This location has the National Prisoner of War museum, the Confederate Fort Sumter prison site, and a national cemetery.
The museum covers all wars the United States has been involved in. It is a very well done museum and includes videos of POW’s from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars. There are notes and pictures from the Civil War describing the horrible conditions at both the Confederate prisons and the Union prisons.
Fort Sumter was hastily built to reduce over crowding at other Confederate prisons. Over 13,000 Union soldiers died (28%) in the prison from malnutrition, bad medical care, scurvy, and dysentery. The camp, which was in operation for 14 months, was opened February 1864 was designed for as an overflow detention center but grew to 45,000 prisoners.
There are a number of monuments throughout the prison from various states in the North commemorating their soldiers.
The Park Service placed bench marks showing locations of wells.
Prisoners were forced to use this small stream for water. Further downstream, they used the stream as a bathroom. Unfortunately, the guards used the stream upstream from the prisoners to drink and to defecate.
Prisoners attempted to escape by digging tunnels, but were not successful. There are several fenced areas where you can see the holes.
The camp was surrounded by tall wood poles installed by slaves. The encampment was about 16 acres of this fence. Entrances were double doors with steel frames.
Guard towers were installed every one hundred feet.
Cement poles mark boundries.
The National Cemetery is still in use for our veterans. The cemetery is well marked making it easy to separate civil war soldiers from current soldiers.
There is an ongoing attempt to name soldiers and find their date of death. Most graves only have a number and identified name.
You will notice there are grave sites with headstones only inches apart. These were mass graves with the headstones identifying the bodies in the grave.
