Sometimes I feel a touch of sorrow when I look off my stand on the garrison and see the amount of suffering and wretchedness in the space allotted to Yankee prisoners.
—David Olando McRaven, Salisbury Prison guard, October 29, 1864
A brick three-and-one-half-story former cotton factory near downtown Salisbury became the nucleus of a Confederate prison. During the war, the Salisbury Prison held captured Federal soldiers, Confederate and Union deserters, and North Carolina political prisoners. The prison population peaked at around 10,000 in October 1864. Although prisoners received the same rations as guards, they lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, which resulted in a high death rate. Because of recent prisoner exchanges, General George Stoneman's forces found the stockade almost empty when they seized it on April 12, 1865. To prevent the site from being used again as a prison, Stoneman destroyed it, along with other Confederate property in Salisbury.
The Indians say as I took the first prisoner each of them must take one to be even.
—Colonel William Holland Thomas, June 1862
From the beginning of the war, William Holland Thomas openly promoted the idea of North Carolina Cherokee fighting for the Confederacy. In 1862 he entered the army and organized a military unit known as Thomas's Legion, which included Cherokee fiercely loyal to him. These soldiers spent much of the war in western North Carolina preventing Union forces in eastern Tennessee from entering the Tar Heel State. Thomas's men remained loyal to him throughout the war and fought until the end. Even so, Thomas was past his middle fifties when he entered the army, and the strain of active military service took a toll on his physical and mental health. Adding to the stress were his responsibilities as leader of the North Carolina Cherokee.
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