The Bull Ring At City Point

The Bull Ring At City Point. A Dreaded Provost Prison. , “It was a pen of filth and vermin.” – William Howell Reed, a Sanitary Commission agent, The Bull Ring was the Union provost Marshal’s prison at City Point used for the confinement of Union soldiers convicted or charged with desertion, murder, rape, disobedience, theft, drunkenness and other crimes. The pen was composed of three large one-story barracks which were surrounded by high wooden fences strictly guarded by sentries day and night. At the entrance was a horizontal bar of wood, supported by two upright posts from which were suspended short ropes used for tying up prisoners by the hands or thumbs as punishment., According to William Howell Reed, a Sanitary Commission agent, the condition of the inmates was horrible. “It was a pen of filth and vermin.” Reed said he “could readily believe the officer, who had been a prisoner at Richmond, when he said that he would rather be confined in the Libby prison for six months than in the Bull-Ring for one.”, During the last week of the war thousands of Confederate prisoners were sent to City Point to await transportation to northern internment camps. At this time the Bull Ring was used to confine Confederate prisoners. There were so many Confederates in the Bull Ring that the overflow were allowed to sleep outside the enclosure., (captions) , The Bull Ring served as a stockade for Union troops accused of various crimes. Sanitary facilities at the compound were primitive, and shelter, when it existed at all, was inadequate. One witness to the suffering remembered: “…In rain and snow and frost I have seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men huddled together without a particle of shelter or protection from the elements…its horror and its odor sickened me to think of, even a quarter of a century later…” The court martial board tried, on the average, four cases a day. Sentencing followed conviction. In a single day one man saw five men sent off to execution., Not all those confined at City Point were criminals. Captured Confederate soldiers were held until special transports arrived to carry them to prison camps in the North. In the two weeks prior to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, some 14,000 Confederates passed through City Point en route to northern prisons, including Generals Richard S. Ewell, Joseph B. Kershaw, and G.W. Custis Lee (right)., The Bull Ring under construction.