"Night at the Museum coming to Andersonville NHS in Georgia

Andersonville National Historic Site

Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia is preserves the site of the massive Camp Sumter Civil War prison and is home to the National Prisoner of War Museum.

The park is normally open during daylight hours, but on November 16th visitors will have a rare opportunity to explore the national park area after dark.

The national historic site and museum will open its doors to the public beginning at 6 p.m. on November 16th to allow visitors to explore the museum and its exhibits, attend special films and hear a presentation on the 15 American Indian men from the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters who were held prisoner at Camp Sumter.

In addition, lanterns will light the way from the museum to the restored northeast corner of the prison stockade. Living history presenters will be there to interact with visitors and portray life at Andersonville during the winter of 1864-1865.

It should be a fascinating event and will be the last chance to see the prison after dark until 2014.

Please click here to learn more about "Night at the Museum.

Please click here to learn more about Andersonville National Historic Site.

Castle Morgan - Civil War Prison in Alabama

A low rectangle of earth and broken brick marks the site of the Cahaba military prison at Old Cahawba in Alabama.

Known locally as Castle Morgan, apparently in honor of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, the prison was established by the Confederate military in 1863 to house Union prisoners of war, many of whom were taken by the troops of General Nathan Bedford Forrest in his operations in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Making use of an uncompleted cotton warehouse on a bluff overlooking the Alabama River, the Confederates established the prison they thought would contain 400 or so prisoners.

Unfortunately, Confederate prisoner of war camps overflowed in 1864 and 1865 due to the decision by President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant to end all prisoner exchanges with the South. As a result of this decision, thousands of Union soldiers remained confined in prisoner of war camps across the South and as the number of prisoners taken grew, the rough prisons overflowed with inmates.

At Cahaba, for example, a facility with only 432 bunks overflowed with more than 3,000 prisoners by 1865. The stockade surrounding the facility measured only 125 by 200 feet and with so many men confined inside, there was only 8 square feet of space per soldier. 

It is generally thought that around 147 men died while confined at Castle Morgan. They are memorialized in a special area adjacent to Old Capital Cemetery in Old Cahawba.

The prisoners were released when the war came to an end in 1865 and today little more than an open space of grass and the low rectangular mound of earth and rubble remain to remind visitors that the prison ever existed. Interpretive markers ring the site and the memory of Castle Morgan is an important part of the Old Cahawba Archaeological Site. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/oldcahawbaprison.

St. Augustine, Florida - Part Eight

This is a view of the interior of the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine.

One of the most noted figures in Florida history was held prisoner here for a time.

On October 21, 1837, the great Seminole leader Osceola was seized by the U.S. Army when he appeared under a white flag for a previously arranged negotiation near St. Augustine. The action remains one of the more deplorable episodes in the history of the U.S. military.

Osceola and several other Seminole leaders were brought here to the Castillo, then called Fort Marion by the U.S. Army, and imprisoned in some of the rooms in the interior of the old fort. Two of the other leaders managed to escape, but Osceola was seriously ill and could not.

Following the escape, he and his family were placed aboard a ship in Matanzas Bay and sent to Fort Moultrie near Charleston, South Carolina. There he died from sickness on January 20, 1838, just three months after he was seized while under the protection of a white flag.

He is buried at Fort Moultrie, far from his Florida home, but his figure remains larger than life in Florida today. Revered by the state's Native American community, Osceola is also the symbol of Florida State University.

Our series on historic St. Augustine, Florida will continue. Until the next post, you can read more by visiting www.exploresouthernhistory.com and looking for the St. Augustine heading.