January 2022
cruel punishments for various infractions. Yellow fever, malaria, scurvy, and diarrhea posed serious issues for the prisoners and the hospital stewards.
Limited medical supplies came from Columbia and were kept in the hospital dispensary. Goods received from the U.S. Sanitary Commission, shirts, stockings, and blankets were stored in the dispensary as well. Shipments of milk, coffee, and beef were occasionally received for the benefit of the prisoners.
Overcrowded hospital facilities and shortages of medication intensified the number of prisoner deaths. Prisoners were left lying where they died until their deaths were discovered. Prisoners regularly scavenged corpses to secure needed clothing and other items that could be traded. Fights broke out when prisoners laid claim to the same clothing.
Daily, the bodies of prisoners who died in the hospital were removed from the compound and stacked outside the stockade gate. The bodies were loaded onto army wagons and driven to a nearby plantation owned by Dr. James Howard Jarrott for interment.
In early 1865, one thousand prisoners were paroled and sent to Wilmington and Goldsboro. Others remained behind in the stockade. The prisoners who stayed in the stockade burnt the shelters of those who had been paroled to keep from freezing.
News arrived toward the end February that Wilmington had fallen and the Confederacy was coming apart. When the stockade’s officers “disappeared,” prisoners who remained were permitted to go free. The remaining prisoners were loaded onto trains and sent to North Carolina. The stockade was left empty.
Today, the stockade wall and the dead line have vanished. There are no traces of the prisoners or
Florena Budwin disguised herself as a soldier so she could accompany her husband, an army captain, during the Civil War. She was captured by Confederates and imprisoned in the Florence Stockade. After she fell ill and her gender was discovered, she served as a hospital nurse. She died of pneumonia and was interred in the cemetery. their shelters. The only remnant of the stockade is a portion of the earthen embankment where guards walked. One half the stockade site is an empty field. The rest of the site has been retaken by nature, overgrown and inaccessible.
One-third of the site, where the hospital and main gate stood, is owned by the City of Florence. The other two-thirds of the property are privately owned. Through efforts of the Florence County Historical Society and the Friends of the Florence Stockade, the site has been designated by the Palmetto Trust as one of the most endangered historical sites in South Carolina.
The original burials were
Sgt. Jacob Kiester served with the 103rd Pennsylvania Regiment. He died in November 1864 as a prisoner of war at the Florence Stockade.
carried out at two separate sites; one contains the remains of 416 prisoners. At the other location, approximately 2,322 soldiers were interred. The interments at the larger site were made in trenches.
Originally, the land for the burials was appropriated. It was later purchased from Dr. Jarrott’s estate. The site was designated a national cemetery in 1865, and the remains of Union soldiers from the smaller initial site were reinterred on the cemetery grounds.
The remains of soldiers from the surrounding area, Darlington, Marion, and Cheraw, were removed and relocated to Florence National Cemetery. Wooden headboards that indicated the original burial trenches were supplanted by sixby-six-inch square marble blocks that marked the graves of over 2,000 unknown soldiers. In 1955,
Almon Jolls enlisted in the 5th Michigan Cavalry. He died as a POW on November 25, 1864, and was interred in the cemetery. This memorial headstone was erected in his memory.
the marble blocks were replaced by 32 vertical headstones at each burial trench end.
While Civil War era monuments on battlefields and courthouse grounds commemorate duty, heroism, and gallantry, Florence National Cemetery, and other national cemeteries, serve a different purpose. Lined by countless rows of white marble headstones, they serve as grim reminders of the human cost of war and the tragedy of man’s inhumanity to man.
Note: Florence National Cemetery was established in 1865. The cemetery serves over 20,000 veterans in South
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Carolina. It is situated on 24 acres and accommodates casketed and cremated remains. Over 300 burials are conducted annually.
Bob Ruegsegger is an American by birth and a Virginian. His assignments frequently take him to historic sites throughout Virginia, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Southeast. His favorite haunts include sites within Virginia’s Historic Triangle— Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. Bob served briefly in the U.S. Navy. He is a retired educator and has been an active newspaper journalist for the last twenty years.