Lining Up For Rations from the Conquerors

Confederate Prisoners at Belle Plain, Captured At Spotsylvania, May 12, 1864

Capture was not an unmixed evil for the Confederate soldiers in the Wilderness campaign. The Army of Northern Virginia had already taken up a hole in its belt on account of the failure of supplies; but the Union troops were plentifully supplied with wagon-trains, and the men in gray who were captured near their base of supplies at Belle Plain were sure at least of a good meal. The Confederate prisoners here shown were captured at Spotsylvania, May 12, 1864, by the Second Corps under General Hancock. They were taken to Belle Plain, where they found not only a Union brigade left to guard them but a brigade commissary and his wagons ready to feed them. Some of the wagons can be seen in this photograph on the left-hand page, unloading supplies for the Confederate prisoners. The camp at Belle Plain was only temporary; the prisoners were taken thence by transports in the direction of Baltimore or Washington, sometimes even New York, and forwarded to the great Union prisons at Elmira, Johnson's Island, Lake Erie, or Camp Douglas, Illinois. On the brow of the hill to the right stands a Union field-piece pointing directly at the mass of prisoners. Behind it are the tents of the guard stretching up over the hill.