Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
(Library of Congress)
If bullets don’t kill you, there are other ways of getting rid of you.1
Among the 51,000 (and possibly more) casualties from the Battle of Gettysburg, little is written of the plight of the countless captured from the fight.
While prison camps, both North and South, consisted of horrendous conditions, the Union soldiers captured and sent South suffered in the extreme. In the Confederacy there was a lack of food – one of the reasons General Lee came North in the first place – and an inability to provide adequate shelter.
Because the worst of the Southern prison camps, Andersonville Prison in southwestern Georgia, was not yet completed, many of the Federal prisoners of war were sent in large numbers to Libby Prison in Richmond, and Belle Isle, near the Confederate capital on the James River. Enlisted men were taken to Belle Isle, and the officers were imprisoned in Libby Prison.
While Libby was at least a building – whereas Belle Isle was largely outdoors with inadequate tents – the conditions were scarcely better.
One officer, 2nd Lieutenant Henry Clay (Harry) Potter of the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry, was among the unfortunates captured at Gettysburg. His regiment was part of Brigadier General Elon Farnsworth’s Brigade, of Judson Kilpatrick’s Division.
After Pickett’s Charge had failed on July 3, 1863, a strong presence of Confederate infantry, mostly from Evander Law’s Brigade, of Hood’s Division, had gained ground on July 2 near the Round Tops. Deployed among the slopes of Big Round Top, the woods and boulders sheltered them well. Ordered to drive out the Confederate infantry there, Farnsworth’s Brigade made an ill-fated charge. This charge abruptly failed. Farnsworth was killed, many of his brigade were also killed, wounded, or captured.
Among the Union captured was Lieutenant Harry Potter.
Born in Philadelphia on June 12, 1841, Harry had turned 22 years old barely three weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg. The second of four sons born to Thomas and Mary Potter, Harry joined up to fight for the Union cause on December 8, 1862. While fairly new to the fighting, he nevertheless showed great capabilities.2
After being taken prisoner at Gettysburg, Lt. Potter was marched along with other prisoners into Virginia by way of Hagerstown, crossing the Potomac at Falling Waters. Since he was an officer, he was imprisoned at Libby Prison in Richmond. Just because Potter was an officer, the conditions were scarcely better. He was appalled at the conditions there: the damp, filth, and rank atmosphere filled the prison.3
“The rooms were in a most filthy condition,” he remembered, “and as we filed in were told each man to take a blanket and tin cup from a pile in the center of the floor…I managed to get a fairly good one but soon found it full of lice and so threw it away.” It was an act he soon regretted.4
Their rations were brought in using large buckets normally used to feed horses, which were terribly unclean from barnyard use. “It was called soup,” he wrote, “and made from rotten pork and black peas or beans.” The men fell in line with their tin cups. “I was hungry and so drank off all the top,” he recalled. “At the bottom found little but fat maggots, so that settled it for me.” He refused to eat, and, along with the other officers, complained bitterly. “After much kicking, they gave us a fair ration with wheat bread. Each man was allowed one half a loaf a day with a small quantity of meat, rice, potatoes, or beans. This did not last long…and our rations were then given to us raw.”5
It was easier to guard men at work rather than when they were idle. The Confederate guards decided to make the men work for their meals. The prisoners were given stoves and some wood that they had to cut themselves in order to cook their meager rations. There was little meat, and most of the vegetables were “diseased”. He remarked that “our rations were getting a little less all the time, until finally they ground the corn cob and all in the corn meal they gave us.”6
After weeks without decent food, the Union officers were “almost raising a riot” and “…they said they would give us some meat.” Their reward came in large barrels. Upon opening them they found the barrels “full of rotten, stinking mule meat which no one would eat.”7
By August, 1863, unsurprisingly, Lieutenant Potter was one of many ill with dysentery. He was taken to a hospital in Richmond, where he received better nourishment. While Potter rested with other POWs in the hospital, General John Winder, the provost marshal of Richmond, and the man responsible for both Libby Prison and Belle Isle, visited the ward one evening where many of his prisoners lay, weak and ill. He asked where the prisoners were from, and some of them whispered their answers. When one man answered “Maryland”, Winder flew into a rage, swore at the man, and said “he deserved to die because he was fighting against his country.” He then said, “If bullets don’t kill you, there are other ways of getting rid of you.”8
Winder was one of the main instigators of the establishment of Andersonville, and was later the commander in charge of it, along with his immediate subordinate, Henry Wirz.
General Winder died of a heart attack in February 1865, so it was Wirz who suffered what would have been Winder’s fate at war’s end, executed for war crimes because of the terrible conditions of Andersonville.9
What Winder brought to the notorious Andersonville, he had practiced well by inflicting the men of Libby Prison and Belle Isle.
To ameliorate the suffering of the prisoners at Libby, the U.S. Sanitary Commission sent blankets, clothing, and food. Other boxes, filled with food and gifts from the families of the captured, also arrived. At first, the men enjoyed some of the rations, but the guards soon coveted the goods for themselves. The prisoners then watched, helpless, as the guards consumed the contents of their packages.10
As Libby grew more crowded, some of the prisoners were transferred farther south, to a prison in South Carolina. Potter was one of those selected to go. While traveling under guard by train, Potter and two other prisoners decided on an escape plan. During the night, while the train stopped for supplies and then began again to embark, Potter and his two friends jumped off the train. They were discovered and chased, but Potter and one other prisoner managed to elude their captors. They were, however, recaptured a few days later.11
Those few days of liberty, however, hardened Potter's resolve to survive the prison camp and the war.
After enduring several more months as a prisoner of war in both South Carolina and Georgia, Potter was paroled in December 1864. He received a brevet to 1st Lieutenant upon his return in 1864. Near war’s end he served in the 3rd Pennsylvania Provincial Cavalry. He was mustered out on October 31, 1865, earning a brevet to captain.12
After the war, Harry Potter married Emily Graf, and the couple raised four children. He became a banker in Philadelphia, a successful employer who was most fortunate to survive the war – and Libby Prison. He died at his Philadelphia home in 1912 at the age of 70. After his funeral in Philadelphia, he was buried in Arlington Cemetery.13
It was at Gettysburg where his trial by fire began – both on the battlefield and then enduring the deplorable conditions at Libby Prison. His story is one of determination and survival, a significant reason that the Union, made up of men and women just like him, also survived.
Lt. Henry Potter, 18th PA Cavalry
(Ronn Palm Museum, Gettysburg)
Sources: 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry File. The American Civil War Memoir, Autobiography of Henry Clay Potter, Captain 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). Ancestry.com: Henry Clay Potter Family Tree. Encyclopedia of Virginia: encyclopediavirginia.org/Johnwinder. Henry Clay Potter Burial Record, Arlington Cemetery. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS), U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA: Found in U.S. Civil War Soldiers & Profiles, 1861-1865, ancestry.com. U.S. Census, Philadelphia, PA, 1850. U.S. Census, Philadelphia, PA, 1910.
End Notes:
1. Potter, Memoir. 18th PA Cav. File, GNMP.
2. Henry Clay Potter Family Tree, ancestry.com. U.S. Census, 1850.
3. History of PA Volunteers, MOLLUS.
4. Potter, Memoir, 18th PA Cav. File, GNMP, p. 16.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Encyclopediavirginia.org/johnwinder.
9. Ibid.
10. Potter, Memoir, 18th PA Cav. File, GNMP, p. 17.
11. Ibid., p. 21.
12. History of PA Volunteers, MOLLUS.
13. Henry Clay Potter Family Tree,
ancestry.com. U.S. Census, 1910. Henry Clay Potter Burial Record, Arlington Cemetery.
