Belle Isle: prison in the James, 1862-1865

This thesis is a socio-military history of the development and use of Belle Isle Military Prison; possibly the most notorious of all Civil War prisons. The prison compound stood on a seventy-five acre island in the James River, approximately one-half mile west of wartime Richmond. The island's use as a prison lasted intermittently from July 18, 1862 to February, 1865. During this period the Confederate authorities confined to Belle Isle over 20,000 Federal prisoners of war. The Confederate authorities were unprepared from the very outset of the Civil War to deal with such a large number of prisoners. Due to lack of planning and foresight, the Confederate authorities improvised in a piecemeal fashion and with "stop-gap" measures a prisoner-of-war system. Confederate prisons came into existence merely to relieve the overcrowding at other prison sites. Belle Isle was such a stop-gap measure. The island prison was used only after the other Richmond prisons were congested. The Federal prisoners at Belle Isle suffered from a number of diseases and illnesses, including pneumonia, pellagra, scurvy and dysentery. Possibly more devastating to the prisoners constitution were the psychological effects of prison confinement. So dismal were the conditions on the island that it became known by many prisoners as the "most infamous bit of land in the national geography." Master of Arts