Libby Confederate Prison

Item CON-10410

Description

Libby Prison was a Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. In 1862 it was designated to hold officer prisoners from the Union Army, taking in numbers from the nearby Seven Days battles(in which nearly 16,000 Union men and officers had been killed, wounded, or captured between June 25 and July 1 alone) and other conflicts of the Union's Peninsular campaign to take Richmond and end the war only a year after it had begun. As the conflict wore on the prison gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Prisoners suffered high mortality from disease and malnutrition. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into large open rooms on two floors, with open, barred windows leaving them exposed to weather and temperature extremes.

The building was built before the war as a tobacco warehouse and then used for food and groceries before being converted to a prison. In 1889, Charles F. Gunther moved the structure to Chicago and renovated it as a war museum. A decade later, the Coliseum Company dismantled the building and sold its pieces as souvenirs.