This is a "Birds Eye View" of the Salisbury Prison Compound.  This painting was made in 1864 and details the entire facility.

This picture of the Salisbury Prison appeared in Harper's Weekly
for June 14, 1862 ( vol. 6, p. 375 )

The picture below was discovered among some private papers in the early 1950's.  It was given by the New York Historical Society to the North Carolina Department of Archives.

Baseball was played at Salisbury in the early part of 1862 when POWs from New Orleans and Tuscaloosa were sent to Salisbury. W.C. Bates mentioned the advent of Baseball at Salisbury in his Stars and Stripes but regretted "that we have no official report of the match-game of baseball played in Salisbury between the New Orleans and Tuscaloosa boys, resulting in the triumph of the latter; the cells of the Parish Prison were unfavorable to the development of the skill of the 'New Orleans nine.' "¹ Prisoner Gray mentions that baseball was played nearly every day the weather permitted. Claims have been made that these were the first baseball games played in the South.

This picture is an indication of the hospital conditions in the Salisbury Prison.  In the background you may note the dead being loaded onto a cart for burial  in the trenches with a swing & a heave.

This is the only structure that remains from the Confederate Prison. It is located in the 200 block of East Bank Street.  It originally was a story and a half log house owned by William Valentine, a free man of color, who was also a barber.  Across the railroad  tracks from the guardhouse a commissary house once stood. The railroad arrived in 1855 and was the perfect corridor for shipping supplies. On December 9, 1861 the first of 120 union prisoners  were unloaded at Salisbury.

This is an original document of the Confederate States Prison Rules

This is an artists rendition of the "Massacre of the Union Prisoners
attempting to escape from the Salisbury Prison on November 25, 1864.

The following is a rare picture of the Trinity Guard made during the summer of 1861 before the main college building in Randolph County, North Carolina. The man in the center is Braxton Craven; to his right is Professor W.T. Gannaway, and to his left is Professor Isaiah L. Wright. Those in the background were the men of the first confederate guard unit at the Salisbury Prison.

The first Guard unit of the Salisbury Confederate Prison

Visit the National Cemetery on Military Drive to see where Salisbury Civil war prisoners are buried in 18 trenches 240 feet in length with estimates placing the number in the trenches at 11,700¹ and the individual graves of another 412 prisoners of which 283 are unknown.
¹ Report by COL. Oscar Mack, August 18, 1871

US Monument
This is the south side of the monument erected by the United States Government at the Salisbury Cemetery in 1876. The statement from the monument is enlarged below.

Additional information about the Salisbury Confederate Prison can be obtained here:

• Rowan Public Library - click here*.

• The Salisbury Confederate Prison Association - click here*.