The Civil War Prisons Message Board

Re: Hart's Prison New York
In Response To: Hart's Prison New York ()

Hart's Island was opened as a Union POW camp in 1865 according to Lonnie R. Speer's "Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War" (Stackpole Books, 1997). Speer gives a description of Hart's Island on pages 253-255.

There is a CMSR for Private Ferdinand H. HAMM, Company H, 48th Mississippi Infantry. Your posting suggests that you already have those records, but if not, I would urge you to get a copy either from the National Archives directly, or through the Military Records Research Service that supports these Civil War Message Boards.

Can you give us the date of FHH’s capture and the date of his release from prison after the war ended? The bulk of the POWs being held at Fort Delaware were released in June 1865, but a substantial number who had offered to take the Oath prior to the fall of Richmond (April 2, 1865) were allowed to do so and released six weeks earlier in May 1865. In all cases, orders were issued to provide transportation by water and by rail to a point nearest the released man’s home.

You wrote: >>>F H sort of vanished after the war and he was let go, I wonder if most prisoners returned home. He was from Warren County Mississippi.<<<

I would venture to say that “most” [meaning 50+%] of the Confederate prisoners who were released from POW camps at the end of the war returned home. According to Colonel Hoffman writing to General Grant at the end of May 1865, there were still 50,000 Confederate POWs, officers and enlisted men being held in camps throughout the North. I don’t know of anyone trying to compile the statistics to document the answer to your question.

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society
New Society Website Location: www.fortdelaware.org

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