December 6, 1863

Point Lookout Union Prison Camp

Scotland, Maryland

"I need to get my men out of this death camp, or none of us will leave here alive."

Captain Rafe Merrick is a Texan. He joined the War Against Northern Aggression because he believed Texas' status as an Independent Republic was in danger.

Merrick and the cowboys who enlisted with him were scrappers. They had grown up on horseback. They cut their teeth fighting Comanches and punching cows-war and survival were not new to them. This war was different though. Battle lines were not clean-cut, and most of the soldiers knew men on both sides.

When the terrible Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia ended, Rafe and his men found themselves behind enemy lines. The Union lost that battle, and now they had Reb prisoners-over six hundred of them. While some of the wounded were exchanged, the rest of the prisoners were sent north. A new prison camp had just been completed in Maryland.

Point Lookout was designed to hold a maximum of ten thousand prisoners. When over fifteen thousand poorly clothed men were crowded onto a forty-acre patch of rock and sand with little or no shelter, the results were devastating. Combine that with constant flooding, poor water, and starvation rations, and the prison became a death camp.

Follow Captain Merrick and his men to see how one decision will forever change their lives.