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Camp Douglas

Camp Douglas was a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Chicago, Illinois, USA, during the American Civil War.

In 1861, a tract of land at 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in Chicago was provided by the estate of Stephen A. Douglas for a Union Army training post. The first Confederate prisoners of war—more than 7,000 from the capture of Fort Donelson in Tennessee—arrived in February, 1862. Eventually, over 18,000 Confederate soldiers passed through the prison camp, which eventually came to be known as the North's "Andersonville" for its inhumane conditions.

It is estimated that from 1862–1865, more than 6,000 Confederate prisoners died from disease, starvation, and the bitter cold winters (although as many as 1,500 were reported as "unaccounted" for). The largest number of prisoners held at any one time was 12,000 in December 1864. Accounts vary as to precise numbers. According to 80 Acres of Hell , a television documentary produced by the A&E Network and the The History Channel, the reason for the uncertainty is that many records were destroyed after the war. The documentary also alleges that, for a period of time, the camp contracted with an unscrupulous undertaker who sold some of the bodies of Confederate prisoners to medical schools and had the rest buried in shallow graves without coffins. Some were even dumped in Lake Michigan only to wash up on its shores. Many, however, were initially buried in unmarked pauper's graves in Chicago's City Cemetery (located on the site of today's Lincoln Park), but in 1867 were reinterred at what is now known as Confederate Mound in Oak Woods Cemetery (5 miles south of the former Camp Douglas).

Nobody was ever held accountable for the conditions and actions at Camp Douglas.

Inmates were deprived of blankets, water, and food.^{[citation needed]} Rations were often cut and the small store that operated in the camp burned down as the war continued. At one point, prisoners ate the 5000 dogs kept by the guards of the camp.^{[citation needed]}The dogs were being better fed than the prisoners.^{[citation needed]}Rats were even eaten by many of the prisoners when food rations were consecutively cut.^{[citation needed]}There was in fact a rat feast in the winter of 1863 when the barracks were raised almost four feet off the ground to prevent the prisoners from tunneling, which also revealed to the starving prisoners rat nests beneath their floors.^{[citation needed]}

Henry Whitney Bellows, president of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, wrote to Colonel Hoffman his superior after visiting the camp: "Sir, the amount of standing water, unpoliced grounds, of foul sinks, of unventilated and crowded barracks, of general disorder, of soil reeking miasmatic accretions, of rotten bones and emptying of camp kettles, is enough to drive a sanitarian to despair. I hope that no thought will be entertained of mending matters. The absolute abandonment of the spot seems to be the only judicious course, I do not believe that any amount of drainage would purge that soil loaded with accumulated filth or those barracks fetid with two stories of vermin and animal exhalations. Nothing but fire can cleanse them."^{[citation needed]}

Although during the first year or so of the camp's existence a number of prisoners of war were allowed to buy their way out of the camp, this means of liberty was eventually cut off.^{[citation needed]}The only way out, aside from escape, was to pledge loyalty to the United States and agree to fight for the Union.^{[citation needed]}Many soldiers took this oath and were sent to fight Native Americans in the West. At the end of the war, only prisoners who agreed to take the oath were given train fare to the South. Those who still refused were forced to return home by their own means which often meant walking across several states.

After the war, the camp was decommissioned and the infamous barracks and other buildings were demolished. Today, condominiums fill most of the site.

For many years, a local funeral home later built on the site has maintained prisoner records and a Confederate flag at half-staff, despite being a black-owned business in a predominantly African American neighborhood. The business is slated to close December 31, 2007.^[1]

• Chicago Historical Society - Camp Douglas
• Camp Douglas
• Illinois in the Civil War — Camp Douglas
• Photo of the monument to Camp Douglas's Confederate dead
• History Channel - Special:Eighty Acres of Hell

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