Florence Stockade

The Florence Stockade was a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp operating in the final year of the Civil War, from September 1864 until the end of the war. Originally a hastily built outdoor stockade — no buildings, just a perimeter fence and trenches for shelter — it held tens of thousands of Union soldiers in conditions that became increasingly brutal as the Confederacy's supply situation collapsed. Disease, exposure, and inadequate food killed thousands.

The site is marked today by the Florence National Cemetery (34.1847, -79.7542), established in 1865 to honour the Union dead. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,882 Union soldiers, most of whom died in the stockade. A monument marks the entrance. The War Between the States Museum on West Palmetto Street in downtown Florence covers the stockade and broader Civil War history of the region in more detail. Both sites are important for understanding the full cost of the war.

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At its peak in late 1864, the Florence Stockade held approximately 18,000 Union prisoners in conditions comparable to Andersonville — the Confederate prison camp in Georgia that has become synonymous with Civil War atrocities. More than 2,800 prisoners died at Florence, many from exposure, disease, and starvation. The site is now the Florence National Cemetery, where many of the dead are buried. Only in the 1990s did the site receive the recognition it deserved as one of the South's most significant Civil War sites.