Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Finn’s Point National Cemetery is located about six miles northwest of Salem, New Jersey, at the north end of what was Fort Mott Military Reservation. Originally the United States purchased the land for the construction of the Finn’s Point Battery to protect the port of Philadelphia. By 1863, however, the grounds increasingly served as a burial site for Confederate prisoners of war who died at Fort Delaware. Finn’s Point was officially declared a national cemetery in 1875.The Confederate Monument was erected by the U.S. government in 1910 to memorialize Confederate soldiers buried at the cemetery. The 85-foot tall concrete and granite obelisk features bronze tablets listing the names of the 2,436 Confederate prisoners of war who died there. The Union Monument was installed in 1879 in memory of 135 Union guards who died while on duty at Fort Delaware and were interred at the cemetery.

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.