Castle Thunder in April 1865
The South doesn’t much cotton to dissenting opinions either.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch August 22, 1862:
Arrival of Domestic Traitors.
Fifteen citizens of Green county, Va., arrived here yesterday, guarded by soldiers, and were consigned to quarters in Greanor’s factory. The batch were sent thither by General Humphrey Marshall, for expressing Union sentiments and displaying various Yankee proclivities not consistent with their duty as citizens of the Confederate States.–The average age of the men was about nineteen years, the oldest being about twenty-four years of age. All of them are subject to the Conscript law; but it is doubtful, after the experience our authorities have had in the matter of improvising soldiers out of similar material, whether they would be of any use to the Confederacy in a military point of view.
Marshall’s plan – send Union lovers to Castle Thunder
According to George W. Alexander and Castle Thunder: A Confederate Prison and Its Commandant by Frances H. Casstevens, Greanor’s Tobacco Warehouse formed the core of Castle Thunder, which opened in August 1862 (p 48). Capt. George W. Alexander served as commandant of Castle Thunder. Captain Alexander was investigated for brutality in 1863 by order of the Confederate House of Representatives. He was cleared of the charges. The Union used the prison for its own detainees after Richmond was captured in April 1865.
Humphrey Marshall was a West Point graduate who served in the Mexican-American War. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives for much of the 1850’s.
