The "Bull—Ring" At City Point, A Dreaded Provost Prison

The exigencies of war differed so widely from those of peace that at times the prisoners held by their own side had quite as much to complain of as if they had been captured in battle. The "Bull-Ring" at City Point was composed of three large barracks of one story which opened into separate enclosures surrounded by high wooden fences. All this was enclosed in a single railing, between which and the high fence a patrol was constantly in motion. The inner sentry stood guard upon a raised platform built out from the fence, which gave him a view of all the prisoners in the three pens. This is where the provost-marshal's prisoners were confined. The sanitary conditions were indescribably bad. William Howell Reed, in "Hospital Life," published in 1866, quotes an officer recently liberated from Libby Prison as saying that he would rather be confined in Libby for six months than in the "Bull-Ring" for one.