Being Illinois first prison and closed for many years before reopening for use in the conflict, conditions were horrible. It was overcrowded and a stone cell structure unlike the camp at Andersonville. Good number of prisoners still at north Alton where there is a large memmorial or they were buried on smallpox island which was put underwater when original lock and dam put in. Alton was called the Andersonville of the North. Jim Keith Alton, Illinois