This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
In July of 1863, Union troops arrived on this island to build a prison. By December, some 5,600 Confederates—many captured during the Battle of Lookout Mountain—had arrived here to face one of the worst winters on record in Rock Island. By March, 679 prisoners had died.
They were the first of some 12,000 prisoners who spent time here. In Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell called Rock Island Barracks "the Andersonville of the North," in reference to its notorious southern counterpart.
Unlike Andersonville, however, there was at least the remnants of civilization within these walls. The Rock Island prison consisted of 84 barracks, 22 by one hundred feet, arranged in six north to south rows of 14 barracks each, with a wide main avenue bisecting the camp. Each barracks contained a kitchen and sleeping quarters for 120 men. In addition, there was a pest house and a 560-bed hospital.
Each of the barracks determined its own lifestyle. One became the gambling den with Keno and other games of chance; another became a school, with prisoners who had been teachers holding classes in subjects such as French.
Citizens from surrounding communities stocked a prison library, while church services were held by the post chaplain and visiting ministers. Some of the prisoners made extra income by making buttons from local shells or carving animals and simple figures from coal.
By 1864, sixteen of the barracks had been fenced off from the rest to house 1,797 prisoners who had gone over to the Union side in return for better rations. These were known as "galvanized Yankees."
Of the 12,000 prisoners at the Rock Island Barracks, 1,964 died. They lie buried nearby in a Confederate cemetery, still maintained. Forty-one prisoners managed to escape, many with the help of southern sympathizers in local communities.
Today, little is left of the prison, save for strange small figures carved in coal which surface now and then in area antique shops.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
