Existing comment:
Prison Times (Fort Delaware, Delaware City, Del.), vol. 1, no. 1 (April 1865).
In April 1865, near the end of the Civil War, the Confederate detainees at For Delaware, on Pea Patch Island, created a manuscript newspaper, the Prison Times, which so closely mimicked printed publications that it included a masthead, motto ("en temps et lieu," or "in time and place"), and advertisements for shoemaking, dentistry, and other services available in the camp. There were even debating clubs. The contributors' wish to be "far away in our loved Sunny South" before they could have time to produce subsequent numbers came true: the hostilities ceased soon after this issue came out, so it remains an anomaly. Four copies are known to survive, each in the meticulous script of Captain J.W. Hibbs of the 13th Virginia Infantry, CSA. |