Side 1
Confederate Military Prison
Near this site, from mid April to December 1862, a Confederate military prison held, under destitute conditions, 700 Union soldiers, most captured at Shiloh. They were imprisoned in a foul, vermin-abounding cotton depot, 200 feet long and 40 feet wide, without blankets and only the hard earth or wood planks as a bed. The cotton shed was situated between Tallapoosa Street and the Alabama River. Of the 700 Union prisoners, nearly 198 died in captivity. The survivors were moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama in December 1862.
Side 2Civil War Military Prisons
Records of the Commissary General of Prisoners list 198 Union prisoners, from the Montgomery military prison, buried at Montgomery. Most of these were listed as unknown. Subsequently, in 1868, the remains interred in the Montgomery cemetery were removed to the National Cemetery at Marietta, Georgia. Over 674,000 soldiers were taken captive during the Civil War. Often prisoners were crammed into facilities with disregard of capacity limits, hygiene, nutrition, or sanitation needs. These deplorable conditions existed in military prisons of both sides. More than 56,000 prisoners died in confinement, 30,218 in Confederate and 25,976 in Union prisons.
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