The Confederate Army built a stockade around a large cotton warehouse near the Alabama River to prepare the site. Cahaba Prison was opened as such in June 1863. The commanding officer was Captain H. A. M. Henderson, a
Methodist minister. The prison made use of a brick cotton warehouse built in 1860 on Arch Street, above the banks of the Alabama River. Jacob Rush of the 3rd Ohio Cavalry enlisted at age 15, having lied about his age. He was captured as a spy, met with General
Nathan Bedford Forrest, and was sent to Cahaba Prison, arriving on October 13, 1864. While there he met Union Captain Hanchette and helped organize an escape attempt. They were successful in capturing the guards, but the demoralized condition of the prisoners resulted in a failed attempt. Confederate reinforcements came from the town and the prisoners were charged with conspiracy. Captain Hanchette refused to give up the names of the men involved, and none of the other prisoners admitted to them, either. The suspected conspirators were kept four days without rations. Jacob Rush and Jesse Hawes, M. D. later wrote first-hand accounts of the prison, the conditions, and the escape attempt. They learned that Captain Hanchette was to be exchanged for a Confederate general confined at Vicksburg. Rush reported that Colonel Jones, who both hated and feared his victim, selected two villainous men to act as his guard, and gave them instructions to find some excuse for shooting him while taking him from Cahaba to Selma, where the exchange was to be conducted. Captain Hanchette was taken forth from the dark dungeon, his strong frame so reduced that he was scarcely able, even under the stimulus of hope, to stand, placed in the custody of the assassins, and started toward Selma. He was shot down in cold blood before he was a mile from town, a fate perfectly in accord with a confinement rarely paralleled in the bounds of any civilized country in the nineteenth century. The regional district commander, Lt. Col. Samuel Jones, negotiated an exchange of Union prisoners from Cahaba for captured Confederates, with the prison being evacuated in March 1865. The exchange took place at
Vicksburg, Mississippi in April 9th 1865, after a long and arduous journey by the prisoners. ==Conditions==