Camp Douglas

Camp Douglas was located between 31st Street, 33rd Place, Cottage Grove Ave and Giles Ave on the near-south side of Chicago. The camp operated between 1861 and 1865 receiving and training nearly 40,000 Union soldiers, including African American troops. From 1862 through 1865 the camp also served as a prison camp housing nearly 30,000 Confederate prisoners. Archaeological digs are underway and discovering many of the old structures.

In a location that once was deemed the Black Metropolis - the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, it now has King Drive traveling through it. The Black-American culture is celebrated today in that region, and President Obama hailed from that region. However, before all that, it was the site of Camp Douglas, home to nearly 40,000 Union troops that trained for war, as well as a Confederate Prison where multitudes suffered and died due to poor conditions and treatment.. 

HIstorian Theodore J. Karamanski notes on the Encyclopedia of Chicago:

Founded in the fall of 1861 as a training camp and staging center for Union forces, Camp Douglas was named after Stephen A. Douglas, whose property south of the city provided its site. In 1862 the camp was hastily adapted to serve as a prison for rebel soldiers captured by Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson. Due to occasional prisoner exchanges during the first two years of the Civil War, the number of prisoners in the camp fluctuated, although for a time it was the largest military prison in the North. By the end of the war a total of 26,060 men had been incarcerated there.

Escapes were frequent from the camp, but only the abortive November 1864 “Chicago Conspiracy” roused broad concern. Federal informants foiled an ill-conceived attempt by local antiwar activists and die-hard prisoners to disrupt the 1864 election with a mass prison break.

Like all Civil War prisons, Camp Douglas had a high mortality rate: one prisoner in seven died in Chicago. Poor sanitation, hastily constructed buildings, and harsh weather conditions were to blame. In June 1862 a U.S. Sanitary Commission agent decried the camp's “foul sinks,” “unventilated and crowded barracks,” and “soil reeking with miasmatic accretions” as “enough to drive a sanitarian to despair.” By the end of the war more than 4,000 rebels had died in the camp.

Douglas was one of the first major speculators in Chicago and a huge proponent of both a northern route to the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as its route into Chicago, He made substantial investments 160 acres near 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue on Chicago's south side. Senator Douglas was also significant in securing Chicago's place as the northern terminus of the Illinois Central Railroad; The Illinois Central traveled through his south-side Chicago property.₁ 

1 See, for example, Theodore J. Karamanski and Eileen M. McMahon, Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History (Athens, Ohio: University of Ohio Press, 2014). 2. Ibid; Ann Durkin Keating, "Stephan A. Douglas," Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicagohistory.org, last updated 2005, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2404.html. 3 Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, "A Chicago Story That Needs to Be Told," campdouglas.org, Last updated, 2016. http://www.campdouglas.org/ Bibliography Bernstein, Arnie, The Hoofs and Guns of the Storm (Chicago’s Civil War Connection), Lake Claremont Press, Chicago, IL, 2003 Campbell, Thomas, Fighting Slavery in Chicago, Abolitionists, the Law of Slavery, and Lincoln, AMP&SAND, Chicago IL, 2009 Cook, Francis Frederick, Bygone Days in Chicago –Recollections of the “Garden City” of the sixties, A. C. McClurg & Co, 1910 Doyle, Robert C. The Enemy in our Hands, The University Press of Kentucky, 2010 Gillispie, James M. Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners, University of North Texas Press, Denton, TX, 2008 Haynie, I. N. A history of Camp Douglas, A Prisoner of War Camp at Chicago 1861-1865, From a Report by the Adjutant General of the state of Illinois, Volume 1, Eagle Press, Little Rock, AR, October 1991 Karamanski, Theodore J. Rally ‘Round the Flag Chicago and the Civil War, Nelson-Hall, Inc. Chicago, IL Levy, George, To Die in Chicago, Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna LA, 1999 Miller, Edward, The Black Soldier of Illinois-Story of the Twenty Ninth US Colored Troops, University of South Carolina Press,1998 McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War, University of Illinois Press, Urbana IL, 1965 Peckenpaugh, Roger, Captives in Grey, The Civil War Prisons of the Union, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 2009 Pucci, Kelly, Images of America, Camp Douglas, Chicago’s Civil War Prison, Arcadia Press, San Francisco, CA, 2007 Quarles, Benjamin, The Negro in the Civil War, Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 1953 Da Capo Press, New York edition, 1988 Rerdkey, Edward S., Editor, A Grand Army of Black Men, Cambridge University Press, 1992 Starr, Stephen Z. Colonel Grenfell’s Wars, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA, 1971 Spear, Lonnie R. Portals to Hell, Military Prisons of the Civil War, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE, 1997 Travis, Dempsey J. An Autobiography of Black Chicago, Urban Research Press, Inc. Chicago, IL 1981