As the war was reaching its climax, Camp Sumter packed more than 30,000 men into the space designed for a third as many. The Stockade Branch, which provided the only water for the inmates, was backed up by the stockade’s pilings. It became a putrid cesspool polluted with grease from a cookhouse upstream, the waste water of laundry and human excrement. Those who drank the water were as likely to kill themselves with dysentery and diarrhea as to quench their thirst.
Then one night downpour caused the Stockade Branch to overflow with such ferocity that it washed away much of the camp’s foul waste. Several bolts of lightning struck near the prison, including one that hit a pine stump inside the stockade. At the base of the lightning-charred stump, a spring of fresh water emerged. The source was most likely a local spring that had been covered over during the construction of the camp, which the storm liberated. It came to be known as Providence Spring.
