Libby Prison

Libby Prison, one of the most notorious prisons of the Civil War, housed mostly Union officers at the southeast corner of 20th and Cary streets in Richmond. Its appalling conditions of overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and rampant disease were chronicled by numerous inmates, including Union soldier Robert Sneden, who wrote that the prisoners “walk up and down, ragged, shoeless and crawling with vermin.” An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 prisoners of war passed through Libby during the Civil War, usually for a short stay before transfer to larger prisons such as Belle Isle or Andersonville. In 1889, the building was disassembled and rebuilt in Chicago as a Civil War museum. During the Civil War, the Union naval blockade closed many Richmond businesses that depended on trade, including tobacco factories, and once fighting began in 1861, dormant factories and warehouses were taken over for hospitals and prisons. A prison hospital was established in Seabrook’s Warehouse on 17th Street, while Castle Thunder and nearby Castle Lightning, both tobacco warehouses between 18th and 19th streets, served as prisons, the first for civilian criminals such as murderers and thieves and the second for Confederate deserters and soldiers who had committed crimes.

Richmond, Virginia · United States