The artwork is a lithograph drawn by Otto Boetticher around 1863, and is titled “Union prisoners at Salisbury, N.C.” Boetticher was sent to the Salisbury prison in North Carolina after he was captured by Confederate soldiers in early 1862. On September 30, 1862, he was exchanged for a Confederate soldier. At this point in the Civil War, prison camps were relatively comfortable, before the conditions dramatically worsened. The lithograph shows a view of the Confederate prison camp at Salisbury, with a fence surrounding the yard. The image depicts a baseball game, with a batter standing at the right, a pitcher frozen in his wind-up, and a runner trying to steal second base. Officers and soldiers are watching the game, and those who are not watching are resting,…show more content… In the distance, a Confederate flag, tents, small cottages, and marching troops are visible. Salisbury prison was established by the Confederate government in 1861 on the site of a cotton factory, near a railroad. The sixteen acre area of land was surrounded by a oak trees and a wooden fence, and was designed to hold under 3,000 prisoners. The baseball game at Salisbury prison, pictured in the print, was during a relatively early period of the war. In 1862, the Salisbury prisoners received sufficient necessities, including rations, water, and shelter. This may explain the sense of leisure and enjoyment in the picture, with the glowing sky and sunlight. The Salisbury prison camp was known for its frequency of games. In an 1862 diary entry, a prisoner reported that the Fourth of July was
