Alton Military Prison: Illinois State Prison and Civil War Prisoner-of-War Camp
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- United States
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Military
On this page6 sections
History
Alton Military Prison was a prison complex in Alton, Illinois, United States, built in 1833 as the Illinois State Prison, the first state penitentiary in Illinois. It later served as a Union prisoner-of-war camp during the American Civil War, the United States conflict between the Union and the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865.
Illinois State Prison
The institution opened with 24 cells and was managed by the Illinois Department of Corrections. Between 1835 and 1858, 65 women and 3,000 men received sentences there. Female prisoners faced the same degrading conditions as male prisoners, along with additional abuses and indignities directed at women. Their average sentence was 0.9 years, and the governor pardoned 47 percent of them.
The prison closed in 1857 and was replaced by a new state prison in Joliet. By the time of its closure, Alton contained 256 cells.
Civil War Prisoner-of-War Camp
The U.S. government reopened the prison in 1862 as a prisoner-of-war camp, a facility for detaining captured military personnel during an armed conflict. It held more than 11,000 Confederate prisoners, including Confederate officer Ebenezer Magoffin.
Conditions were harsh, and mortality was higher than in other Union prisons. Smallpox, rubella, and other diseases repeatedly spread through the camp. A total of 1,534 Confederate soldiers, along with many Union soldiers and civilians, are known to have died there.
Closure and Historic Preservation
Alton Military Prison ceased operating at the end of the Civil War in 1865 and was demolished soon afterward. The State of Illinois maintains the site as a state historic site. It was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, the federal inventory of properties recognized for historical, architectural, archaeological, or cultural importance, on December 31, 1974. The site also lies within the Christian Hill Historic District, which was listed on the National Register in 1978.
Remains
The prison occupied approximately 4 acres, or 1.6 hectares, within the block bounded by Broadway, William Street, Fourth Street, and Mill Street in Alton. The prison buildings were demolished, and the surviving physical remains consist of a section of the original ruin wall.
Prison Site and Ruin Wall
The surviving wall section is the principal visible remnant of the prison complex. It marks part of the site once occupied by the Illinois State Prison and later used as the Civil War prisoner-of-war camp. The original building expanded from its 24-cell arrangement in 1833 to 256 cells by 1857, while the remaining wall preserves a fragment of that demolished institution.
