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6 “it looks like starvation here” Belle isle, 1863–64 As long as the exchange cartel remained in effect, Belle isle remained an unpleasant , but generally temporary, place to be confined. After being closed following the big exchange of september 1862, the facility reopened in January to accommodate prisoners from fredericksburg and stone’s River. most of them were gone by early may, when the battle of Chancellorsville resulted in another large group of prisoners bound for Richmond. The majority of them stayed only until the 13th, when they began the thirty-four-mile march to the point of exchange. Belle isle was again vacant, but the tents remained in place in case they were needed.1 They soon were. A trickle of prisoners reached the island in June, and in the wake of Gettysburg, the trickle became a flood. more exchanges followed, but with the difficulties that were quickly developing, arrivals began outnumbering departures. on september 1 the Richmond Examiner reported that there were between four thousand and five thousand yankees on Belle isle.The prison, the paper added, was “beautifully laid out.” When maj. isaac h. Carrington conducted an inspection of Richmond prisons in mid-november, he reported that there were sixty-three hundred Union prisoners there.2 The captives entered the pen with very little. strapped for resources, the Confederates searched every man they captured. items of military issue, such as canteens , haversacks, belts, and rubber blankets, were virtually always taken. Personal items sometimes were and sometimes were not, depending, it seemed, upon the whims of the individuals conducting the search. Among the unlucky ones were the men who entered Belle isle with henry G. Tracy of the eighteenth Connecticut .Tracy wrote that they lost silver pencils and gold pens during the search process . nathan Webb of the first maine Cavalry was searched at libby before being 92 • Chapter 6 sent to Belle isle. he noted that DickTurner treated a prisoner “favorably” if he saluted and addressed him as “sir.” “if otherwise it would go hard with him,” Webb added. in one case an impertinent prisoner ended up in the libby dungeon after Turner had confiscated everything he could find.3 for the arriving prisoners, first impressions of Belle isle were universally negative . “We were put in a field of about 3 acres,” wrote Wisconsin soldier horace smith. “not a spear of grass growing. it is nothing but sand full of lice and vermin .” smith had been at Belle isle about three weeks when he concluded, “i would give anything i could get for the privilege of eating and sleeping with the hogs at home.” Webb put the prison portion of the island at about two and one-half acres. An eight-foot-deep ditch, he noted, surrounded it, with an embankment built up around the ditch. for John Boudwin of the Thirteenth massachusetts, the limited space was a major factor in the discomfort of the prison. he lamented, “if we only could enjoy the privilege of the island it would be of some comfort but here we are pushed in like so many sheep in a pasture.” William Tippett of the Union firstvirginia and William Dolphin of the second new york Cavalry both reached Belle isle in september, and the two new prisoners recorded similar first impressions . “This place is the worst that i ever imagined. hell is hardly a name for it for here a man suffers cold hunger & thirst all the time,”Tippett wrote. Dolphin was even more succinct. “Bell island [is a] lousy dirty hole. hell is a palace to it.”4 At between four and five acres, the prison portion of the island was slightly larger then the diarists’ estimates. Webb was correct about the depth of the ditch that surrounded the prisoners. Guard posts could be found every forty feet along the embankment that followed it. The cookhouse, a hospital, and quarters for Confederates sat outside the prison. near the hospital was a cemetery.5 As smith mentioned, lice were a major problem for the Belle isle prisoners, especially during warmer weather. After only two days there, he added, “We have regular louse hunt[s] twice a day. strip our clothes off and look them over.” George hegeman of the fifty-second new york put the number of daily hunts at two or three. The ground, he wrote, was “alive with vermin,” creating a situation “worse than [the] egyptian Plague.” Webb agreed, writing, “The ground litterally crawls with great body lice...

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