Living History at Fort Delaware

Delaware City, DE

August 17, 2003

Traveling home from Gettysburg 140, Your Correspondent, attended a smaller event held at Fort Delaware that was hosted by the Mifflin Guard. Originally meant as weekend for the musicians to practice, a contingent of Union re-enactors demonstrated for the public how Fort Delaware was used as a prisoner-of-war camp with the help of our Southern brethren. No escapes reported. From the Fort's website, "Originally built to protect the ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia, Pea Patch Island also became a Union prison camp during the Civil War, housing up to as many as 12,595 Confederate prisoners of war at one time. Manned only briefly during World Wars I and II, the island and fort were finally abandoned and declared surplus property in 1944, when ownership was transferred back to the State of Delaware. Fort Delaware became a state park in 1951."