THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Camp Douglas

During the Civil War, more Confederate soldiers died at Chicago's Camp Douglas than on any battlefield.
IT WAS FEBRUARY 1862, AND ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF CHICAGO, A SMALL CROWD GATHERED and watched anxiously as several thousand Confederate prisoners of war climbed out of a long string of boxcars. Under the guard of Union soldiers, augmented by local police officers and volunteer constables, the captives—"traitors," the Chicago Tribune branded them—marched some 400 yards to the gates of Camp Douglas, a Union army camp that had been hastily repurposed as a military prison to accommodate them.

A three-volume history of Chicago published in 1885 included this aerial view of Camp Douglas but noted that it had "already ceased to exist, except as a memory." (Kankakee Community College (Archive.org)
The arrival of the Confederate POWs, who vastly outnumbered their guards, had been a source of worry for some in Chicago who feared that the camp couldn't contain them. What if they broke free and attacked? But once Chicagoans got a look at the defeated soldiers, the fears surely dissipated. The prisoners, who had no winter coats or blankets, had endured several days of travel on unheated boats up the Mississippi River to Cairo, Illinois, and then more exposure to frigid temperatures during the 300-mile train trip to Chicago.

"A more motley looking crowd was never seen in Chicago," Mary A. Livermore, a Union army nurse, would recall years later. "They were mostly un-uniformed, and shivering with cold, wrapped in tattered bed quilts, pieces of old carpets, hearth rugs, horse blankets, ragged shawls—anything that would serve to keep out the cold and hide their tatterdemalion condition."

Another onlooker observed that the prisoners' toes stuck out of their worn-out boots as they trudged through the snow. They were weak from diarrhea and bronchitis, and many of the bedraggled captives' faces showed evidence of measles and mumps.

But somehow the Confederate POWs struggled on, just a few more yards, until they were inside the walls of Camp Douglas. Within a week more than 200 of them were in the hospital, with several hundred more being treated outside. Before long even more of their comrades would join them. For many, the camp would be their final destination.

6,000 Confederates died in these 80 Access of Hell

Now the story

Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois  was one of the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camps for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. Based south of the city on the prairie, it was also used as a training and detention camp for Union soldiers. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862. Later in 1862 the Union Army again used Camp Douglas as a training camp. In the fall of 1862, the Union Army used the facility as a detention camp for paroled Confederate prisoners (these were Union soldiers who had been captured by the Confederacy and sent North under an agreement that they would be held temporarily while formal prisoner exchanges were worked out).

The evil commanders of Camp Douglass were Brigadier General Daniel Tyler
Brigadier General Jacob Ammen Brigadier General William W. Orme Colonel Joseph H. Tucker Colonel Arno Voss Colonel James A. Mulligan Colonel Daniel Cameron Colonel Charles V. DeLand Colonel James C. Strong Colonel Benjamin J. Sweet and Captain J. S. Putnam

Camp Douglas became a permanent prisoner-of-war camp from January 1863 to the end of the war in May 1865. In the summer and fall of 1865, the camp served as a mustering out point for Union Army volunteer regiments. The camp was dismantled and the movable property was sold off late in the year. The land was eventually sold-off and developed.