Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Walter E. H. Fentress was a native of Virginia, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1849 to May 1879. Captured at Rodney, Mississippi in September 1863, he spent fourteen months as a Confederate prisoner. Fentress composed four volumes of memoirs, illustrated with numerous watercolors, for his daughter in the 1880s.

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.