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Fate of the Prisoners

After being evacuated from Camp Lawton, many prisoners, like Robert Sneden, were held in the prison at Savannah until they were exchanged.  They were then loaded on boats and taken north, many to recuperate in the Naval Academy hospital in Annapolis, Maryland, which was manned at that time by the army.

Some POWs were sent to prisons in South Carolina, while about 5,000 others, including Henry Lightcap, were transported to Blackshear in south Georgia.  The prisoners spent less than a month at Blackshear before they were moved once again. Some went sent to the prison in Florence, South Carolina but the majority was sent to Thomasville, Georgia.  They spent just 2 weeks in Thomasville before being marched 60 miles to Albany to be loaded on trains, arriving back in Andersonville on Christmas Eve, 1864 (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/civil-war-prisons).

Large scale prisoner exchanges began in April, 1865 with Vicksburg, Mississippi serving as one of the exchange points.  From there, the former POWs were placed on steamships and shipped north. Disaster stuck one of these ships, the SS Sultana.  On April 27, 1865, the Sultana was overloaded with POWs released from Cahaba (Alabama) and Andersonville. One of the ships boilers exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee killing most of those aboard (http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/exhibits/disasters/sultana.htm).

A note about the museum’s database:  This is a work in progress and will be updated as additional information about prisoners is discovered.  If you have information on any of the Camp Lawton POWs or the Confederate soldiers who manned the prison, we would like to hear from you.  You can reach us at: Magnolia_Springs.park@dnr.ga.gov

How did death rates at Camp Lawton compare to other Civil War prison camps? See the charts below- clicking or tapping a pie slice will give exact numbers. All numbers are estimates, as it is very challenging to find precise records of deaths.

 

 

Of course, not only did death rates vary by prison, the number of deaths per month varied, as prisons were occupied in different lengths of time. See the table below:

Prison Death
Rate
Months
in
Service
Ave.
Deaths
per
Month
Sumter (CSA).2962166.6
Lawton (CSA).072362.5
Elmira (USA).2415197.5
Douglas (USA).1729153.5