To your right is the second Courthouse building of Rowan County. The first courthouse stood in the middle of the square, one block south. In 1860 Salisbury was already 100 years old with 50 public gas street lights and boasted a population of 2,420, fifth largest in the state.

This impressive Greek style courthouse, built in 1855, had been here only a short time when the local paper, The Carolina Watchman, reported that "secessionists were increasing their noise and agitation."

After the April 12, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, local citizens made the event the subject of rejoicing by firing the cannon. Shortly after, on May 9, editor J. J. Braner reported that the citizens were resigned to the fact that war was inevitable".

The call for troops fell on their minds "like a spark on powder" and when asked to send troops, the Governor John Ellis replied "You can get no troops from North Carolina." North Carolina was the last state to secede on May 20, 1861. Gov. Ellis lived here and died in July 1861, early on in the war. His grave is here just inside the Old English cemetery beside St. Luke’s Episcopal Church directly behind the old courthouse.

This courthouse played an important part at the end of the was also. Amidst the ruins of the town, the courthouse was spared. According to one story, Mr Meroney, who owned the adjoining warehouse, pleaded with General Stoneman to spare the structure even after it had already been set afire. General Stoneman agreed and it stands today, the home of the Rowan Museum.

At the corner of West Bank and South Jackson Street are two antebellum houses. The Andrew Murphy home on the left with a Greek revival double portico is still owned by the descendants of the original family and has the original wall paper in the parlor.

As you look to your right you will see the Dr. J. W. Hall house, with cast iron decoration added just after the war. It was the home of the ‘surgeon-in-charge’ at the post and prison. It was occupied by Stoneman’s troops and housed officers and their horses until Mrs. Hall, the doctor’s wife refused to let the horses trample her boxwood garden. Guided tours are available here and last about 30 minutes. There is an admission charge.

This was actually his sister’s home where he spent much time. It is an imposing Greek revival structure and must have had a great impact on visitors who could see it for Main Street - where we are headed - by turning right on Fisher Street and traveling for 3 blocks being careful to stop at all intersections or stop lights.

Back to Main Street turn south (that’s right) and proceed one block to turn left on Bank Street. In the second block of East Bank Street pull to your right and park just before the bridge.

This is the original entrance way to the Confederate prison pen, the sight of much suffering and grief for North and South alike.

Look at the print of the prison on the brochure and imagine you are at the bridge in the lower right hand corner. The large building on you right and the 3 brick hospitals just over the bridge would be on your left. Nothing remains of the original prison compound today.  For more documents / information on the prison click here.

Look to your extreme left beside the railroad track to see a small red cottage that served as a guard house. You can see it on the print at the bottom right corner and is the only building surviving from the time of the prison. It originally was a story and a half log house owned by William Valentine, a free man of color, who was also a barber.

As you cross the bridge you will be 40 yards from the main gate. Tall wooden palisades surrounded the entire prison grounds of about 16 acres. Just inside the walls a trench about 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep was called the "deadline" where anyone would be shot without question. The home guard walked along the top of the wall where there were 13 sentry posts. You could hear as they called out to each other in the darkness every half hour.

A cannon guarded the gate and was used twice when prisoners rushed the gate.

Meanwhile the prisoner sat huddled in make shift tents or overcrowded rooms in the large prison building. "There we sat, night after night in the thick darkness, inhaling the foul vapor and acrid smoke, longing for the morning when we could again catch a glimpse of the blue beaming sky."

By October 1864 with winter approaching, the buildings equipped for 2,500 men eventually grew to numbers of 8 to 10,000. The prison became a devil den of robbing, muggers even killing to exist, not to mention the lice in the straw beds. Local church records show they voted to give the carpets for use as blankets and the church bell for cannon.

A New York paper called this "stealing the livery of heaven to serve the devil." Once strong, able bodied, happy men but now changed to gaunt and ghostly forms, slowly perishing from hunger, exposure and ill treatment.

Many prisoners resorted to oak bark tea and corn cobs were ground and fried for food. Bayonets were now used as tent pegs, candleholders and shovels to dig trenches. Several times tunnels were discovered being dug under the wall to the railroad.

Every day boxcars loaded with more prisoners arrived.

By 1864 when A. D. Richardson wrote the N. Y. Tribune as a correspondent, he described the "heavy crushing weight of captivity. It is not hunger or cold, sickness of death which make prison life so hard to bear. But it is the utter idleness, emptiness , aimlessness of such a life. It is being through all the long hours of each day and night for weeks, months and years if one lives so long. Absolutely without employment, mental or physical, with nothing to fill the vacant mind, which always becomes morbid and turns inward to prey upon itself." Some made trinkets or walking sticks to sell to townspeople and some of these still are collected today.

The prisoners began to die at an alarming rate.

Near the gate was a small brick blacksmith shop known as the dead house. Prisoners who died were deposited there before their journey – the short distance to the cornfield burying ground. The were loaded 5 at a time "hatless, shoeless, and coatless".

In the fall of ’64 correspondent Browne wrote "I saw men wandering back and forth their heads bowed, their eyes searching the ground for a stray bone or morsel of food dropped from some weaker hand. I saw men with clasped fingers and streaming eyes praying for their dear over at home, into whose loving eyes they would never look again. I saw men in delirium beat themselves and curse God. And I saw shuddering as I looked, the dead cart on its morning and in it God’s images tiered up like sticks of wood. Death or desertion were the only sure chances of release for our men.

Now as you enter the prison site turn right on Long Street. You are approximately at the corner of the 2^nd brick hospital building. Turn back to your right and then left 2 blocks, along the railroad track until you come to the handsome iron gates at the bottom of the hill. The entrance to the National Cemetery.

¹ Report by COL. Oscar Mack, August 18, 1871

Just beyond the tallest monument are 18 headstones. One for each of the trenches that run from here to the back wall where you will see 18 more stones to mark the end of each trench. Estimates of the head from all causes, disease, hunger, winter…… range from 5,000 by some to 11,700 as recorded on the monument to 12, 844 by government records. Some feel these numbers were exaggerated.

The darkest part for the town of Salisbury was yet to come. Gen. Gegove Stoneman had orders to rid the confederacy. He thought he was coming to rescue prisoners but they had already been released over a month earlier. February 22, 1865 at 12:30 in the afternoon a column 3 miles long could be seen as 2,822 prisoners walked out the gate of the prison for the last time. Although for all practical purposes the war had ended on April 9^th when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox Courthouse. Undaunted and perhaps unaware Stoneman approaches Salisbury from the north in the early morning of April 12. The skirmish along Old Mocksville Road lasted only a short time and by 9 a.m. 1364 defenders of the town were captured. The editor of the paper vanished. Salisbury lay under siege. Citizens waited to see what would happen. Guards were posted at private houses. The remnant of a confederate flag was carried away. That same afternoon Stoneman set out to take the Yadkin River Bridge but did not succeed in burning the bridge defended by Col. Zebulon York. That night Stoneman left for Statesville but he left behind an unbelievable list of destruction. The garrison buildings, hospital, foundry and machine shops, the depot and car shops, the confederate distillery were all committed to flames. The fire could be seen fifteen to twenty miles in the country. Out of every storage warehouse in Salisbury had been carted wagon loads of blankets, overcoats, shoes and underclothing…and they were heaped in piles on the roadway of Innes Street. Yankee ready lighted torches touched ablaze the piled up loot. Tongues of fire shot in and out of scorched leather and charred woolen garments that broadcast a dense smoke screen set adrift intermingled acrid smells of the hospital drug.  The length of four squares was a burning mass.

Editor O. O. Bruner said "These days will long be remembered by our citizens as the saddest and most distressing in our history."

For more information you may want to consult the definitive study by Louis Brown called The Salisbury Prison at the Rowan Public Library and other collections and diaries at the History Room on Fisher Street. Our site also features a series of pages with images of original documents from the Register of Deeds and other sources. The Rowan Museum also has civil war artifacts.

Return to the Visitor Center by going straight out the main gate along Military Avenue. Turn right on South Main going up to the Square 5 blocks and then right on block.

Thank you for traveling through our town and please come back to see us.