Cahaba Prison
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Cahaba Prison is a site in Alabama where the Confederacy held Union soldiers during the American Civil War. Cahaba Prison was named for the small Alabama town of Cahaba (sometimes spelled Cahawba), that lay nearby at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba River, not far from Selma. The building was built as a cotton and corn shed measuring roughly 193 by 116 feet (59 by 35 m), with walls 8 to 10 feet high and only partially roofed over. The entire center area was left open. Into this small stockade the Confederates crowded between 3,000 and 5,000 men from late 1863 until the end of the war in 1865, when Union forces liberated it during Wilson's Raid. Ironically, many of these freed prisoners perished in the subsequent Sultana disaster.
[edit] Conditions
Estimates suggest that each man in the prison had only six square feet (0.6 m²) of living space (U.S. Army regulations at the time required that military posts allow at least 42 square feet (3.9 m²) of living space per soldier.) In late February 1865, heavy rains caused the Alabama River to flood the prison grounds at Cahaba. The water was so deep that on the morning after the high water reached the stockade, the Confederates in charge floated through the prison gate in boats. For four days and nights, prisoners were left to stand in waist-high freezing water. Guards finally allowed the prisoners to leave the compound to gather driftwood, which was stacked to form platforms for the men. John Walker, a private with the 50th Ohio Infantry, was one prisoner lucky enough to find a few pieces of heavy timber and cordwood, which he and seven comrades stacked high enough to clear the water. There they sat, back to back, for two days. Finally, 700 prisoners were taken to nearby Selma, while 2,300 waited in the flooded prison.
Cooking was done by the prisoners themselves in the open area in the center of the prison yard. There was a single fireplace in the building and fires were sometimes built upon the earthen floor of the barracks. The firewood, when furnished at all, was either green sap pine or decayed oak from old fields. The daily rations for the prisoners consisted of 10 to 12 ounces (280 to 340 g) of corn meal (including ground cobs and husks), and five to seven ounces (140 to 200 g) of bacon or beef. But in the warm months, the meat rations often gave off such a nauseating smell that only a few of the men could force themselves to eat it.
The sleeping arrangements consisted of rough bunks, without straw or bedding of any kind, under a leaky roof which extended out from the brick wall. These bunks could accommodate only 432 men. The supply of water for drinking, cooking, washing, and bathing was conveyed from an artesian well along an open street gutter for 200 yards (200 m) into the prison. In its course the stream gathered the washings of Confederate soldiers and citizens, the slops of tubs, and the spittoons of groceries, offices, and hospitals.
[edit] References
- Hawes, Jesse. (1888) Cahaba: A Story of Captive Boys in Blue.
- Reed, Charles B. (1925) The Curse of Cahawba.
- Hasseltine, William Best. (1930) Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology.
- Bryant, William O. (1990) Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster.
