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. Although not alone in this distinction, it is sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville." 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. Camp Douglas became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862, but military training continued. Later that year, the Union Army used the facility as a detention camp for paroled Confederate prisoners (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).
Camp Douglas became a permanent prisoner-of-war camp from January 1863 through 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 subsequently developed.
In the aftermath of the war, Camp Douglas eventually came to be noted for its poor conditions and death rate of roughly seventeen percent (about the same as other POW camps in the North). Some 4,275 Confederate prisoners were known to be re-interred from the camp cemetery to a mass grave at Oak Woods Cemetery after the war.
Location and construction
Training Camp Douglas
On April 15, 1861, the day after the U.S. Army garrison surrendered Fort Sumter to Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln called 75,000 State militiamen into federal service for ninety days to put down the insurrection.. On May 3, 1861, President Lincoln called for 42,000 three-year volunteers, expansion of the regular army by 23,000 men and of the U.S. Navy by 18,000 sailors.. Many of the 90,000 ninety-day volunteers re-enlisted for three years. Convening in July 1861, Congress retroactively approved Lincoln's actions and authorized another one million three-year volunteers.
The states and localities had to organize and equip the volunteer regiments until later in 1861, when the federal government became sufficiently organized to take over the project.; In February 1862, Captain John Christopher, U.S. Army recruiting officer, assumed most of the construction costs of Camp Douglas for the federal government. Soon after President Lincoln's calls for volunteers, many volunteers from Illinois gathered in various large public and private buildings in Chicago and then overflowed into camps on the prairie on the southeast edge of the city.. The 7th Annual Fair of the United States Agricultural Society was held at this location in 1859. Senator Stephen A. DouglasSenator Douglas died June 3, 1861. owned land next to this location and had donated land just south of the camps to the original University of Chicago..
Henry Graves owned most of the property on which the camp was located.. Illinois Governor Richard Yates assigned Judge Allen C. Fuller, soon to be adjutant general for the State of Illinois, to select the site for a permanent army camp at Chicago.. Judge Fuller selected the site that was already in use for the makeshift camps because it was only from downtown Chicago, prairie surrounded the site, nearby Lake Michigan could provide water, and the Illinois Central Railroad ran within a few hundred yards of the site.
Fuller was not an engineer and did not realize that the site was a poor choice for a large camp because of its wet, low-lying location.. The camp lacked sewers for more than a year, and the prairie on which it was built could not absorb the waste from thousands of humans and horses. The camp flooded with each rainfall. In the winter, it was a sea of mud when the ground was not frozen. When the camp opened, only one water hydrant worked. There was a severe shortage of latrines and medical facilities from the time of the camp's initial use through the period of incarceration of the first group of Confederate prisoners in mid–1862.
The camp ran west four blocks from Cottage Grove Avenue to the present Martin Luther King Drive. Its northern boundary was what is now East 31st Street, and its southern boundary was the current East 33rd Place, which then was named College Place. A gate in the south fence of the camp provided access to the donated by Senator Douglas to the Old University of Chicago, which had opened in 1857 at its site on Cottage Grove Avenue and 35th Street. A smallpox hospital, four rows of garrison barracks, and an Illinois Central Railroad station were located on the former Douglas property.
The boundaries of the camp and the number, use and location of its buildings evolved during the war, but certain main divisions of the camp existed for significant periods of time. "Garrison Square" contained officers' quarters, post headquarters, a post office and parade ground.; "White Oak Square" housed both Union soldiers and prisoners until late in 1863. White Oak Square included the original camp prison and the building that would become the infamous "White Oak Dungeon." Prisoners who were being punished were subject to close confinement in small, dark and dirty conditions in this "dungeon." The "dungeon" was a room , lit by one closely barred window about off the floor, with entry only through a hatch about square in the ceiling. The room had a damp floor and an intolerable stench from a sink (latrine) in the corner of the room.
Prison hospitals and a morgue were located just to the south of the camp in an area of known as "Hospital Square". In 1863, the army built "Prison Square" or "Prisoner's Square" in the western division of the camp, as well as surgeons' quarters and warehouses.; ; singular form of word is in the source Prison Square, which was located along the south and west sides of Garrison Square, was created by combining parts of other squares with White Oak Square and separating the area from other parts of the camp with a fence. Prison Square eventually contained 64 barracks, which were with partitioned off as a kitchen. Designed for about 95 men each, the camp's barracks held an average of 189 men when the prison population was at its highest.
Command of Colonel Joseph H. Tucker Governor Yates put Colonel Joseph H. Tucker, commanding the 60th Regiment, Illinois State Militia, in charge of building the camp. Yates also appointed Tucker as the camp's first commander. State militia troops called the Mechanics Fusileers, who were apprentice and journeyman carpenters, built the barracks in October and November 1861. These troops mutinied on December 18, 1861, when the State of Illinois tried to press them into service as infantry upon completion of their work on Camp Douglas.; The State paid them less than they believed they were promised for their work. Regular troops had to suppress the rioting construction troops and restore order to the camp. After the Mechanics Fusileers repaired damage that they had caused to a fence, they were allowed to return home.
By November 15, 1861, Camp Douglas housed about 4,222 volunteer soldiers from 11 regiments. By February 1862, the recruits suffered 42 deaths by disease. According to George Levy's 1999 history of the camp, a total of about 40,000 Union Army recruits passed through the camp for outfitting and training before the facility was permanently converted to a prisoner-of-war camp. A 1960 history by Eisendrath estimated the number of recruits as 25,000 based on his sources at the time. Colonel Tucker's job as camp commander was not easy; he had to use increasingly hard measures to curb considerable drunk and disorderly conduct by recruits in camp. He also had to supervise their conduct and sometimes take punitive action against them for acts in the city of Chicago, where the soldiers abused pass privileges..
Designated prisoner of war camp, 1862
Commands of Colonel Joseph H. Tucker and Colonel Arno Voss On February 16, 1862, the Union Army under then Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River, and Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, near Dover. With these victories, his forces took about 12,000 to 15,000 Confederate prisoners. The army was unprepared to handle this large group of prisoners and scrambled to find places to house them. Colonel Tucker told General Grant's superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck, that Camp Douglas could accommodate 8,000 or 9,000 prisoners, which was about the same number as the recruits it had been built for. This did not anticipate the differences required of a prison facility.
General Halleck's chief of staff at the scene in Tennessee, Brigadier General George W. Cullum, sent many prisoners to St. Louis before he received War Department instructions to direct 7,000 prisoners to Camp Douglas. This relieved pressure in Chicago, as the camp and its staff could not easily handle even the smaller number of prisoners that it received. In the event, the Illinois Central Railroad transported 4,459 of the Fort Donelson prisoners to Camp Douglas from Cairo, Illinois, where they had initially been sent.
On February 18, 1862, Colonel Arno Voss took brief temporary command of the camp until Colonel Tucker returned from Springfield, Illinois, several days later.. "Arno" may have been an abbreviation for "Arnold." Voss had to prepare for arrival on February 20, 1862, of the first prisoners from Fort Donelson, who found a camp but no real prison. For the first few days, they were housed in the White Oak Square section, along with newly trained Union soldiers about to depart for service at the front. The army sent sick prisoners to the camp, although it had no medical facilities at the time, and they had been advised not to do so.
On February 23, 1862, the Union troops vacated the camp, except for a small force left to guard the prisoners. This guard consisted of one regiment of 469 enlisted men and about 40 officers.
On February 25, 1862, General Halleck ordered Confederate officers to be transferred to Camp Chase, Ohio; several hundred men were pulled out and Camp Douglas became a prison camp only for enlisted men. In little more than a month, by the end of March, over 700 prisoners had died. About 77 escapes were recorded at Camp Douglas by June 1862. Historians have found no record of any escapee harming civilians.
Command of Colonel James A. Mulligan On February 26, 1862, General Halleck ordered Colonel Tucker to report to Springfield. Colonel James A. Mulligan, a Union Army officer from Illinois, was appointed as commander of the POW camp until June 14, 1862. Between June 14 and June 19, 1862, Colonel Daniel Cameron Jr. was in charge.
The first group of prisoners were treated reasonably well under the circumstances, despite the inadequacy of the grounds, barracks, and sewer and water systems. Sewers were not authorized until June 1863 for the camp, and took time to be completed. Initially the prisoners received enough to eat, with cooking stoves and utensils to aid in preparation, and clothing. A good sutler store was set up.
The Union Army sent three tons of corn meal and large quantities of blankets, clothing, shoes and eating utensils to the camp on March 1, 1862. Sickness and death among the prisoners, and even among some guards, reached epidemic levels. Frozen hydrants led to a water shortage. One in eight of the prisoners from Fort Donelson died of pneumonia or various diseases. After April 12, 1862, Colonel Mulligan finally permitted only physicians and ministers to visit the prisoners to reduce exposure to illness.