In the fall of 1861, the United States Army leased approximately forty cleared acres of Johnson’s Island for a prisoner-of-war depot. Construction proceeded through the winter of 1861–62, and the first Confederate prisoners arrived in April 1862. Many of the earliest captives had been taken at Fort Donelson and Island No. 10.
The War Department ultimately used Johnson’s Island primarily for Confederate officers. The prison compound contained twelve prison blocks; another block served as the hospital. Prisoners and guards lived under a highly organized military system, and conditions varied over time. Early prisoners were often exchanged after relatively short stays, while the breakdown of prisoner exchanges later in the war left some men confined for twelve to eighteen months.
More than 9,000 prisoners passed through the depot. The average confined population was probably 2,000 to 2,500, while approximately 3,200 were present in January 1865—more than the available bed capacity comfortably supported. The prison population included officers from across the Confederacy, including a number of generals and men who later became prominent in politics, law and religion.
Escape occupied a significant place in prison life. One large internal plan organized trusted prisoners into groups totaling about 500 men. The intended operation was to rush the gate when an express wagon entered, overwhelm the relatively small guard force, capture the delivery steamer and then seize additional vessels in Sandusky. The appearance of USS Michigan, armed with fourteen cannon, helped bring the scheme to an end before it was attempted.
Individual escape attempts could be extraordinarily persistent. Lieutenant Charles Pierce of the 7th Louisiana reportedly attempted escape seven times through methods including tunneling, scaling the stockade and posing as a Union guard, but was repeatedly caught. Second Lieutenant D. Woodson of the 28th Virginia escaped on June 30, 1864, and his absence reportedly went unnoticed for roughly two days.
One of the most successful episodes began January 1, 1864. Six prisoners initially attempted to leave; four—Major John R. Winston, Captain G. H. Davis, Lieutenant C. C. Robinson and Captain J. H. McConnell—ultimately reached Canada. They scaled the stockade, crossed frozen Sandusky Bay, traveled through northern Ohio toward Detroit and crossed the Detroit River by moving over ice.
External threats were taken seriously as well. Union authorities reinforced the island in 1864 after learning of Confederate plans originating in Canada. The most famous effort came on September 19, when Confederate naval operative John Yates Beall and a raiding party boarded the Detroit–Sandusky steamer Philo Parsons in Canada while posing as passengers.
Beall’s group seized Philo Parsons and then captured Island Queen after the second vessel came alongside at Middle Bass Island. Passengers were detained, soldiers aboard Island Queen were paroled, and the vessel was taken into deep water and sunk. The larger objective was USS Michigan, the only U.S. warship on the Great Lakes and the vessel guarding Johnson’s Island.
Captain Charles H. Cole was part of the conspiracy and had cultivated relationships with Michigan’s officers. Cole was arrested before he could complete his part of the plan. Beall continued toward Sandusky, but members of his crew ultimately refused to attack the warship. The raiders withdrew to Canada, leaving the Johnson’s Island prisoners imprisoned. The Lake Erie Conspiracy was therefore real but unsuccessful.
The prison closed after the Civil War. The last nine prisoners left on September 5, 1865, and the government disposed of buildings, lumber and equipment. None of the original prison buildings remains standing. The former prison ground was later used agriculturally and eventually subdivided and developed.
The Confederate cemetery is the most visible surviving physical link to the prison era. Traditional records identify 206 marked graves, including unknown burials, but the total number of men originally buried there is more complicated. A wartime death register lists 241 officers, soldiers or civilians who died on Johnson’s Island; some remains were subsequently removed, and the disposition of others is uncertain. Later ground-penetrating-radar work and monuments have produced higher burial estimates.
The cemetery’s first recorded Confederate burial was First Lieutenant R. M. Ray, who died of typhoid fever in May 1862 after being captured at Fort Donelson. The last prisoner identified by the Preservation Society as buried there was J. L. Hood of the 59th Virginia Infantry in May 1865. Two prisoners are documented as having been fatally shot by guards: Lieutenant Elijah Gibson in 1862 after violating prison rules and refusing an order, and Second Lieutenant John B. Bowles in December 1864 while attempting to scale the stockade wall.
After decades of deterioration, concern over the cemetery led to replacement grave markers in the late nineteenth century. The federal government assumed ownership of the cemetery in 1932. The cemetery and archaeological remains of the prison preserve a landscape whose significance includes captivity, death, escape, wartime intelligence and Confederate clandestine operations on Lake Erie.
