Camp Douglas (Chicago)
Camp Douglas was a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Chicago, Illinois, 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—arrived in February, 1862. Eventually, over 18,000 different Confederate soldiers passed through the prison camp, which eventually came to be known as the North's "Andersonville" for its harshness. It is estimated that from 1862–65, more than 6,000 Confederate prisoners died from disease, starvation, and the cold weather, although as many as 15,000 were reported as "unaccounted". Most were initially buried in unmarked pauper's graves in Chicago's City Cemetery (in today's Lincoln Park), but were reinterred after the war in 1867 at Oak Woods Cemetery (5 miles south of Camp Douglas).
The camp was called "80 Acres of Hell" by many of the captured soldiers. Inmates were deprived of blankets, medical treatment, and food. The president of the U.S. Sanitary Commission once inspected the prison and gave a 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." The barracks were so horrendous, he said, that "nothing but fire can cleanse them." After the war, the camp was discontinued and the infamous barracks and other buildings demolished. Today, modern condominiums fill most of the site.