Rolling the dice: Discovery of piece of gaming object at Georgia's Camp Lawton an example of the 'shadow economy' at POW sites

Views of the remains of the die, which may have had numerous sides (Camp Lawton Project)

Somewhere at an archaeological site in Georgia are the remains of a sutler’s cabin, where captured Federal soldiers could buy a whole range of goods, temporarily lifting them from misery that took the lives of 800 comrades.

The Camp Lawton sutler’s cabin and the grounds around it offered more than food and clothing. It was part of the prison’s shadow economy for six weeks in autumn 1864. Soldiers -- either with U.S. greenbacks they still held, or equipment and personal items – could obtain alcohol from guards, tobacco and play games of chance.

Ryan McNutt, who leads the Camp Lawton project at Georgia Southern University, and a couple dozen students have spent the spring looking for evidence of the cabin. Thus far, there have been no definitive finds. Maps produced in the 19th century gave different positions for the structure.

Patrick Sword and Audrey McGill at dig site (Picket photos)

On one bright note, part of a carved die was found a few weeks ago during digging, evidence of apparent gambling in the trade-and-sell part of the stockade.

Patrick Sword, a graduate student from the Atlanta area, is studying the shadow economy at Lawton. I met him and other students in late March during a brief visit to the site on the fenced grounds of an old federal fishery adjoining Magnolia Springs State Park.

The stockade was laid out in a grid fashion (left, click to enlarge) and much of the commercial activity took part on Market Street, Sword said. He is hoping to find more evidence of the shadow economy, but the team in recent weeks has found mostly modern stuff, including trash dumped by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, who helped construct the state park in the late 1930s.

McNutt says the die is made of lead, probably fashioned from a small caliber round, likely a pistol or a .54-caliber ball. He says the artifact is probably one-half or one-fourth of the original die.

“Six-sided die are the most common, but there are also 10-sided, 32-sided, and 20-sided. If it's from a six-sided die, it is a half, split down the center to leave a quasi-pyramid shape,” McNutt wrote in an email after my visit.

In its six weeks' existence, the 42-acre Confederate stockade held about 10,000 men before it was closed when Union forces approached. Over the past dozen years, teams from Georgia Southern have found evidence of the stockade wall, Rebel officers’ quarters, brick ovens and sleeping areas for the POWs. Thus far, they have been unable to find the hospital or burial area.

Camp Lawton was one of several prisons in south Georgia that briefly held Federal prisoners sent from the larger Andersonville camp. They were moved back and forth because Confederate officials feared they would be freed by Sherman’s March to the Sea.

McNutt and his students in their spring dig have found a lot of postwar material, but also have come across cut nails, buckles, a bullet and files from the Civil War period. On the day of my visit they were working near a stream that divided the camp, and served as a drinking source and latrine a bit downstream.

“We get good historic Civil War stuff and then a modern fishing weight,” the associate professor tells me.

McNutt (right, on site) believes much of the area they were working on is where Union prisoners who served as an internal police force operated.

Not many prisoner items have been found here, unlike in the hill above. “No one is allowed to camp right near the stream.”

The professor is interested in the relationship between guards and prisoners. They were known to have traded at here and other sites, and morale among the former was low at Camp Lawton, not surprising given the Confederacy’s decline. Guards sometimes foraged away from the property.

Prisoner of war camps are “excellent places to hide contraband, personal items you are not supposed to have," McNutt told me several years ago when he became project director. 

The National Park Service, which maintains the much larger site at Andersonville, has an online page detailing life and diversions for Federal prisoners held there. It, too, had a sutler’s cabin, but it had other shops selling items to the captives as well.

Food, of course, was always on their minds.

Sutler's cabin in rear at Andersonville in 1864 (Library of Congress)

Here is an NPS description of Andersonville:

“Many of the Andersonville prisoners who arrived in the stockade in April and May were well supplied with money. The Federal armies were reclothed and paid off in the spring of 1864 for the spring campaigns. Many of the new recruits and reenlisted veterans had bounty money with them when captured. Greenbacks could be pressed into the sole of a shoe, or placed inside a brass button. Money was concealed about the person in various ways. Some swallowed their rings and others put their money into bowls of large Dutch pipes with a little tobacco sprinkled on top. When searched, they would pretend to be busy lighting their pipes and thus escape suspicion.

“Gambling was carried on quite extensively; faro, dice, and $10.00 stakes were commonly played for. Trade was carried on with the guards on the outside of the wall by talking through the cracks and throwing articles over the fence. Another trade was carried on as well, as noted by prisoner John Northrup, Co. D, 7th Connecticut Infantry: "There is one commodity never had in any market. It is ahead of any Dutch brewery extract; it is meal beer made by letting corn meal sour in water. The vendor cries, 'here is your nice meal beer, right sour, well-seasoned with sassafras.'"

POWS trade new rations for something more palatable (NPS)

McNutt believes there may be beer and rum bottle remains at the Camp Lawton site.

Trade, bartering and gambling were common at virtually all Civil War prisoners, both North and South, though there appeared to be some restrictions later in the war.

At Point Lookout in Maryland, where Confederates were held, a prisoner made compelling illustrations of camp scenes. All depicted guards were African-American soldiers.

“The drawings highlight the concerns and experiences of prisoners of war; most scenes show prisoners playing cards, buying food, or engaging in barter with food vendors,” the historical society says in a description of its collection.

Exchanging buttons for pepper at Andersonville (Library of Congress)

Confederate officer Henry Clay Dickinson wrote about gambling he witnesses while a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware, Delaware, in 1864, according to a Civil War Monitor article on gambling.

“The gambling saloons were a curious feature in prison, and were not only numerous but well patronized. Captain Coffee, of Mississippi, was the prince of faro dealers, being always gentlemanly in his manners and always attracting the greatest crowd. He never played cards until he was captured, except for amusement, and I am told that a Yankee guard was his first victim. The bettor wagered either in Confederate or Yankee money. He always had a large and anxious looking crowd around his booth. Some quartermasters having been captured, the amount of Confederate money in prison was very large, and changed hands frequently.

“I heard that Coffee once sent to Dixie from Point Lookout ten thousand dollars. How much United States money he (Coffee) made I cannot say, though at one time, when the Yanks were about searching quarters and persons, he hid in the grass one hundred and eleven dollars in gold, a gold watch, and several hundred dollars in notes, which, of course, some Yank, who knew he was flush, had seen him hide and took care to not let him find it again.”

Rusted metal likely from the 20th century (Picket photo)