(Photo)
Four days before, the Confederate
cavalry General
John Hunt Morgan and
364 of
his men had been
captured at the end of
the longest cavalry raid of the war.
They had
terrorized the populations of Indiana
and Ohio as
they traveled more than
700 miles through those states in 25
days. Because
Camp Chase, the prisoner-of-war camp
outside
Columbus, was not
considered secure enough for such
desperate
prisoners, Morgan's raiders were
confined at
different locations from which
they would have no chance of escaping.
Union Dept.
Comdr.General Ambrose Burnside declared
the
prisoners ineligible for
parole, sentenced to be imprisoned for
the duration
of the war.
Morgan and 30 of his officers were
thrown in with
the general prison population of felons
in the
penitentiary in Columbus.
They were denied all visitors, and had
to endure
the humiliation of having their heads
shaved and
wearing convict
clothes. These soldiers were
occasionally punished
by being put on a bread and water diet
and placed in
solitary
confinement in dank, unlighted prison
cells. All of
these actions were contrary to the rules
governing
the confinement
of prisoners of war. On the night of
November 27,
1863, Morgan and six of his officers
escaped. They
had worked for 20
days with two small knives to gouge out
a tunnel to
freedom.
Prison rules changed after the escape.
War prisoners
were separated from the rest of the
prison
population and kept on
the third floor under constant military
guard. The
state penitentiary's involvement in the
war ended on
March 18, 1864,
when Secretary of War Stanton ordered
all remaining
Confederates transferred to the
notorious
prisoner-of-war camp,
Fort Delaware.
The Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus
was a
three-story stone structure with heavy
iron bars on
the windows and
doors of cell blocks. It was used to
house hardened
convicts until July 30, 1863, when David
Todd,
governor of Ohio,
informed warden Nathaniel Merion that
the prison
would also house Confederate prisoners
of war.