To the left is the trailer for our new documentary, The Rock Island Civil War Prison: Andersonville of the North?.
The winter of 1863-64 was very cold in the Midwest, temperatures reaching as low as 32 degrees below zero Fahrenheit at Rock Island. During December of 1863, about 5000 Confederate prisoners were brought on dreadfully long train rides to a new, and ill-prepared, prison camp on Rock Island. Over the following twenty months the camp housed over 12,000 prisoners of war from the South of whom almost 2,000 would perish there.A severe winter and a cholera epidemic caused hundreds of prisoner deaths in its first months. However, its overall death rate was much lower than the rate at Andersonville. Special emphasis in the documentary will be placed on how the Rock Island Prison got its undeserved reputation as, "The Andersonville of the North."
The
documentary on DVD may be purchased by mail for $10 per
copy (include $3 for packaging and shipping for the first DVD and $1 for
packaging/shipping for each additional DVD). Send a check payable to
Heritage Documentaries, Inc to:
Heritage
Documentaries
2120 12th
Street
Moline,
Illinois 61265
USA
The DVD
also can be ordered online through the Rock Island County Historical
Society:
