Castle Thunder After the Fall of Richmond

Union soldiers, a trio of barefooted children, and a young black man stand along cobblestoned Cary Street in Richmond, Virginia, in front of the infamous Confederate prison Castle Thunder. On the third floor, several men, perhaps prisoners, stick their heads through the barred windows. This image was made not long after the fall of the Confederate capital to Union forces. The Union occupiers took over the prison and used it to incarcerate former Confederates. Former Union prisoners claimed to have made off with the key to Castle Thunder as well as the immense dog, called variously, Hero or Nero, who had menaced the incarcerated soldiers. The May 19, 1865, edition of the Richmond Whig described the dog as follows:

Hero is a dog about seven feet in length from tip to top, weighing nearly two hundred pounds. He is a splendid cross between a russian bloodhound and a bull-dog, and combines the faithfulness of the one with the ferocity of the other. We have seen him seize little dogs that came around his heels, shake them and cast them twenty feet from him. The stoutest man he would bring to the ground by one gripe on the throat, and it was always a difficult matter to get him off if he had once tasted or smelled blood.