Camp Sorghum

Established in late 1864 as a makeshift prison for approximately 1,400 Union officers, Camp Sorghum consisted of a 5-acre (20,000 m2) tract of open field, without walls, fences, buildings, or any other facilities.

Conditions were terrible, with little food, clothing, or medicine, and disease claimed a number of lives among both the prisoners and their guards.

[2] The prisoners of Camp Sorghum were eventually transferred to the property of the state mental asylum in Columbia sometime before the city was captured in February 1865.

[3] Most of the POWs were removed from Columbia on February 12, 1865, as William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army approached the city.

[3]: 55–57  Byers however managed to hide in the attic of the asylum, and became one of the first to greet the Union Army upon its entrance to Columbia.