Talk:Camp Douglas (Chicago)

History Channel
Tonight on the History Channel, there will be a program about Camp Douglas. I'll be paying attention to see what I can get from it. Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 01:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

What time.
Dear person, what time does the program start on the history channel?

University of Chicago?
The article states that seminary students from the University of Chicago provided humanitarian aid; the University of Chicago was founded in 1890, well after the Civil War. Perhaps instead these were students from the Chicago Theological Seminary, a separate institution?

-- I removed the sentence about University of Chicago. Maybe someone else can verify whether the Theological Seminary is the real answer.

It's the UoChicago. Pucci, K. (2007.) Camp Douglas: Chicago's Civil War Prison. Arcadia Publishing. 34. Senator Steven A. Douglas started the "first" University of Chicago with a grant in 1856. Goodspeed, T. (1916.) A history of the University of Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 13. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.72.180.231 (talk) 20:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Map
Does someone have a good map of where this was? I was walking around the area, but wan't sure where it was. I don't know if there were ever any historical markers put up. There should be. --Kalmia 07:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Douglas Tomb site
tomb of Stephen Arnold Douglas in Chicago, Illinois located in the approximate area of the former Camp Douglas (POW concentration camp).

Photograph taken 8 October 2006 CST/UTC in Chicago, Illinois

Issues and suugestions
I'd like to see more on the "pre-POW camp" phase of Camp Douglas. It was an extremely significant training and mustering center in the early days of the war.

The article would be greatly strengthened by placing the blame for the deplorable conditions on named individuals, such as the camp commander(s) and senior officers or state officials responsible. As written, the conditions appear without any context. Scromett 20:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The cable documentary referenced in this talk page does go into that sort of discussion of which commanders were to blame for the deplorable conditions (I saw a while enough back I can't remember specific names). --Bobak 19:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of sentence concerning promotion
I have deleted the second part of the sentence: "Nobody was ever held accountable for the conditions and actions at Camp Douglas, in fact the only Union general to gain the rank without seeing combat was an overseer of Camp Douglas." The sentence refers to Colonel Benjamin J. Sweet, who was the only commandant of Camp Douglas who was awarded a general's rank supposedly without seeing combat - not the only Union general - a far narrower statement. Even this statement is not correct. Sweet was wounded at the battle of Perryville, so he most definitely did see combat during his service. In fact, dozens of staff officers received brevet general awards so a blanket statement covering all Union generals would not be correct on that basis either. Also, Sweet was not an actual general. Like approximately 1,400 other lower ranking officers, Sweet was given a brevet brigadier general (USV) award, an honorary rank which would be the equivalent of receiving a medal today. Many of these brevet awards were made for "faithful service" or some equivalent statement so nowhere near all brevet awards can be traced to specific battlefield actions.Donner60 (talk) 08:41, 11 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Even on the face of it the statement is untrue. Col. Carroll H. Potter, appointed to command the 6th U.S.V.I. (Galvanized Yankees) in April 1865, was one of the March 13, 1865 brevets to brigadier general, and he had been an assistant adjutant general as a junior officer the entire war.  btw the phrase was usually "meritorious service".--Reedmalloy (talk) 07:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Many years later I have read my old comment that Sweet was not an "actual" general. Actual should be "actual rank" or "full rank" or "substantive." Also, not all brevet general appointments were completely "honorary," which is to say in lieu of medals or other honors or awards which did not exist at the time. About 58 brevet general appointments were made by President Lincoln and many were made so that an officer who was then in a lower grade could have a high enough grade to take command of units such as brigades and divisions in preference to higher grade officers or officers of the same grade with senior rank. (Some brevet appointments by Lincoln, especially of full rank brigadier generals of volunteers to brevet major general may have been in addition to the 58, which the source suggests were only brevet generals.) Some of the later appointed brevet generals, over 1,300 of them, were given the appointments because of battlefield actions rather than just faithful service but many were for the latter reason. These were postwar appointments and none of them was actually made on March 13, 1865. Many of these appointments were confirmed to "rank from" March 13, 1865 but most were confirmed between late 1865 and early 1869 regardless of the antedated rank. Very few were even announced as early as General Orders No. 97 in May 1865.


 * As further information, Carroll H. Potter (born 1838) served as an assistant adjutant general in the grades of captain and major throughout the Civil War. Potter was nominated for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers (USV) by President Andrew Johnson on December 11, 1866, to rank from March 13, 1865, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on February 6, 1867. Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1. p. 755. Potter served as colonel of the 6th United States Volunteer Infantry Regiment from March 27, 1865 to July 28, 1866 when he reverted to his regular army grade of 1st lieutenant USA and was assigned to the 18th US Infantry Regiment. He was mustered out of the volunteers on October 10, 1866, before his nomination to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers was even presented to the U.S. Senate for confirmation. Potter served as regimental adjutant from January 1, 1867 to March 20, 1879. He was promoted to captain in 1879. Later, he was promoted to major of the 14th US Infantry Regiment on April 26, 1898 and lieutenant colonel of the 22nd US Infantry Regiment on May 31, 1900. He retired from the regular army on June 9, 1900, died on December 9, 1901 (aged 63) and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. All from Eicher, p. 436. FWIW. Donner60 (talk) 08:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Further revisions to come
Within the next few days, I should be able to complete the revision and expansion of this article. I have brought the article up to mid-1863. As I have progressed, I have left the last three sections which were part of the existing version of the article so that the article would in some sense remain complete as I expanded it. I plan to incorporate directly or include the information from the sections on conditions and deaths as I complete the article but I will use the formatting I have been using. I will exclude any statements that I cannot verify. I also plan to see if I have other sources on Camp Douglas or can use any online editions of books (if any) that were published before 1923 and are free of copyright. On the other hand, some information about the camp has only been found in the recent past. The discovery of the additional information is why Mr. Levy revised his book in 1999. So more current sources such as Mr. Levy's book and the Heidler encyclopedia may be the best available information. I have seen the History Channel documentary on Camp Douglas but in the absence of a transcript, I cannot add any information from that source. I will advise the work groups of the revision of the article when I complete my editingDonner60 (talk) 08:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

References deleted
I have deleted seven references from the original article. Three are master's theses which I could not find on the internet. Two were passing mentions in the sources cited and are not true references for any Camp Douglas information. I could not find any mention of one of the references (De Jonge) on the internet. I could not retrieve one of the references (Praus) but have added a very similar reference (United Confederate Veterans). I added six other references and updated or completed three others. The original article contained no in-line citations to any of the seven deleted references and the revised and expanded article obviously does not cite or depend on any of them. Since it seems they would be difficult if not impossible to retrieve, they do not provide additional sources of information or add to the verifiability of the articleDonner60 (talk) 07:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The Camp Douglas Conspiracy: To hell in a hand basket
The note of the first recorded use of the phrase, which was in a truthiness-laced account of related conspiracies, with a pointed reference to Camp Douglas, seems to have become a basket case itself, buried as it among Notes that for the most part, are not notes clarifying text per Help:Footnotes, but citations that likely should be under References. Rather than risk becoming a basket case, myself, I'll leave it to others to ponder. BTW, the article's lead paragraph as presently written strikes me as yet another a basket case. --Pawyilee (talk) 16:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I will restore the sentence to the text. I moved it to a footnote because I could not follow the link and verify the statement. Complete deletion did not seem called for since I thought it likely to be accurate. I thought it might be better to park the statement below until I could verify it. Otherwise, since I made substantial additions to the article, I might be giving it some prominence without having a source I could find. Although I think I am about finished with my edits on this article, I had not thought I was finished with that statement or the article as a whole, which needs at least a little more editing. I have been working on the article for some weeks and have thought that I could put up some good revisions without waiting until I had an end product. Of course, that does not mean others would not be interested in the article in the meantime, which is easy to lose sight of when one is working on it alone. In any event, I have tried to find the source again and just have been able to follow the link to the source article. I am not sure why that did not work for me before but perhaps I reached the linked page and for some reason thought it was a dead end. The bottom line is that for whatever reason I did not find the source before, wanted to be cautious about either leaving the statement in or taking it out entirely, but had not thought I had reached a conclusion on that point or on my final wording or arrangement of that sentence. There was no way for anyone else to know that, of course, and I probably should have put up another note here. The Camp Douglas conspiracy probably could be a separate article with a briefer summary here, but I am not sure I want to take that on at this time.


 * You are perfectly correct about the first paragraph and I will rewrite it. I tried to break up a long sentence and also to add all the uses of the camp to the introductory paragraph. I needed to allow time to let the most recent revision sink in and then to revise it rather than jumping on it hurriedly when I made the previous changes. I got the information about the various uses of the camp over the course of the war into the paragraph but I agree that it does not read well at all. The previous version was probably better even though it too needed revision. I would like to think I would have changed the current poorly worded paragraph the next time I read through the article but it is helpful to have such things pointed out. I think that the old saying about it being harder to proofread one's own work than someone else's work is often true. The need for change here looks rather obvious.


 * As to the difference between footnotes and references, I suppose I have not been doing this long enough for the fine points to have sunk in. I believe I have seen a number of articles set up this way but perhaps my recollection is wrong or those particular articles were not set up right. My range of experience is still small. (I did not start this article so I do not know how it was originally set up. It is probably not all that important to go back and look because I have used the current format here in any event.) I will make any change that is required by the style manual or policy or even that I understand to be preferable. I will look at the help page and take the initiative on it but if I think that a change is simply preferable, I may wait for more specific direction.


 * I will do this promptly.Donner60 (talk) 00:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * First paragraph edited and sentence on hand basket phrase restored to text. Will work on separating substantive footnotes from references.Donner60 (talk) 04:48, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I still intend to work on the separation of types of notes which may be preferable in this long article with many notes and may not take too long to accomplish. I thought I would check a few articles on notable military history topics at random, and to which I had no input, to see how the notes were handled and references were made. Such articles as Battle of Bunker Hill, Battle of Cowpens, Battle of Gettysburg, Siege of Petersburg have both types of footnotes in a notes or references section and a separate section of references or bibliography listing the sources used. So for what it is worth, I checked my statement about seeing article notes and references set up like the ones in this article and found that some comprehensive articles on Revolutionary War and Civil War topics have this type of organization. In some of them one or both sections are titled a little differently but the substance is the same as the two sections in this article. I do not note this to start any sort of argument over the footnote guidelines but merely to "source" my own recollection and statement above. I thought it would be rather lame if I could not back up that recollection, especially when I had moved a statement around because I could not immediately verify it. I think these articles show my notes and references sections for this article are not set up in a unique style that is way out of line with the format of other notable U.S. military history articles. I do think the suggestion that the set up of these sections is worth pondering is nonetheless a good one, especially in an article like this where it may be questioned whether the few substantive footnotes in a long list of footnotes should be separated out and whether a separate list of references is really necessary when each reference is given in full detail when it first appears in a note.Donner60 (talk) 06:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your response. WP:Footnotes is very confusing: good luck figuring it out. What brought me here in the first place was the current state of affairs among conspiracy theorists, which had me thinking USers are going to hell in a hand basket. So, I goggled the phrase, which landed me in Camp Douglas and in The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details, the great, great-granddaddy of conspiracy theories. Your re-wording was much better than mine; but I re-worded it to characterize Ayer's work as an "account." While itself historical, is a rant rather than a "history," which needs only one reference: yours to the PDF rather than mine to the Gutenberg editions. I also back-tracked to the first instance of Sons of Liberty, to link the SOLs to the Knights of the Golden Circle, as their cabal was called until 1865.

As to great, great-granddaddies, mine was KIA 22 Nov 1864 at the Battle of Griswoldville. The current account leaves much to be desired, but I'm 180 degrees out from Macon where the archives are kept (which is where I got my info, not from family lore.) When it had become obvious that Sherman wasn't about to attack Macon, the one remaining Georgia militia unit was ordered to make their way to mount a defense of Savannah, under strict orders to avoid battle. But when they stumbled across one, they died trying to expunge the infamy of the refrain from Eating Goober Peas. In the words of the Union commander, they left the field littered with graybeards and boys: John Lowe Montgomery, age 46, was one of the latter. Mary Jane, his wife, bore his daughter on Christmas Day. I'm going to add these comments to the battle account, and might even mention who the heck was Griswold. --Pawyilee (talk) 13:41, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I think your change reflects the best view. The degree of involvement of Judge Morris, as contrasted with that of his wife, was a subject of debate even in contemporary accounts. I think there is "too much smoke" for the view that he really wasn't involved at all. On the other hand, at least one modern historian, Levy, does not think the conspiracy itself amounted to much, especially after August. The Battle of Griswoldville article is a little sparse, at least for my taste, and could use some addition. As I recall from past reading or History Channel programs or both, many Union soldiers as well as their commander were embarrassed if not appalled when they discovered the composition of the force (boys and old men) who opposed them at Griswoldville. Wikipedia encourages editors to add to or comment on prior work and I do think that is a good philosophy for ultimately coming up with the best article on a subject.


 * I may not be the best at interpreting some of the guidelines, templates, HTML phrases and so on but I think I can usually come up with the gist. I puzzled over not just the footnotes section but several sub-pages and related pages such as those dealing with layout, sources and templates for sources and footnotes. I still am not sure whether there is an exact, or even a preferred, way of adding the footnotes and references although I think I understand what the references should contain. Just looking at a small number of articles, one can find variations so others either read it differently or think it allows some leeway. Verifiability and accuracy are our main goals and if we can help each other produce more accurate and verifiable (and better written) articles, the readers who rely on Wikipedia for accurate information will benefitDonner60 (talk) 07:02, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Because of the variation that you've noted, the most important goal is to make the article readable, and where there are variations in how to accomplish that, to maintain consistency. I also added comments to the Battle of Griswoldville's Talk page, Why they were there, and to Goober Peas Talk page, why they included the Georgia Militia. --Pawyilee (talk) 10:47, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I added the tidbits on John T. Shanks to provide a little balance to what had been a pretty grim (and therefore possibly POV) characterization. Dee Brown took a more objective view of Shanks than did Levy.--Reedmalloy (talk) 07:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You have cited the reference only in the references section. In view of all the citations to other points, I think it would be appropriate here to add an inline citation with page number to the sentence added at the end of the paragraph. I don't have the cited book so I can't do it myself. Donner60 (talk) 08:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was looking at the first change not the last one. I see the citation was added. Donner60 (talk) 08:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Levy reference
Attorney and historian George Levy is referenced again and again in the footnotes only as Levy, 1999, p.__, without a full reference to his work that I could find.

Also, so much as reads [Levy] believes the conspiracy was almost entirely a con of Confederate agents which was perpetrated to swindle them, which became a hoax, ultimately carried on by Colonel Sweet for his own advancement

might better read
 * [Levy]...maintains the "conspiracy" began as a confidence trick to exploit Confederate agents that evolved into a hoax exploited by Colonel Sweet for his own advantage.

--Pawyilee (talk) 14:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I am sure I had the full reference to the Levy book in the notes at one time. I think I must have deleted the first note in which the full citation appeared during a revision of the first paragraph and did not notice it. I still had a citation to the book in the References. But since I was using the format of giving a full citation in the first note in which a work is cited, I should have been careful not to have deleted a first citation to any source in any later revision. In any event, I put the full citation in the current first footnote to conform to the format I used for citations in the rest of the notes - and which I think is a suggested format in a help or layout or style page somewhere.


 * Your sentence about the conspiracy being a confidence trick which turned into a hoax is much better than mine. I substituted it. Levy actually used the word "con" in his characterization of the plot. That struck me as odd wording when I read it but I blanked on coming up with a better word at the time so I just used it. The rest of the sentence was from a later Levy statement that I ran together to show that the "conspiracy" morphed into something else. That is Levy's view but he actually expressed it in a piecemeal way that I thought could be shortened for this purpose. He started out by calling the plot a "con" but then he goes on to describe real discussions and rudimentary planning to carry it out. I found this a little incongruous or at least thought it undercut the thought that there was nothing substantive to the plot. He concludes that everyone had given up on the plot by the end of August. (Or perhaps almost everyone had given up; I do not think he is crystal clear about whether Hines and a few others may have hoped to continue with a new plan.) Also, he stated that due to lack of planning and participation, the few persons who still might have thought they could pull it off were unprepared and too few to accomplish the task. This is the point at which Levy thinks it became a hoax perpetrated by Sweet for his own self-advancement even though he knew (or should have known) that the plot had already failed and no serious attempt at its execution was possible. It seems to me that Sweet was not entirely above board with his handling of the matter but I think Levy goes too far when he asserts that Sweet knew there was no longer anything to the plot and that there might not have been much to it even when it began. Thus, Levy seems to think Sweet should have ignored it or perhaps simply have been on alert. I think he may have been justified in being more vigilant and in taking some action even if in hindsight he may have overblown the threat.


 * I made other changes in wording in my last revision and a few more when I made these revisions just now. That may finish my work on this article. I think I will leave a note with a few thoughts on my approach to the article and its length below. It may be too long in some respects but quite a lot happened over the life of the camp and quite a number of people were involved with it. A time line approach with many facts and statements about the changes over time may best convey the overall picture. It also may help preserve a neutral viewpoint where more general or global statements might become more like interpretations and might not apply to the entire period of the camp's existence. If so, it would more likely cause some dissatisfaction.


 * I will ask the military history project to assess the article since I think it is appropriately within the scope of that committee's work. I am not sure how active the other interested projects are but I will leave a note on their pages as well. Thanks for your contributions to this. I think you not only improved it but you encouraged me to re-read the article with care. I did not change any substance but I think I corrected a few mistakes and improved some of the wording. It is in better shape for review now.


 * Donner60 (talk) 23:25, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Approach to and status of article
Almost 2 months ago, I began to read George Levy's book, To Die in Chicago, about Camp Douglas. I had seen the History Channel program on the camp. I looked at this article and saw it was start class and with few or no inline citations. I thought I could fill in some additional details and some citations and improve the article. I found some other sources but could not find a few of the master theses and other obscure references that were shown in the references section. I took some notes on the Levy book and later found one or two other sources to support these notes and filled out the narrative with references to other sources. I had intended to reduce the length of the article but instead have tried to make the original draft better. I think I have gone as far as I can with it and will submit it to various projects for possible B-class assessment.

I have had in mind the Wikipedia guideline of neutrality. I thought that if I wrote about the facts in detail and along a time line, I could best keep the neutral point of view. I discovered some facts about Camp Douglas that make generalizations difficult. Over the four years of its existence, the camp changed, the uses changed, the commanders changed, the guards changed, the prisoners changed, the rations changed, the medical care changed, the discipline changed, policies changed and treatment of the prisoners changed. The commanders were different and acted differently while in command. I could not cover all the changes and a large number of the persons connected with Camp Douglas without referring to the period of command of each commander and the coming and going of groups of trainees, prisoners and parolees. Certain conditions and policies at the camp fluctuated and even improved over time while others remained bad. I think many general statements about the camp could end up being inaccurate or one-sided if applied to the entire period of the camp's existence.

The Camp Douglas Conspiracy (Chicago Conspiracy or Northwest Conspiracy) could have a separate sub-page, probably with even more details. The section in this article about it could be reduced in length but perhaps not enough to make a significant difference in the article's size. I have been unable to think of any other ways to reduce the article size through splitting off some related topics. Perhaps the topic can support an article of this length or perhaps other editors may want to try to improve or shorten the article. I would not quarrel with that although I must admit I would not like to see a large number of substantive changes, especially if they were made by mere deletions. I thank the others who started, worked on or contributed to the article. I hope readers will find the topic and the details interesting and even helpful if they need or want information about Camp Douglas. Donner60 (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The Camp Douglas Conspiracy intro needs to acknowledge that all of the principles were indeed conspiring, regardless of whether they were con men, Sweet's agents, or Confederate secret agents who contrarily carried out their clandestine operation in such a way as to attract a lot of notice. I made a few changes already, mainly to change "conspiracy" to "plot," then gave up to post here. Sigh. Georgia militia needs a complete re-write from the get-go, but I've limited myself to comments on its Talk page, too. --Pawyilee (talk) 12:55, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * NB: Plot in the sense used here suggests, instead, Conspiracy (political); which redirects to List of conspiracies (political); which leads with: In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. We seem to have a Confidence trick with the marks thinking it was a political conspiracy. See also entrapment. Intrigue, however intriguing, is no help to us, a tall. --Pawyilee (talk)


 * Although I assume you have not read the book, you have picked up Levy's point exactly. Your writing/editing is so good that I would like to see you make the changes in these articles that you think are necessary or helpful. As I have been at this for a few months now, I understand the time it takes not just to write or edit an article or parts of an article, but to do so clearly while making sure the facts and citations are correct and everything is in the right code and style. People have limits on the time they can spend on this. If no one works on these articles for a few months, perhaps I will try to expand and improve the factual presentation and ask you to come by and edit it. I have a few other articles and lists that I want to work on, or go back to and improve a little, on the agenda first. I will try to complete your thought here if I can come up with something that seems to express your full point.Donner60 (talk) 22:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Readability score
Just to test the web site that performs analyses of the readability of Wikipedia articles, I submitted this article to http://www.readabilityofwikipedia.com/check/Camp%20Douglas%20%28Chicago%29 today to determine its readability. "The Flesch reading ease score was 63, this means that 83% of the articles on Wikipedia are harder to read than this one." For what it's worth. Donner60 (talk) 04:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Tone
Hi, I admire the great work you put into this, and the effort to keep track of the various commanders and heads of garrisons and their policies, who each had an effect on the camp, plus changes in prisoners, etc. Terrific. Am not familiar with Levy, but he was not published by an academic press. I have done some editing to reduce what appears to be wording picked up from his POV- such words as "surprisingly," "ironically", "actually" (a factual statement is sufficient), "nonetheless", "indeed", "only". Wikipedia in its guidelines classifies these as "OPED" expressions and discourages their use. It appears his work was very thorough, but he also appears to have a position to push. Without having other accounts to compare many of his points to, I just tried to tone it down, as it appeared he was making an argument, and the encyclopedia should not be an essay. Conditions were horrendous, but conditions were also horrendous in the military camps and lines of both armies. They had little provision for adequate sanitation, did not understand a lot about hygiene (in surgery, for instance) and disease transmission, and didn't have the time or money in the midst of war to devote to prisoners (according to other accounts.) Many people in cities and rural areas also lived under poor conditions at the time, so this has to be understood in context. It's good that you compared the fatality rate to other camps. More soldiers have died of disease than of wounds in every war up until WWII, as I recall reading somewhere. You provided such strong facts I had other questions: was making prisoners work against some concept of POW treatment? (I can see someone arguing that keeping them busy and physically active reduced fights.) Anyway, will review again to see if I can contribute. Congratulations on your work!Parkwells (talk) 17:02, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Here's a good review of his book by a history professor that provides perspective. Has some points that might be worth picking up - in terms of his analysis.|A67829833&userGroupName=k12_histrc&zid=fbd76b35a759b0344bf3226d1da07656. I thought you did a good job in noting when reduction of rations, for instance, was tied to national policy issues.Parkwells (talk) 17:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I have put a longer reply on your user talk page. This was one of the first, maybe the first, article that I significantly edited. It certainly needed some cleanup. I very much appreciate that you have done such a fine job of doing that. It relieves me from the thought that I should have another go at it.


 * The review of Levy's book, although brief, is quite good. You are right that the points made should be included in the article to the extent they are not clearly there. These are Levy's main points but he also commented on the poor conditions caused by the location of the camp, and the point about ignorance of some of the problems is made. Some Union guards, trainees or detainees awaiting exchange also suffered.


 * I did place considerable reliance on Levy but I did use other sources. All or at least most of these are on line. Some support Levy, as might be expected as they were used as sources by him.


 * I am going to try to find sources that might answer the questions you raised. I mentioned a few possible answers on your talk page but those are not necessarily specific enough and are from memory, which may be faulty after three years.


 * Thanks for the compliment on the article. I think it had a few rookie mistakes but it had some good information. With your edits, it is now cleaner and better. Donner60 (talk) 03:30, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

ID major figures - chronology
There was material about the spring of 1862 that referred to Colonel Hoffman. I have more fully identified the office that he headed, noting that it was a national office reporting to the Sec'y of War directly from June 1862. But, he didn't take office until Aug. 1862, according to sources about him, so could not have been giving advice about quarantine in Feb-April 1862 when the prisoners at Camp Douglas were having the epidemic of pneumonia and other disease. Have moved material about Meigs into the article from the note, as his failure to authorize sewers until June 1863 (and then they had to be built) obviously affected health at Camp Douglas - this also shows the conflicting lines of authority for getting things done at the camps.Parkwells (talk) 21:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hoffman may have had oversight of some or all camps, including Camp Douglas, before he took the national office. I think he was stationed outside of Washington during the early part of the war. This is just recollection. I suppose he may have been criticized about the same general problem or problems that still existed at a later date but he also may have been an inspector or some sort before he became the overall head of the Union prisoner of war camps. I will try to find a source that is more specific and definite. Donner60 (talk) 03:35, 24 September 2013 (UTC)


 * My guess was wrong. According to the Wikipedia article on Hoffman, he was taken prisoner in Texas at the start of the war and did not assume his office in Washington until August 1862. He had been promoted to colonel while a prisoner but that does not affect his ability to perform his duties. So the text was a poorly lumped together statement. Donner60 (talk) 05:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Illustration
Pleas add some iLLustration.--Aro84 (talk) 13:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Conditions at Camp Douglas
From "Portals to Hell:Military Prisons of the Civil War"

Feb 1862 “When Camp Douglas was first established,” reported prisoner Thomas A. Head, 16th Tennessee Volunteer Regiment, “the prisoners had kitchens supplied with stoves and cooking utensils, and were supplied with more provisions than they were able to consume. They were also allowed as much clothing as they pleased.”

Late summer 1862 "found the barracks and grounds in general disorder during his inspection in mid-1862, with large amounts of standing water, foul sinks, and the soil around the barracks “reeking with miasmatic accretions, of rotten bones and the emptying of camp kettles.”24 Camp Douglas was indeed established on low ground, and it flooded with every rain. During most of the winter months, when it wasn’t frozen, the compound was a sea of mud. “Our prison pen was like a cattle-yard,” complained Henry Morton Stanley,"

If I can find more, I will. Doug Weller talk 16:41, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Digging
Wondering when there will be more digging at the Camp. Im from Georgia and live here in Illinois. I would like to join in and find some History from possible southern soldiers. raven1228@hotmail.com is my email address. Thank you. 130.126.255.53 (talk) 23:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)