Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Writing from camp near Brandy’s Station, Virginia, John S. Judd of the Third New Jersey Volunteers writes: "I think that I have been through the ‘mill’. I’ve been wounded a wound from which I will never entirely recover, have been a prisoner, hunted lice in Libby Prison, felt the pangs of hunger on Belle Island, have been sick with the fever in Hospital and so on…. "

Type: Exhibition case

Name: Prisons and Prisoners

Detail: The story of prisoners in both the North and the South is a dark chapter in the history of the Civil War. During the war, 409,608 soldiers, one out of seven, became prisoners, and 56,194 did not survive the experience. Incarcerated soldiers from both sides endured poor sanitation, inadequate food and shelter, and disease. After Grant ended prisoner exchanges in 1864, the conditions in overcrowded Confederate prisons were especially dire. Many New Jersey soldiers were imprisoned in these notorious jails, particularly at Libby Prison in Virginia. One of the most notorious Union prisons, Fort Delaware, was located just off the coast of New Jersey on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River.