The Political Prison: Seven Prisons

The Electric Shop on Alcatraz Island

Soldiers were not the only people incarcerated on Alcatraz Island during the US Civil War. Suspected Confederate sympathizers including politicians and newspaper editors found themselves locked up at this Union fort. The foundation of the wooden Electric Shop once supported a Political Prison, as it was called, that held people who spoke out against the war until such time that they swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. One of the men held here was C.L. Weller, brother of a former governor of California and Chairman of the State Democratic Committee. 

Should people be imprisoned for their beliefs?