Camp Douglas

Confederate prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, c. 1864. During the Civil War, Camp Douglas, originally constructed at Thirty-first Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago, as a Union Army training post, served as a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. Between 1862 and 1865, the camp housed about twenty-six thousand prisoners in temporary, wooden barracks. As a result of harsh conditions, some four thousand men died at the camp; they were buried in unmarked paupers' graves in Chicago's City Cemetery, located at the southeast corner of what is now Lincoln Park. In 1867, the remains were reburied at Oak Woods Cemetery, about five miles south of the camp. Camp Douglas was so named because Stephen A. Douglas, the powerful Democratic senator from Illinois, purchased land in that area; possibly it was built on land owned by him?   See also: •  Camp Douglas, Wisconsin

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