The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

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[38] Illinois, was taken for the accommodation of Confederate prisoners in the West, while in the East the forts along the seaboard, including Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, Forts Lafayette and Columbus at New York, Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay, Fort Delaware in the Delaware River, and the Old Capitol at Washington, were converted into prisons. In Richmond, tobacco-factories which could be transformed with comparatively little work into places for the detention of prisoners, were leased. Among these were Liggon's, Crew's, Castle Thunder, Pemberton, and others. Later Libby, which had been an old warehouse, became the chief officers' prison. Castle Pinckney in Charleston Harbor, and some empty buildings in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were also used.

As the war went on, it was found that such accommodations were entirely inadequate. The capacity of the forts along the seaboard was limited, with the exception of Fort Delaware, and besides they were soon full of political prisoners. Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor, sheltered a number of Confederate privates during the first year of the war, but later was used chiefly for the confinement of political prisoners and general officers. Likewise, the Old Capitol at Washington, which had been built after the destruction of the Capitol during the War of 1812, and in which for several years the sessions of Congress had been held, while the present Capitol was building, was very seldom used for prisoners of war, but was devoted to the detention of citizens suspected of disloyalty to the Union. The pressure upon the accommodations at Richmond led to the transfer of the private soldiers to an enclosure on Belle Isle in the James River.

For the purpose of better administration, the government at Washington, in October, 1861, appointed LieutenantCol-onel William Hoffman, one of the officers who had been surrendered in Texas, commissary-general of prisoners. Colonel Hoffman, for he was soon promoted, served to the end of the war, though for a few months he was transferred west of the