By the winter of 1864, the Confederate prison at Salisbury was so overcrowded that disease became its own kind of enemy. Smallpox, pneumonia, and dysentery swept through the camp, claiming Union prisoners faster than anyone could record their names. Every day, wagons rolled out of the stockade carrying the bodies of men who hadn’t survived the night. They were taken to a nearby field—now part of Salisbury National Cemetery—and laid to rest in long trenches dug as quickly as the deaths rose. Most