Finding Aids: Pathways to Georgia History
Cumming Letters: 328 Point Lookout POW Letter
328.
Feb. 14- Military Prison, Point Lookout Md., E. L. Black Maj. to Julien Cumming Pleased at the prospect of being much more comfortably situated here than at Johnson’s Island. The hospital is clean and well ventilated. There are quite a number of Sister’s of Charity who devote themselves entirely to the sick and wounded.  Lady friends are allowed to visit the sick also. Sends his respects to his roommates and friends.
ALS - from calendar compiled by Mary Ann Cashin

Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA PGA - Sachse--Point Lookout, Md (D size) [P&P]
Major Black’s improved situation at Point Lookout was short lived. Discharged from the hospital, he would have taken his place in the general camp. At the height of the internments there were 8,764 prisoners accommodated in 980 tents. Instructions were issued “not to permit prisoner’s friends to send food…no luxuries and no gifts whatsoever were permitted … for the general benefit of the prisoners. Official policies combined to make Point Lookout “a story of diarrhea and dysentery of typhoid and typhus, of burning sands and freezing cold …a story of despair and death of 4,000 prisoners many of whom could have been saved.” For more information see: Beitzell, Edwin W. Point Lookout Prison Camp for Confederates (1983) E616.L8.B44 1983
The last original POW camp building at Point Lookout, MD
Original photo courtesy of Margaret S. Pratt, Ridge MD