Point Lookout prison camp was established immediately after the Battle of Gettysburg and was operated by the Union Army from September 1863 to June 1865. Near this site, 52,264 Confederate soldiers, sailors, and civilians were imprisoned during the War Between the States. Although the camp was built to hold 10,000 prisoners, at times it held more than twice that number of military prisoners and civilians. The account says that despite available funds to house and feed prisoners adequately, inhumane conditions, active persecution, exposure to the elements, disease, starvation, and indiscriminate shootings caused thousands of deaths, though the record remains incomplete. It further says that Col. William Hoffman, Commissary General of Union Prisons, saved more than two million dollars allotted for Confederate prisoners' care by denying them enough food to prevent starvation. The Point Lookout Prisoner of War Descendents Organization was founded to honor its members' ancestors and to publicize what it calls the true story of the prisoners' treatment. In 2002, the Maryland State Park Service and U.S. Veterans Administration began requiring speeches and reenactments to be submitted for censoring and took other actions directed only at Southern heritage organizations, including prohibiting the display of the Confederate flag over the mass grave of thousands who fought and died under the Confederate banner. In 2003, the organization purchased this land to create a memorial plaza free of government interference and restrictions and to list additional documented names of the dead not included on the monument at the adjacent Federal Cemetery. The site also presents flags associated with the Confederacy, including those of the seceded states arranged in a circle, the Bonnie Blue flag, the first, second, and third national flags of the Confederate States of America, the Cherokee Confederation flag representing five tribes allied with the Confederate government, the Saint Andrew Cross as the pattern for the Confederate battle flag, the organization’s own flag, and the Maryland flag, which is set apart because Maryland was occupied by the Federal government and its legislators were imprisoned before the state had the opportunity to secede.