Yeoman's in the Fork Blog

A fellow comrade-Union soldier, Williard W. Glazier, Company E, 2nd NY Cavalry regiment served in several Confederate prisons as well. In fact, Glazier’s prison experiences nearly mirrored those of Morris Cooper Foote’s and we are very fortunate that Glazier’s succeeded in telling his story in book format and published this memoir in 1866.

Glazier adds the following detail about soldiers – including Foote – who arrived in Camp Oglethorpe (Macon) in mid May 1864.

We reached Macon at eight o’clock on the evening of May seventeenth, 1864.

Two long files of sneaking, stay-at-home Georgia militia extended from the cars to the Prison Pen, and between them we were marched into Camp Oglethorpe.

On our arrival at the front gate whom should we find bu the veritable Major Thomas P. Turner, fiend incarnate, from Libby Prison. This human monster stood at the gate to count us as we passed in. To his great chagrin forty-seven of our original number were missing, all of whom had escaped from the cars. He drew us up in line, and informed us of the prison regulations, especially that any man would be shot who approached the “dead line.”

The Prison Pen takes its name from General Oglethorpe, an early settler of Georgia. It is about eighty rods east of the city, and covers an area of a little more than two acres. The enclosure is surrounded by a stockade fence about fifteen feet high, near the top of which projects a platform whereon the sentinels are stationed. Within the stockade, and at a distance of fifteen feet from it, is the dead line, extending entirely around the camp. This consists of an ordinary picket-fence three and a half feet high. . . . . Camp Oglethorpe was made expressly for our reception, and had never before been occupied.