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In mid-1862, Union Army officers found Ship Island’s remote location to be an effective solution for troublesome civilians. Following the surrender of New Orleans, the commanding officer, General Benjamin Butler, took prompt reprisals against Confederate sympathizers displaying their sentiments. Pro-Confederate civilians found themselves promptly arrested and shipped to this small island twelve miles off the Mississippi coast. These political prisoners eventually found themselves incarcerated in a prison stockade located on the island’s western end, just outside the walls of Fort Massachusetts. Besides civilian political prisoners, the early population of Ship Island’s military stockade included a few Confederate soldiers sentenced for parole violations. Paroles were essentially promises made by captured soldiers to go home and not fight in future battles. If captured again on another battlefield, the paroled soldier could face severe punishment for breaking his oath of honor and again taking up arms. On Wednesday, June 4th, 1862, six Confederate soldiers stood in line before a squad of armed Union soldiers. Tried, convicted and found guilty of violating their paroles, the six had conspired, following their surrender at Fort Jackson, to cross battle lines and join Confederate forces in Mississippi. Their sentence for breaking their parole was death by firing squad. At the last minute, an order signed by General Butler was read stating that the six prisoners were to be "confined at hard labor upon the fortifications at Ship Island or the nearest military post." On June 16th, these same six Louisiana soldiers were transferred from their New Orleans prison to Ship Island. Federal soldiers were also sent to Ship Island as punishment, court-martialed for committing serious crimes or failing to maintain military discipline. These Union soldiers, actually military convicts, were also imprisoned inside the walls of the wooden military stockade. There they were kept under armed guard alongside political prisoners, suspected spies, parole violators and captured blockade-runners.
Depending upon punishment, prisoners faced performing hard labor along with confinement. This could mean unloading cargo from military supply ships or assisting work crews in the construction of Fort Massachusetts. Civilian workers with the U.S. Army began building the brick fort before the Civil War, but the arrival of Confederate forces forced suspension of construction in January 1861. Union forces returning nine months later found the fort’s brick walls stood only a few feet high and nowhere near completion. Several women were sentenced to Ship Island for pro-Confederate activities. While not confined with male prisoners in the military stockade or forced to do hard labor, living conditions were harsh and guards severely monitored their activities. Mrs. Eugenia Phillips survived on Ship Island for three months. The wife of a former U.S. Congressman from Alabama, the Confederate sympathies of Mrs. Phillips were well known to Federal officers. Accused of insulting behavior during a Union officer’s funeral procession, Phillips was arrested on June 30th, 1862 and sent by General Butler from New Orleans to Ship Island until further notice. Through intercession by her husband, Mrs. Phillips reluctantly took the oath of parole and was allowed to leave on September 18th, 1862. Beginning in late-1864, the first of several thousand Confederate soldiers boarded under guard a steam ship outward bound from New Orleans. A rash of escapes had proved the city’s cotton warehouses were inadequate as prisons. On October 5th, 1864, Union officials ordered 200 prisoners-of-war to depart for Ship Island. These men were to be then held on Ship Island until sent to prisons in the North. Neither criminals nor military convicts, these soldiers had earlier surrendered at different battles primarily in states along the northern Gulf coast. Their camp was not in Fort Massachusetts, the brick fort then under construction, or in the wooden prison stockade outside its walls. Instead, these prisoners-of-war were marched to a separate open area on the island’s north shore. Fenced off by barrels and wooden planks, guards walked the camp’s perimeter while prisoners occupied tents or slept in the open when necessary. By October 31st 1864, Union soldiers were guarding 1300 prisoners-of-war one-mile east of the fort plus the convicts and political prisoners in the wooden prison stockade beside the fort. From October 1864 until June 1865, the prisoner-of-war population climbed and fell as paroles were issued, prisoners exchanged, or groups were sent to facilities ashore. The camp’s highest population at one time rose to around 3,000 prisoners, following battles at Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, Spanish Fort and Blakeley, Alabama. Over the camp’s nine-months of activity, 5000 Confederate soldiers set foot on Ship Island.
Diaries and historic resources currently available do not mention whether prisoners-of-war helped build Fort Massachusetts, unlike the Confederate parole violators sent separately to Ship Island as punishment. A Union officer in 1865 did complain that Confederates had too much freedom. During an inspection tour, Lieutenant Colonel W.D. Smith noticed a dozen paroled Confederate officers moving freely on the island. Confederate privates worked at jobs outside the prisoner-of-war camp, including as clerks at the post headquarters. If later exchanged or released, the colonel reasoned that these soldiers could return home and draw plans detailing weaknesses in the island’s defenses. Controversy surrounds the quality of living conditions. Prisoners-of-war complained about inadequate shelter, living conditions and bad food. Friction existed between prisoners and their guards, African-American members of the island’s Federal garrison. When the original 200 Confederate prisoners-of-war stepped ashore in October, a mix-up among Union supply officers delayed delivery of tents, forcing prisoners to quarter in the open until shelters arrived a week later. Compounding conditions were the physical conditions of the captured soldiers. A Union surgeon described many prisoners as being 11 to 15 and 50 to 75 years old, limited duty personnel assigned by the manpower strapped Confederacy to garrison coastal forts. Finding fuel for cook fires and keeping warm was difficult. Little wood was available on the island’s treeless west-end so details of prisoners-of-war set out daily accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets. Hikes through miles of powdery, white sand to the island’s wooded eastern end was arduous, and made more so when dragging back loads of firewood to camp. In 1864, Colonel Ernest Holmstedt, a German immigrant formerly known as Von Holmstedt, commanded Ship Island’s Union forces, the 74th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment. Stung by a Union army inspector’s report that conditions were unfit in the prisoner-of-war camp, Holmstedt replied in his defense that the men were forced upon him in a rush without adequate preparation and that he was always asking for men, money, material and permission to build barracks. During nine months of activity in the prisoner-of-war camp, 153 prisoners are recorded as having died from diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia, scurvy, typhoid and dysentery. During the years 1863 to 1865, about 260 Union soldiers died from similar causes and were also buried on the island. Two of the deceased 153 prisoners-of-war died from gunshot wounds. Thinking he had permission to cook a potato in the kitchen area, sixteen-year-old Private J. C. Dunklin was shot after ignoring a guard’s order to leave. The cooks, themselves Confederate soldiers, had complained earlier about interference by other prisoners The second soldier to be shot, Sergeant Edward H. Inzer stood up one night in April of 1865 to shake sand from his blanket. One story suggests that guards thought the Texas cavalryman was signaling an escape attempt following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Ship Island’s prisoner-of-war camp emptied quickly following the war’s end, but the military stockade next to Fort Massachusetts continued to receive and hold Federal soldiers as prisoners for another five years after the war. To save expenses, the last several dozen convicts were escorted ashore by guards and sent to prisons in Louisiana and Arkansas, permanently closing the Ship Island Military Prison in April of 1870. |
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Last Updated:
1/6/03
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