Book Description

Virginia Lomax was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1831. Her work, The Old Capitol and its Inmates (1867), contains her memories of a Washington, D. C. prison, where she was held immediately after the end of the Civil War. Arrested when she attempted to visit her friends in Carrol Prison, she was held prisoner in the adjoining building, the Old Capitol Prison, on suspicion of being a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Her fellow prisoners were Confederate loyalists suspected of conspiring against the United States. Lomax was eventually released through the political maneuvering of her family and friends. In her book she recounts the stories of several of her fellow prisoners in The Old Capitol and describes their daily activities as well as the hardships they experienced. Lomax also discusses the broader problems former Confederates had to address in their efforts to re-assimilate into American society.