Description
Union soldiers pose in front of the Old Capitol Prison, at the corner of 1st and A streets northeast in Washington, D.C. Originally called the Old Brick Capitol, the structure had been built as a temporary home for Congress after the British burned the Capitol in 1814. During the Civil War the building was used as a jail for Confederate soldiers and political prisoners. Among its most famous inmates were spies Rose ONeal Greenhow and Belle Boyd, and Confederate commander John S. Mosby. Captain Henry Wirz, who had served as Confederate commandant of Andersonville Prison in Georgia, was convicted of murder by a military tribunal and hanged in the yard of the Old Capitol Prison in November 1865.
