Gettysburg, Pennyslvania
(Unknown / Library of Congress)
Until 1863, both sides in the American Civil War of 1861β1865 used a parole system for prisoners. A captured soldier vowed not to fight until he had been exchanged for a soldier fighting for the opposition. But in 1863, when this picture was taken, the parole system proved untenable, because Confederate authorities would not recognize a black prisoner as equal to a white prisoner. The direct result was that the number of troops being held in prisons increased massively, on both sides.
Just over 400,000 soldiers were captured and placed in prison camps during the American Civil War. One in ten of all deaths during the war occurred in a prison camp β a total of more than 55,000 men lost their lives incarcerated.
βFor many weeks past, and long before the battle of Gettysburg, there were from four to five thousand Confederate prisoners confined in Fort Delaware. That fort is now crowded to its utmost capacity with a weltering mass of human beings, our own gallant Confederate soldiers, the sons and the brothers of our people, the stay and the pride of thousands of Southern families. Fort Delaware is the most unwholesome of their many dungeons.β
Richmond Enquirer, Virginia, July 28, 1863
