Camp Douglas Prison: Andersonville of the North-- Part 1

From the April 22, 2015, Champaign (Ill) News-Gazette by Joan Griffis.

When it comes to Civil War prisons, by far the best-known and most notorious is the Confederate one at Andersonville in Georgia.  Terrible conditions and a high death rate were the norm.   Andersonville is the National Prisoner of War Historical site, 476 acres, and there is a white headstone for each of the 12,912 Union prisoners who died there.

But the little-known one called Camp Douglas in Chicago, near the shores of Lake Michigan was known as the Union's prison camp with the highest morality rate.

Beginning in February 1862, when the first Confederate prisoners began arriving, an average of one in every five died.

--Old Secesh