This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Dewey was a communist, failed teacher who pushed what are now clearly failed education theories. Camp commandants were rotated in and out, one after another, possibly in a feeble attempt to halt the increasing number of escapes and escape attempts. Oh I guess some of you still call it the Civil War. Camp Douglas, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville", was the largest Union POW Camp. When summer rolled around, though, the camp parade ground gave way to a new sport that returning union soldiers had learned during wartime: baseball. It was in use from Feb. 1862-June 1865. Check out the American Battlefield Protection Program's website for more information about various grant offerings and eligibility. Prisoners and nearby residents helping the camp accumulated enough books to set up a prison library system. Here is a group of people who looked upon my people as animals, as subhuman, then-Alderman Allen Streeter told the Chicago Tribune. In the camps early days, Chicago residents were allowed free access to the camp. , a newspaper out of Bibb County, Georgia did a listing of known Confederate deaths, the soldiers name, and the regiment they were with. Records indicate the capture of 211,411Unionsoldiers, with 16,668paroledand30,218diedin captivity;of Confederate soldiers, 462,684 were captured, 247,769 paroledand25,976died in captivity. Answering this part of Chriss question had us consider how a city acknowledges the darker parts of its past and the benefits, if any, of remembering them at all. 189190), Last edited on 30 November 2022, at 03:30, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Biographical Directory of the United States Congress", Map of the Territory and Military Department of Utah 1860, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Utah_Territory_in_the_American_Civil_War&oldid=1124711359, This page was last edited on 30 November 2022, at 03:30. Like all Civil War prisons, Camp Douglas had a high mortality rate: one prisoner in seven died in Chicago. War Spirit in Illinois For the people of Chicago, the year 1861 would be an especially momentous one, The State was inflamed with war fever . The Rush Valley Mining District was established by soldiers in the western Oquirrh Mountains and more than 100 claims were staked in the first year. In 1863, Utah's territorial governor, Stephen Harding, was removed from office after public backlash from his criticism of the LDS Church and the practice of polygamy. In 2014 the foundation helped persuade the Illinois Historical Society to erect the first official acknowledgement of the camp: a small plaque at 32nd Street and Martin Luther King Drive informing residents and passersby that they are in fact walking upon significant history. The president of the U.S. Sanitary Commission inspected the prison and gave a dismal report of an "amount of standing water, of unpoliced grounds, of foul sinks, of general disorder, of soil reeking with miasmic accretions, of rotten bones and emptying of camp kettles..enough to drive a sanitarian mad." 2022 Preservation Planning Grants Success Stories. Civil War Prisoner of War Records, 1861-1865 (Ancestry) ($) . Its safe to say probably the last thing on their mind was exploring their neighborhoods lost history, centering on those who had previously fought to keep them enslaved. But Karamanski suspects baseball may have helped erase part of a larger memory, too: public memory, or in this case, the way a city tells the story of itself. But at the center of this question of why Camp Douglas was forgotten is the obvious tension of an African-American neighborhood and a city rooted in Union ideals taking steps to remember thousands of dead soldiers who fought on the side to uphold slavery. What happened to it? The lockup was a room 18 sq. While Camp Douglas may have claimed more Confederate lives than any other Union prison camp, it pales in comparison to Andersonville, a Confederate prison in Georgia that offered neither barracks nor fresh water to its Union prisoners. A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried. More than 40,000 troops passed through the camp during its nearly four years in operation. [5], The Shoshoni and other Native American tribal groups engaged in several small conflicts with incoming immigrant settlers in northern Utah and south-eastern Washington Territory (present day Idaho), particularly during the late 1850s and early 1860s. Although no battles were fought in the territory, the withdrawal of Union forces at the beginning of the war allowed the Native American tribes to start raiding the trails passing through Utah. When the camp was first opened, many escapes occured when a prisoner darkened his hands and face with charcoal or some other substance and walked out the front gate with other black prison laborers. During most of the winter months, when it wasn't frozen, the compound was a sea of mud. 103 memorials Page of 6 No grave photo PVT Elihu W. Addison 1825 - 25 Oct 1863 Oak Woods Cemetery Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA More people in the Civil War died of diseases than from bullets, says David Keller, the managing director of the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation and the author of a forthcoming book about the history of the camp. Fort Pulaski was used as Confederate prison camp from 1861 to 1862. Also, an onlinesite of namesis written out in alphabetical order. Tucker used 2 detectives, under the guise of being camp prisoners, to inform him of any future escape attempts and the aides of escaped prisoners. Soon, though, the camp tightened up security and stopped admitting visitors. Thus a navy captain or an army colonel was worth fifteen privates or ordinary seamen, while personnel of equal ranks were exchanged man for man. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862 and is noteworthy due to its poor living conditions and a death rate of roughly 15%. Again, security was lax because the camp had never been intended to hold prisoners. (WBEZ/Logan Jaffe), The topic then presented itself at work. American Civil War. After the rocky attempts to memorialize Camp Douglas and the soldiers who died there, seeking to remember Camp Douglas has been going more smoothly lately. Heres the intersection of the fight for freedom.. Camp Douglas is the only military installation in the United States sited purposely so that soldiers could keep a watchful eye on the American citizens outside its gates. Colored Infantry at Camp Douglas. Edu@Metropolis.Caf. The camp was meant for no more than 6,000 prisoners, and as its ranks grew to roughly 12,000 at its peak it became more dangerous than any battlefield. A prisoner who was on parole promised not to fight again until his name was "exchanged" for a similar man on the other side. On the east side of the camp was the parade ground and administrative buildings: on the south side was the camp hospitals: on the west side was the actual prison camp. Col. Patrick E. Connor marched into Utah with a regiment of California volunteers. These soldiers are not included on the memorial. Above, visitors with picnic baskets arrive at the camp. Here is the actual newspaper page on May 14th, with the listing of names based on dates as the public would have seen it in 1866 in Macon. More than 7,000 prisoners were in the camp by September, many of them ill-clad and sick, with only one surgeon to care for them. Between 1861 and 1865, American Civil War prison camps were operated by the Union and the Confederacy to detain over 400,000 captured soldiers. But for many Confederate prisoners of war, captured on far away battlefields, the camp was their final fighta struggle to survive cold weather, poor sanitation, and hunger rather than evading Union bullets. But then, in February 1862, Ulysses S. Grant captured roughly 5,000 Confederate soldiers in a victory at the Battle of Fort Donelson at the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Patrick Edward Connor (March 17, 1820 [1] - December 17, 1891) was an Irish American soldier who served as a Union general during the American Civil War. This militant crowd is comprised of uninformed and misinformed people looking at themselves as unfortunate, underpaid, underappreciated victims of capitalism, overwhelmed with jealousy that there are people who are everything they are not. You are going to have to take ownership over the education of your children ~ Rosemary Stein, MD, Kettle Moraine, Ltd. Its close proximatey to Lake Michigan, and consequent exposure to the cold, damp winds from the lake, with the flat, marshy character of the soil created a tendency for disease. Quartermaster General Meigs responded that such an undertaking would be much too "extravagant". We look at the Camp Douglas story as being told just about the miserable conditions that were faced by these prisoners of war, but there are wider stories to need to be expounded on, she says. Register of Confederate soldiers who died in Camp Douglas, 1862-65 : and lie buried in Oakwoods Cemetery, Chicago, Ills., 1892.Cincinnati, Ohio : Cohen & Co., 1892 FS Library Digital Images; . Of the 26,060 interned over the four years, roughly 4,000 died from starvation, execution, or exposure. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The camp is low and flat, rendering drainage imperfect. A fascinating Civil War Harper's Weekly with a story and Picture of Camp Douglas, Chicago Illinois : Camp Douglas . Besides the California units Connor led into the territory, the district was also defended by detachments from the 6th and 11th Ohio Cavalry, elements of the 4th U.S. Cavalry, and the 1st Nevada Cavalry Battalion. Just outside the kitchens, slop barrels were always kept for the purpose of depositing beef bones, and such other scraps and refuse as came from the kitchens; these would often remain until late in the afternoon without being removed and emptied. Massachusetts 1676 Battle of Wissatinnewag-Peskeompskut (Great Falls): Building on Community Commitments to Remember, Honor, and Protect, Download the official NPS app before your next visit, 2022 Preservation Planning Grants Success Stories, Amplifying Narratives 2022 Preservation Planning Grant Year in Review, Massachusetts 1676 Battle of Wissatinnewag-Peskeompskut (Great Falls): Building on Community Commitments to Remember, Honor, and Protect. Sweet took over. What REALLY went on in this 80 acres of pure Hell? After the signal given at 6 p. m. for the prisoners to retire, we had to do so without delay, and were not allowed to speak or whisper to each other under any circumstances, but had to go to sleep, and then be very careful as to how loud we slept. If you feel that something here has infringed your work please let us know and we will correct it immediately. After looking into the camps death records, she discovered that a soldier named S.G. Cooper died at the camp. The use of black laborers was soon ended after this was found out. Known as "galvanized Yankees" these troops were stationed in the West facing Native Americans.[8]. [3] Training camps were often turned into prisons, and new prisons also had to be made. The spectators would go to the top of the tower where, with the aid of spy or field glasses, they could look down upon the camp. Kinney was elected as the Territory of Utah's Democratic delegate to the 38th Congress and served from March 4, 1863 until March 3, 1865. The capacity was increased to 7,000, but towards the end of the war up to 10,000 men were crammed into the facility. Some of the prisoners would just wander off and say Hey, lets go get a drink. Drunk and emaciated soldiers (still wearing their Confederate garb), would be picked up by local police and hauled, stumbling, back to the camp. It was in use from Feb. 1862-June 1865. Litchfield Park, AZ 85340 "Andersonville Revisited,", Waggoner, Jesse. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. SOURCE: A Sketch of the Battle of Franklin, Tenn.; with Reminiscences of Camp Douglas, by John M. Copley, 1893. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried. It was a real treat for a lot of kids to see those Confederates, Karamanski says. This was like an incitement to many African Americans, Karamanski says. The Union victories at Shiloh and Island No. Another favorite method of punishment was this: Every man in a barrack would be marched out on the snow in front of the barrack, formed in a line of one rank, and then told by the guards that under the snow and ice could be found plenty of corn for them to parch and eat, that they must reach for it, which was done in the following manner: The guards would point their pistols, cocked, at the heads of the prisoners, make them bend their bodies over in a stooping posture, until the tips of their fingers would touch the ground under the snow and ice, the knees having to remain perfectly stiff and straight and not bend in any manner. And that strife over how to remember what happened at Camp Douglas didnt come about over time. Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville ," was one of the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camps for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. Many escape attempts were made by digging tunnels into the soft, swampy ground, but most came from bribing the guards. According to Karamanski, one of the most important things to keep in mind while trying to preserve history is the way we tell stories about the past as well as who tells them. When it opened in 1861, Camp Douglas was a training and enlistment center for Union soldiers, a pit stop or starting point for soldiers headed to the battlefield. By late summer of 1862, the Camp Douglas held nearly 9,000 Confederate prisoners, and the prison conditions really deteriorated. Around 10,000 prisoners were moved to Camp Lawton between October and late November 1864. So when dealing with the memory of oppression and racism which is what the Civil War represents its never going to be something thats broadly consensual because its a felt history.. Camp Douglas became a prison camp, housing over 30,000 Confederate prisoners, from 1862 until it was demolished in 1865.