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Convict Camp laborers were held in iron cages between 1923-1938 The system was born of the southern states' emergent need for free labor at the end of the Civil War. Within a decade of the end of the war, 12 southern states had adopted what became known as the Convict Lease System. This article will primarily focus on the camps in Georgia, with an emphasis on those in Pickens County. Of the few existing prisons at the time, many had suffered damage from arson during the Civ