Are there any historical markers or signs marking the location of Fort Douglas – the Union Prison Camp for Confederate Soldiers? It was comparable to Andersonville.
Don’t know if there’s any signage near the historic location, but here’s a map of Camp Douglas superimposed over Chicago streets laid out after the camp was demolished. (Don’t look for South Park or Cottage Grove Avenues; present day, they seem to be MLK Drive and railroad tracks, respectively.)
There is a monument in Oak Woods cemetary, where many unidentified prisoners were eventually interred in (according to Wiki) the largest mass grave in the Western hemisphere.
And you’re right with the comparison to Andersonville. Although, having visited the Andersonville site, I think Camp Douglas must’ve been an order of magnitude worse, just from the scale of the place and the volume of prisoners.
No. Completely incorrect. Camp Douglas was in a frigid climate and saw some 6000prisoners die. Andersonville was in a warm southern climate and saw twelve thousand deaths at least. So too, much of the ill treatment in northern prisons was precisely because that’s how the southerners treated prisoners on their soil.
Come now. Both sides trotted out that justification post hoc, and it’s bullshit both ways. But you’re right that the Andersonville death numbers are bigger, and the survival rate for inmates lower. It was just an impression on my part regarding the conditions in Douglas vs. Andersonville, but really it’s death by privation and exposure either way.
No, the North did not “trot it out post-hoc”. They got really, really pissed mid-hoc. It wasn’t until partway through the war when the revelations of sufferings in southern prisons got press that the northern public became very, very angry. And from then on nobody really cared what happened to prisoners in the north. In truth, the South could have prevented it on both sides had they not been useless and lackadaisical at organizing anything other than their armies and weapons manufacture. Also note that while Andersonville was only marginally worse than most southern prisons, Camp Douglas was far worse than most northern ones. Calling the situation equal is dishonest or ignorant, or overly kind.
It’s a disingenuous rationalization whenever it’s been used to justify maltreatment of prisoners, whether delivered post hoc or ad hoc. We’ve heard similar sentiments expressed quite recently in this country over treatment of detainees; it scares me that this kind of sophistry is still offered up as reasonable discourse.
The treatment of Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas was abusive, dishonorable and despicable, as was the treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville. If either of these assessments seems “dishonest” to you, I’d be happy to hear why you think that way.
But sb, this really isn’t a debate forum. If you want to continue this, may I suggest Great Debates or BBQ Pit? Just throw me a link, and I’ll be happy to engage you there, and meanwhile we can let Zoe find out about Chicago landmarks without distraction.
It should be recalled that Southern soldiers in the field–that is, uncaptured soldiers in active operations with Confederate armies–were near starvation in many cases before the end. Yankee prisoners were receiving similar rations to those given to the South’s own troops. Of course, soldiers in the field sometimes had the option to supplement rations with foraging, and prisoners did not. And prison camp life in the 19th century was pretty brutal under any circumstances. But the key thing is that Union treatment of Confederate prisoners was far more a matter of choice than was the corollary situation in the South.
Also, Camp Douglas was hardly the only prison camp in the North. Elmira, New York, was pretty clearly the worst of all.
I’m not aware of any markers on or around the site itself, just the Confederate Mound at Oak Woods. Back in the 80s I also remember a marker near the Confederate Mound commemorating Illinois Copperheads, but on a recent visit could not locate it.
Griffin, a black funeral home that closed last year, is located on part of the site and had a historic display about the camp’s history. They also flew the Confederate battle flag, which caused some raised eyebrows in recent years as that came to be equated with intolerance rather than history.
There are a couple of books about Camp Douglas:
Levy, George. To Die in Chicago, Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65, 2nd ed. 1999, Pelican Publishing
Pucci, Kelly. Camp Douglas: Chicago’s Civil War Prison. 2007, Arcadia Press
Like that model prison at Elmira, for example?
Did anybody read about the major find at Millen (the camp built when Andersonville was evacuated) this week? Archaeologists found something major, something breathtaking, something game-changing in our understanding of the P.O.W.s from the war.
Unfortunately they won’t tell us what it is. (Rumors include gold, journals, escape tunnels, Jimmy Hoffa, and soldiers posing for humiliating gay tintypes ala Abu Ghraib.)
One of the horrifying things about the Civil War is that while the death rate in prison camps, both north and south, often reached the double digits percentage wise, it was often less than the death rates had the men remained in their units. There were units both north and south in which (in order of cause of death) disease, infection, and battle took well over the majority of the unit. (This was pointed out at a hearing into abuse at Point Lookout in Maryland after the war- they’re death rate of around 10% was less than some units experienced in one battle.)
Regarding Elmira, Mark Twain (famously a Confederate deserter and a resident of Elmira at times and whose in laws lived there) used to walk the grounds of the P.O.W. camp after the war. No idea how if at all it influenced his writing; perhaps we’ll learn when his unexpurgated autobio is released later this year.
Update: some of the artifacts found at Millen. Coins, weapon parts, etc… To quote Dom Deluise’s jaded emperor character in Mel Brooks History of the World, “Nice… nice. Not thrilling, but nice.”
Advice to archaeologists: what you’ve found is interesting- make no mistake- and it’s an asset to the primary source evidence of P.O.W.s in particular and the Civil War soldiers in particular. BUT, don’t try to build suspense like you did with the “we won’t even give you a hint until the press conference” unless you’ve found a living breathing Civil War soldier and a Sleestak in a cave under the camp.
Interesting. Of course, since I am the presumptive sort, I presume that death rates in POW camps might be reasonably expected to be at least slightly improved over those of active combat units in theaters of war. I’d suppose that even in the mid 19th Century, prison administrators were generally more successful at keeping their charges alive, not having any armies actively trying to kill them and all that.
Do you know of any comparisons to civilian prison populations of the time in the relevant geographical areas? There are huge differences between POW’s versus convicts but still, this seems a more appropriate perspective to me.
The only prison I’ve studied in any depth was the one in Milledgeville, Georgia, which stood on the exact spot of a library I worked at. Like most southern civilian prisons the men were put to work for the war effort early on and later released altogether so long as they swore to serve in the Confederate army, regardless of his crime*. Most civilian prisons north and south had chain-gang style work details as well so that probably (I am guessing, not based on research) also helped with their health a lot since they wouldn’t be cramped; at Andersonville men bribed guards and other prisoners with anything they had to get put on one of the few work details that took them out of the gates even for a day or two (the building of the hospital being the big one).
And as mentioned, twice as many Civil War soldiers died of illness as died of combat. The combination of the miasma theory of disease, lack of medicines, and the ambulance train cars and hospital tents and lack of hygiene (some northern bases and prisons had good hygiene due to volunteers, but far from all) and lots of misunderstandings about disease (e.g. if you’ve ever had the measles then you’re safe from mumps or smallpox so put him in there with those men) created an orgy of disease.
*An important supporting character in the novel Gone With the Wind is Archie, a lifer who murdered his wife and her lover, spent decades at the prison and was released at this time to serve in the army; he goes to work for Melanie after the war.)
There are two Confederates whose fates after the war that I’ve done an about face on after reading more about them: Dr. Samuel Mudd and Captain Wirz. It’s part of the Magnolia Mythology that both were railroaded and undeserving of their harsh sentences ala Mary Surratt (who I do believe was railroaded), but I think both deserved their outcomes.
Since this isn’t about the conspiracy I won’t go into Mudd other than to say while he probably wasn’t involved in the killing of Lincoln he was anything but a simple country doctor helping a patient he didn’t know and if anything deserved more than the time he served in prison. The Magnolia Mythology about Wirz is that he couldn’t help the starvation and disease and exposure as he honestly didn’t have the food or building materials to give them and the place was built for 10,000 but instantly came to hold three times that many at any time. There is some truth to the lack of food and building materials- his men weren’t fed a whole lot better than the prisoners (though unlike the prisoners they had the option of buying/bartering/stealing/writing home for/growing more) and while there’s no shortage of pine in that part of Georgia it’s reasonable not to want prisoners to have axes and hammers (even if they’d been in great supply, which they weren’t because iron and steel were being melted down for use in the war effort). He also couldn’t help the overcrowding, that was forced upon him.
What he could have helped was the disease. He could have ordered the Confederate latrines to be located someplace other than uphill from the same stream that ran through the camps where it carried rebel feces and piss and germs through the camp- that would have been an easy one. He could have set a work detail to dig latrines for the prisoners; he allowed them to build a gallows for their court martial after all and trusted those on grave detail with shovels. While he doesn’t seem to have been a moustache twirling sadist and was even capable of some acts of kindness and dignity (allowing the he did very little to punish sadistic or otherwise trigger happy guards, of which there were many accounts even on the rebel side: you’d probably only have to flog, hang, or- if you really wanted to be mean- strip one of his weapons and throw him into the camp before the others fell in line. While there was much he couldn’t help there was enough that he could, and while it’s true there were more sadistic camp commanders on both sides it doesn’t excuse him, it just means they should have been tried as well.
I am on vacation, but wanted to say this.
I would swear that somewhere I read or probably saw on TV a documentary on these two camps. The gist as I remember it was the Southern Camp commander did all he could to be civil and provide for the prisioners but didnt really have crap to work with. While the Northern Camp commander was basically an uncaring ass.
Now of course, maybe it was produced by Ted Turner and that explains that particular POV 
Anybody recall that show?
I was driving south on King Dr. a few weeks ago and made an impromptu stop at the Griffin home. The memorial is long gone, but there’s still a sign at the entrance to the parking lot:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~jwk/douglas2b.jpg
(Sorry about the crappy image quality; it was a cellphone camera.)
Turner definitely produced Andersonville, a not-bad TV miniseries based on the camp. It mainly concerned the Marauders (the band of thieves who preyed on their fellow prisoners) with a great performance by the late Fred Coffin as their leader, Collins, with some sideplots about escape attempts and the like. I was hoping they’d have the baby who was born in Andersonville but they didn’t.
That one has a fairly even handed depiction of Wirz: he’s a man who’s in way over his head and dealing with a hellish situation and he has some humanity (he allows the court martial and hanging of the Marauders for example), but he’s also an arrogant military bureaucrat more concerned with promotion than really making things better. One scene, probably based on a historical incident, is a showdown twixt him and a Confederate politician who’s appalled at the conditions in the camp and both sides are presented.
Civil War POW movies have the same problem as concentration camp and Japanese POW movies incidentally; no actor (save maybe Christian Bale) is willing and crazy enough to lose enough weight to be at all realistic. Many of the men who survived Andersonville and subsequent camps had to wait months before they were well enough to travel home. Sadly, hundreds of Andersonville survivors were killed in the explosion of the Sultana on April 27, 1865.
Boston Corbett, the nutcase who defied direct orders to kill John Wilkes Booth, was an Andersonville survivor. At the time his insanity was blamed on his ordeal there in an attempt to whitewash him and get him employment and speaking engagements, though records revealed he was insane long before he was taken prisoner. Before he even joined the army he had castrated himself with a pair of scissors as self administered punishment for using prostitutes.
mad as a hatter
for today’s most esoteric SDMB joke.