Libey Prison

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[OCTOBER 17, 1863.

668

EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE LIBEY PRISON, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.—[FROM A SKETCH BY CAPTAIN HARRY E. WRIGLEY, TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEERS.]

(Previous Page) which they were unable to mend. Every bridge throughout the South was well guarded, especially so in North Carolina and Virginia; the principal manufactories of war materiel out of Richmond were in Georgia and Alabama, now within easy 'raiding' distance of our armies.

"The absence of not only luxuries, but even the conveniences of life, seems to have given the whole people a semi-barbarous air, and the almost total extinction of the genus citizen made this all the more apparent. We saw no slave who was not anxiously waiting to be free; no man whose interests

would allow it who did not wish to he back in the old Union. Many would come and tell us, as we waited for the trains, how the wave that swept over the South in '61 carried them along with it, and how earnestly they would rejoice at peace. All this, too, at a time when their arms flourished,

and they were exultant. Now they are down-hearted beyond conception. Let not our Copperhead friends pour too much of their faith into the Confederate tub, for the bottom will be out of it ere they are aware."

Captain Wrigley is now at home.

ENCAMPMENT OF UNION PRISONERS AT BELLE ISLE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.—[FROM A SKETCH BY CAPTAIN HARRY E. WRIGLEY, TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEERS.]