The Libby Chronicle was a newsletter published by inmates at Richmond’s Libby Prison during the Civil War. Libby began as a hospital and general prison in 1861 and was converted into an officers-only facility in 1862. The Union prisoners who stayed at Libby were crowded inside a three-story, poorly ventilated former tobacco factory; they suffered from severe food shortages and outbreaks of disease. Their guards, in turn, struggled with controlling a large population, often resorting to punitive violence and threats of violence. Despite the hardships, the prisoners published for a brief time an eclectic and at times irreverent newsletter called the Libby Chronicle. Written by inmates during the summer of 1863, the Chronicle advertised itself as “Devoted to Facts and Fun” and was read aloud each Friday morning by its editor, Louis N. Beaudry, chaplain of the 5th New York Cavalry. The publication often interspersed humorous limericks with writing that addressed the prison’s harsh conditions. An ironic ode to lice, printed in the Chronicle’s first issue, was titled “Homer Modernized”: “Of Libby’s rebel lice, to us the direful spring / Of woes and pains unnumbered, O ye muses, sing.”
Further Reading:
Speer, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War (1997)
This Vignette Provided By
Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia
