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6 The Lives of the Prisoners For prisoners arriving in Columbus, the recent days or weeks had already been trying. Capture, layovers in jails that were often filthy, and long marches and rides in freight cars proved difficult for all and debilitating for many. After all this they reached the Ohio capital only to learn that a four-mile march from the depot to Camp Chase still lay ahead. Under the best of circumstances it was an unpleasant prospect. Inclement weather made it much worse. George Moffett recalled stepping off the train very early in the morning of New Year’s Day 1864 to a temperature of twentyfour degrees below zero with a stiff gale blowing. Although his memory may have exaggerated the circumstances a bit,the winter of his arrival was undeniably bitter. “The four-mile tramp across the bleak Scioto [River] bottoms to Camp Chase in the face of that cutting cold wind was an event in our prison experience never to be forgotten,” he wrote. Upon reaching the camp, the “fresh fish” stood in the cold for nearly an hour as officials took down their names, ranks, and units. “It was not cheerful tidings,” Moffett recalled, “when the officials informed us that two of the sentries had frozen to death on their posts that night.”1 Pvt. James W. Anderson was among a group of prisoners who arrived on April 3, 1864. The men were first formed into a rank and ordered to give up all valuables. Anderson had a federal $10 bill, which he did not attempt to conceal. He surrendered it, receiving a receipt for the greenback the next day. The prisoners were then searched. “It was really amusing,” Anderson wrote, “to see the prisoners working to smuggle in money, and other things such as pocket knives, etc. which were reported contraband.” Anderson received a less thorough search than many of his fellow prisoners , a courtesy he attributed to the fact that he did not complain when the search was announced. James Taswell Mackey of the Forty-eighth Tennessee noted a similar procedure in his diary after arriving at Camp Lives of the Prisoners / 105 Chase on January 18, 1864. He added, “Receipts are given for greenbacks, but none for Confederate [money].”2 Once the men had been searched and their names recorded, they headed for their new homes. For enlisted men, the overwhelming majority of Camp Chase prisoners, this meant Prison 2 or 3. “We had had nothing to eat all day,” Pvt. Anderson wrote, “and I for one wanted none. I rolled myself in my shawl and stretched my weary bones out on the cleanest bunk I could see and slept until morning.” Upon awaking, Anderson talked to some veteran prisoners, learning that he was an inmate of Prison 3. “It was an enclosure of about four acres,” he recorded, “and contained 69 mess rooms which, with a forced effort, could be made to bunk twenty men.” Anderson was apparently better educated than many of his fellow enlisted men. Looking around, he concluded, “I don’t think a much ruffer set of fellows could be found.” Although most officers were soon transferred to other prisons, a few remained at Camp Chase. They were housed in Prison 1, along with the political prisoners still remaining . “Within these limits, between three and four hundred officers of all ranks, up to a Brigadier-General, were confined,” noted prisoner James W. A. Wright.3 The collapse of the cartel brought the realization that, despite Hoffman ’s wishes to the contrary, Camp Chase was to remain a Union prison for the duration of the war. It also meant increasing numbers of prisoners, far beyond what the camp was ever intended to hold, that would soon tax the capacity of the three prisons. As Camp Chase evolved from a temporary to a permanent depot for Confederate prisoners, it became obvious that the temporary measures of temporary commanders would no longer suffice. Soon after assuming command, Col. Richardson noted, “The original structures, having been put up in the spring of 1861 in a very temporary manner [are] nearly, if not quite, worn out and useless.” He proposed an extension and at least the partial rebuilding of Prisons 1 and 2 and the relocation of Prison 3 “to put the prisons and camp in a sense of thorough repair.” The plan was intended to increase the capacity of the prisons to hold “at least...

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