Re: Camp Douglas, Worse Than Hell

Date: April 28, 2004

"Pieces of Our Past

Camp Douglas, Ill. — worse than Hell

by Scott Thompson

If you think war is Hell, then you should avoid any notion of what it would be like to be crammed, starving and nearly naked, inside a rat infested and disease saturated 1,700 square-foot coffin in Camp Douglas, Ill., in the dead of winter. More deadly than war, more deadly than the vilified Confederate prison Andersonville, this “eighty acres of Hell,” was the dying place of more than 6,000 souls. Three native Laurens Countians were there. They endured the icy winds of winter, the intense heat of a Chicago summer, and the mortal symptoms of scurvy, cholera, and small pox in addition to the inhumane torture of miscreant guards.

T.Z. Ennis and John F. Hogsett enlisted in Company C of the 55th Georgia infantry on May 3, 1862. Ennis was 22 years old, while Hogsett was just over the age of 21. A month later, William B. Lock, the third Laurens County native in the company, joined up six months after his 18th birthday. Company C was formed by men from Dooly County, Ga. It is likely that the families of the trio had migrated to Vienna in the decades before the war.

The 55th Georgia infantry was immediately sent to eastern Tennessee and thence to Heth’s division in Kentucky. Under the overall command of Lt. Gen. Kirby Smith, the 55th and the other companies found themselves without food and returned to the safety of the Cumberland Gap. In September 1863, Unionists Tennesseans and regular Federal troops began an assault on the recently fortified Confederate positions. With little supplies and food on hand and mistakenly believing that his force was outnumbered, Confederate Commander Gen. Frazer surrendered his force at Cumberland Gap on Sept. 9, 1863. Included in the roll of prisoners was Ennis, Hogsett and Lock. The prisoners were taken to Camp Douglas in Chicago, Ill., a part of the estate of former Democratic presidential candidate and rival of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas.

The first 8,000 prisoners arrived at the camp, which was located between 31st and 36th streets on the south side of Chicago in 1862 following the capture of Fort Donelson. Immediately the prisoners fell ill to symptoms of scurvy and small pox. Despite the best efforts of a relief society, the death toll continued to mount. Overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and inadequate health care led to a 10 percent mortality rate in the first year alone. At its worse, 9 percent of the Union prisoners died at Andersonville in the exceedingly sweltering month of August 1864. Two hundred prisoners were crammed into a 25 X 70 foot barrack. Floors were made of dirt to discourage tunneling. As the prison population grew, the overflow of prisoners were placed in tents.

Sewage and the water supplies were intermingled. Rats were rampant. Slow rats were killed, skinned and put into “rat pies.” Cholera permeated the bodies of hundreds of prisoners. Southern furnished relief supplies and medicine were appropriated by Union officials, who retaliated against the rebels by cutting food rations following victories by the Southern armies. By the end of the war, the Chicago police department took control of the camp from the wholly inadequate number of guards assigned to the camp.

In April 1863, a group of civilian doctors conducted an inspection of the camp. They reported that Camp Douglas was “an extermination camp,” and painted a picture of “wretched inmates without a change of clothing, covered with vermin, in wards reeking with filth and foul air, and blankets in rags. It got so bad in a three-week period that 260 out of 3,800 prisoners died. At that rate, the entire camp population would have been exterminated in 320 days.

Just like Andersonville, Camp Douglas had its dead line. The camp was laid out in squares with a 3-foot guard walkway around the top of the 15-foot tall fence. Any prisoner caught crossing the line would be shot on sight. Some guards shot aimlessly into barracks to disturb the slumber of the weary men. Lackadaisical prisoners were shot, while others were strung up by their feet in an attempt to coax them to profess loyalty to the Union. Insidious guards forced uncooperative prisoners to sit on a board with the sharp corner side up for hours on end. The devise, known as the “mule,” was made even more excruciating by tying buckets of sand to the legs of the men. Eventually, the mule was elevated to fifteen feet above the ground. The punished were forced to sit on the sharp edge until they fainted or fell from exhaustion.

Often Confederate prisoners were exchanged for Union prisoners in the South. The practice stopped in 1864 under orders from President Lincoln and General Grant. Many of the prisoners from Cumberland Gap were exchanged and returned to their units in the South despite their promises to the contrary. Many surviving members of the 55th infantry became guards at Andersonville. One could not doubt the revenge in their minds as they walked the dead line in the prison, just a few miles from home. For some unknown reason, Ennis, Hogsett and Lock remained at Camp Douglas.

A fourth Laurens Countian, Frank Fleming Goolsby, at the age of 17, enlisted on Aug. 6, 1861, in the Savannah Light Guards. Goolsby rose to the rank of ensign of Company D of the 1st Georgia Infantry. He was captured at Jonesboro, Ga., on Sept. 2, 1864, and taken as a prisoner of war to Camp Douglas.

Most of the prisoners were released in the spring of 1865. Goolsby was released on May 17th, while the Dooly County men were freed about four weeks later. During the forty months of operation more than 18,000 men were held captive at Camp Douglas. In December 1864 alone, more than 12, 000 men were crammed into the frigid netherworld.

Included among the prison rolls were Sam Houston, Jr., son of the founder of Texas, and Henry M. Stanley, the famous 19th Century African explorer. Goolsby moved to Laurens County, where he married Maggie Hester. Following his death on July 19, 1915, he was buried in Northview Cemetery in Dublin.

More than 6,000 men, one-third of those imprisoned in the camp, died. Bodies were heaped into a large mass grave which was eventually transformed into a funeral mound. Twice that many men died in Andersonville, or Camp Sumpter. However, the overall death rate at Andersonville was slightly less than 30 percent, while the death rate at Camp Douglas was 33 percent, more or less. The meaningless deviation is moot in that too many boys and daddies died needlessly.

As another Confederate Memorial Day passes, let us take a moment to honor the memory of more than a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers who died during that horrible war. Most of the dead were just boys. Let us not question the nobility of their cause. In their minds it was a just and noble war. But war is war, and war is hell!

— Scott Thompson is a local attorney and avid historian."