James Thomas Watt Hairston Civil War prison ledger

Ligon's Prison, A Confederate prison, was originallly a tobacco warehouse in Richmond, Virginia, (25th and Main Street) during the American Civil War. In 1861, it was confiscated and became a prison known by several names, including Liggon's Prison, Prison Depot, and Prison No. 1. It was later converted to a hospital, General Hospital #23, and was sometimes used to treat the sick from nearby Libby Prison.

It held officer prisoners from the Union Army, taking in numbers from the nearby Seven Days Battles (in which nearly 16,000 Union men and officers had been killed, wounded, or captured between June 25 and July 1 alone) and other conflicts of the Union's Peninsular campaign to take Richmond and end the war only a year after it had begun.

In 1862 Libby Prison began taking prisoner officers to relieve the overcrowding at Ligon's Prison. (20th Street and Cary Street)

As the conflict wore on the prison gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Prisoners suffered high mortality from disease and malnutrition. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into large open rooms on two floors, with open, barred windows leaving them exposed to weather and temperature extremes. Mortality rates were high in 1863 and 1864, aggravated by Confederate shortages of food and supplies.

Friends of Abraham Lincoln and an assistant of Ambrose Burnside were prisoners there as well as African Americans and free African Americans.

Major James Thomas Watt Hairston, commandant of Libby Prison was born on 25 January 1835 in Old Fort, Patrick, Virginia. He was the son of Hardin Hairston and Sarah "Sally" Stovall Staples.He graduated in 1858 from Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. He is listed on the 1860 Federal African Americans Slave Schedule as owning 20 slaves.

He was a "Soldier in the Confederate States Army, Captain of Company E, Eleventh Regiment Mississippi Volunteers, Lieutenant Confederate States Regular Cavalry. In October, 1861, he was made commandant of Libby prison, in Richmond, Virginia, holding that position until May, 1862. " Richmond Virgina.

He was also Major, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General of J.E.B. Stuart Calvary of the Army of North Virginia, and after the death of General Stuart was transferred to General Beauregard and since the war have been merchandising and attending to farming his plantation, called "Hairston", which was named after and inherited from his father. Situated near Crawford and contained about eight thousand acres of land. He removed to Virginia in 1889, at Beaver Creek where he had a tobacco farm of about four thousand acres.

For more information: "Libby Prison" Wikipedia. Accessed 8/25/25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Prison https://www.hairston.org/p114.htm https://archivesweb.vmi.edu/record.php?ID=684