Prison. The Kelley family settled Kelleys Island in Lake Erie.

"LIBBY LIFE" by Col. Federico Fernández Cavada

Colonel Federico Fernández Cavada, who belonged to the Hot Air Balloon Unit of the Union Army, was captured during the Battle of Gettysburg and sent to Libby. Cavada was released in 1864 and later published a book titled "LIBBY LIFE: Experiences of A Prisoner of War in Richmond, VA, 1863-64", in which he told of the cruel treatment which he and his fellow prisoners received in the Confederate prison.

In the introduction of the book he wrote, in pages 19 and 20, the following:

"It was a beautiful country through which we had just passed, but it had presented no charms to weary eyes that were compelled to view it through a line of hostile bayonets; we felt but little sympathy for the beautiful; on our haggard countenances only this was written: "Give us rest, and food."

"On the evening of the same day, our sorry column was marched through the streets of Richmond from the depot of the Virginia Central Railroad to the Libby Prison. The gloomy and forbidding exterior of the prison, and the pale, emaciated faces starring vacantly at us through the bars were repulsive enough, but it was at least a haven of the rest from the weary fast-march, and from the goad of the urging bayonet. Had we known that we were entering this loathsome prison-house not to leave it again for many, many weary days and months, more than one heart would have grown faint with a mournful presentiment, for there were among us some who were doomed never to recross its threshold as living men."

The Libby Chronicle

(The Libby Chronicle, Louis Beaudry, Albany, NY)

One of the most interesting documents to come out of Libby Prison is called the Libby Chronicle. This was a newsletter of sorts, written by the inmates of Libby during the summer of 1863 and read aloud by the editor every Friday morning. The most striking feature of this publication, composed in the midst of such hardship and brutality, is its irreverent humor.

In issue number two, for example, appears a poem entitled “Castle Thunder,” which offers a dryly witty perspective on prison life as in this verse on food:

We have eighteen kinds of food, though ‘twill stagger your belief, Because we have bread, beef and soup, then bread, soup and beef; Then we sep’rate around with’bout twenty in a group, And thus we get beef, soup and bread, and beef, bread and soup; For dessert we obtain, though it costs us nary red, Soup, bread and beef, (count it well) and beef and soup and bread.

This poem and others like it inspired hope in the miserable soldiers. The following week’s issue begins with a segment called “encore” which reads, “Yielding to pressing demand from those who heard and from many who did not hear the poem entitled ‘Castle Thunder,’ we reproduce it this week. We are certain that the uproarious laughter caused by this facetious article . . . has done more good in Libby than cartloads of Confederate medicine.”

However, the Libby Chronicle was not all fun and games. In it we see evidence of the inmates’ misery and desperation. Common among the men seems to have been antipathy towards Abraham Lincoln for allowing them to remain so long in prison without rescue. These men were firmly rebuked by the editors of The Chronicle, who wrote, “these officers evince more the spirit of spoiled children than that of manly courage and intelligence which should characterize the actions of the American soldier.”

Individual efforts were also undertaken by inmates to affect their release, as we seen in the example of “one young surgeon,” who wrote a letter to the editor of the Richmond Sentinel, promising that if he were released he would find the editor’s “Rebel son” and look after him until he could be returned home. According to the editors of the Chronicle, “this same officer was poltroon enough to offer to leave the Federal army if the Confederates would do something for him. But the Rebels didn’t want the poor Judas, and he finds he has eaten dirt without advantage.”

Escape from Libby

Libby Prison, 1865, from the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration.

More than one hundred prisoners took part in the February 1864 Libby Prison Escape. The Charleston Mercury reproduced “the following interesting account of the manner in which the exodus was accomplished”:

At the base of the east wall, and about twenty feet from the Cary street front, was discovered a tunnel, the entrance to which was hidden by a large rock, which fitted the aperture exactly. This stone, rolled away from the mouth of the sepulcher, revealed an avenue, which it was at once conjectured led to the outer world beyond. A small negro boy was sent into the tunnel on a tour of exploration, and by the time Major Turner and Lieutenant LaTouche gained the outside of the building, a shout from the negro announced his arrival at the terminus of the subterranean route. Its passage lay directly beneath the tread of three sentinels, who walked the breadth of the east end of the prison, across a paved alley way, a distance of more than fifty feet, breaking up inside of the enclosure in the rear of Carr warehouse.

So nicely was the distance gauged, that the inside of the enclosure was struck precisely, which hints strongly of outside measurement and assistance. Through connection once opened, the prisoners were enabled to worm themselves through the tunnel, one by one, and emerging at least sixty feet distant from any sentinel post, to retake themselves off, singly, through an arched gateway, to some appointed rendezvous. To reach the entrance of the tunnel it was necessary for the prisoners to cut through the hospital room and the closed stairway leading into the basement. All the labor must have been performed at night, and all traces of the work accomplished at night was closed up or cleared away before the morning light. The tunnel itself is a work of several months, being about three feet in diameter and at least sixty feet in length, with curvatures worked around rock.

(The Charleston Mercury, Particulars of the Escape of the Yankee Officers from the Libby Prison, February 16, 1864)

3 tunnels were built: the first ran into water and was abandoned. The second hit the buildings log foundation. The third reached a small carriage shed 15 m (50 ft) away.

Escapes were regular occurrences at both Federal and Confederate prisons. John Bray's (First New Jersey Cavalry) account of his escape from Libby Prison can be found at the CivilWarSources site (See external links).

Letters from Libby

A short but poignant piece in The Christian Recorder, reproduced here in its entirety:

The rules of Libby Prison allow but six lines for our soldier's letters in correspondence with their friends at home. Here is a specimen written within the limit:

"My Dear Wife. - Yours received - no hopes of exchange - send corn starch - want socks - no money - rheumatism in left shoulder - pickles very good - send sausages - God bless you - kiss the baby - Hail Columbia! - Your devoted husband."

(The Christian Recorder, A Prisoner’s Letter, February 11, 1865, Philadelphia, PA)

See also

• List of Civil War POW Prisons and Camps

After the war

In 1907, nails from Libby prison were melted down and used to cast the Pokahuntas Bell for the Jamestown Exposition. The front door of Libby Prison is currently on display in the museum at The American Civil War Center, located at the former Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.

External links

• Libby Prison in Encyclopedia Virginia
• "WWW Guide to Civil War Prisons" (2004)
• CivilWarSources
• Reprint of Official Publication #12, Richmond Civil War Centennial Committee, 1961- 1965, no copyright claimed
•  "Libby Prison". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 

Further reading

• Byrne, Frank L., "Libby Prison: A Study in Emotions," Journal of Southern History 1958 24(4): 430-444. in JSTOR
• Byrne, Frank L., ed. "A General Behind Bars: Neal Dow in Libby Prison," Civil War History 1962 8(2): pp. 164–183.
• Chesson, Michael B. "Prison Camps and Prisoners of War," in Steven E. Woodworth, ed. The American Civil War (1996), 466-78; good review of published studies.