Enlisted Men

Along this side of Fort Warren, Union soldiers in training and Confederate prisoners of war were quartered, often in adjoining rooms. The area also contained a schoolroom, a 1900-volume library, and a chapel used almost daily by the Southerners. Both groups fought monotony by playing football, pitching quoits, and joining in group songfests. North-South tensions often surfaced in taunts between them: when Unionists sang "John Brown's Body," Confederates answered by recalling the Union defeat at Bull Run, and when news of General Grant's capture of Fort Donelson reached Fort Warren, Union soldiers paraded with a sign reading "Bull Run Outdone."

Boston, Massachusetts · United States