Castle Morgan & Jesse Hawes

Union soldiers held captive in Cahaba's Civil War Prison called the place Castle Morgan in honor of a daring Confederate raider. In 1888 Jesse Hawes published a book about his imprisonment in Castle Morgan and drew a diagram from memory. The prison's water closet was a six hole outhouse constantly flushed into the Alabama River by artesian well water. Jesse Hawes and two other prisoners once escaped through the latrine, but after two days on the run they were caught and returned to Castle Morgan.

Alabama · United States