Picture courtesy of Jim Kuntz

A monument that honors the 233 confederate prisoners of war and 16 civilians who died of the disease on the vanished island.

The crack of Enfield muskets and the strains of "Dixie" were heard during a memorial to Confederate prisoners who died of smallpox on a Mississippi River island that washed away long ago.

The occasion was the dedication of a stone monument across the river from Alton, Illinois. The site, only a few feet from a preserved piece of the old Alton Dam, [upper left of photo] is on-or near- what was known as Smallpox Island during the Civil War.

Nowadays, the site is part of the Lincoln Shields Recreation Area, alongside a new Clark Bridge. Over the years, the island blended into the Missouri bank and eventually disappeared beneath Alton Lake.

The island was used as quarantine for Confederates who contracted smallpox while imprisoned in Alton, which housed captured rebels during the most of the Civil War. The monument names 233 soldiers and 16 civilians, including one woman, who died on the island and were buried in its trench graves.

The Army Corps of Engineers completed the monument. The memorial slipped easily into the $970 million budget for the new Melvin Price Lock and Dam 26 just below Alton. Federal law required the corps to commemorate historical sites in the path of its heavy work.

Don Huber, Alton Township Supervisor said, "We need to pay proper respects for this unrecognized cemetery. The consequence of fighting for the South is secondary. They fought for a cause they thought was honorable, and they died a miserable death."

The site of the old penitentiary is just uphill from the big ConAgra elevators in downtown Alton. The state closed it in 1860, but the Union Army reopened it on Feb.9,1862.

The first case of smallpox among the prisoners was discovered eight months later. In August 1863, guards began rowing sick prisoners across the river to Sunflower Island, which soon earned its new name.

The prison housed 11,764 Confederate prisoners, plus a few secessionist-sympathizing civilians and lawbreaking Union soldiers, during its three-year run as a POW camp. About 1,800 of them died and were buried in trenches at a cemetery on Rozier Street in North Alton.

An unknown number were rowed to wooden shelters on Smallpox Island. Those who died were buried at the downstream end of the 14-acre island.

In 1935, workers digging for the original Alton Dam hit a mass grave. A young reporter for the Alton Telegraph, went over to investigate and found skulls and other bones. His report under the headline, "Island Yields Skeletons of Prison Dead", ran on July 23, 1935. Flooded by Alton Lake, the site was once again largely forgotten.

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