Camp Douglas Prison -- Andersonville of the North-- Part 2

Continued from Friday, May 8th.

There is only one monument to those Confederates who died at Camp Douglas in Chicago and, it is an impressive one, but not at the camp's site.  It is at Chicago's famous Oak Woods Cemetery at 1035 E. 67th Street in what is called "The Confederate Mound" where at l;east 6,000 are buried (4,200 known, the rest unknown).  They are buried in a mass grave on one acre of land.

The monument was dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1895 and reads:  "To the memory of the six thousand Southern soldiers here buried... who died in Camp Douglas prison ... 1862-65."  This is the largest mass burial in the entire Western Hemisphere.

Every April, the Camp Douglas Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, based in the Chicagoland area, holds a memorial service for the dead at the mound.

The dead interred in the mound had previously been buried in paupers graves in Chicago's City Cemetery but were moved in 1867 to make way for the creation of Lincoln Park.  Who knows how many bodies are still buried there?

--Old Secesh