Civil War Prison Camp
Haunted by Controversy
Scotland, Md. - Years of severe weather have eroded the shoreline here at the southern tip of St. Mary's County.
It's not just Point Lookout's whipping winds and remoteness that give it a haunted feel. Some say it's the turbulent history of the place where thousands of Southerners died slow deaths.
From 1863 until 1865, the point was the site of the Civil War's largest prisoner of war camp, housing more than 52,000 Confederate soldiers. Historians say at least 4,000 died, most from disease and exposure. The prison was dismantled after the war, and much of the site is under water.
One hundred thirty-eight years later, hundreds of the prisoner's descendants and sympathizers are tying to ensure that the dead are given their due and that the prison's history isn't washed away like much of the land.
"This seems to be one of Maryland's best-kept secrets," says Patty Beil, 51, of Annapolis, a history buff.
She's not alone. In the past few years, Patrick Griffin, a Darnestown general contractor, has filed several legal challenges to a policy that bars a Confederate flag from flying permanently at the POW graveyard near where the prison stood.
The federal cemetery features two monuments marking a common burial site. All of the known names, about 4,000, are displayed on bronze tablets, and supplemented by a three-ring binder with recent additions.
Griffin, a past commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, also is suing the federal court to overturn restraints on the content of speeches delivered at the cemetery.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says the rules, which ban partisan speech and activities at the grave site, are in place to preserve decorum. Under the restrictions, the department can review speech text in advance and delete portions - such as, in Griffin's case, a statement he had intended to make at a memorial event in June criticizing the government's Confederate flag policy.
In a letter to the State Forest, James Harris, chairman of the philosophy department at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., criticized Maryland officials for permitting what he considers an exploitive Halloween "ghost walk" near the prison.
The walk included actors dressed in Confederate and Union garb. Acting parks director Robin Melton said the walks were supposed to be fun and are not historically accurate.
But Harris, who had an ancestor who was held at Point Lookout, said in his letter, "It's hard to imagine that the citizens of Maryland, many of whom had ancestors imprisoned there, would approve if they knew of the true nature of this Ghost Walk."
The state is reviewing the appropriateness of the walks.
Date of article unknown
By Jeff Barker
The Baltimore Sun
Contributed by R. Eason
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