Because of the poor conditions and high mortality, in February 1865 the Confederates moved thousands of prisoners to other locations, including 3,729 who were marched to Greensboro and taken from there by train to Wilmington, North Carolina, and 1,420 others who were transferred to facilities in Richmond, Virginia. By the time Union Gen. George Stoneman reached Salisbury in the spring of 1865, the prison had been emptied and was being used as a supply depot. Stoneman ordered the prison structures burned and a wood fence built around the mass graves. Of the buildings that constituted the prison, one house on Bank Street still stands; it was believed to be a guardhouse.
