McHenry County Civil War Round Table's Prisons Discussion 3/27/21-- Part 4: Talking About Camp Douglas Today and John Yates Beall

**  There is a Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation that has a primary mission "To provide  active leadership in the development,  delivery, and preservation of  educational and  historic information regarding  the Upper Midwest, especially Illinois and Chicago during the Civil War."

**  And then there was an interesting character by the name of John Yates Beall, who led attacks on Union shipping on the Chesapeake Bay, was captured, released, then was involved in a scheme to release Confederate officers at the prison on Johnson's Island on Lake Erie.  That failed.  But then was captured trying to derail a train near Buffalo, New York.

Jailed again, and after a questionable trial and Abraham Lincoln declining to extend leniency, was hanged at Fort Columbus on Governor's Island in New York Harbor.

**  Abraham Lincoln and Sec. of War Edwin Stanton once visited Point Lookout in Maryland to view Union black soldiers.

**  One of the people at the meeting said he had an ancestor die at the Confederate prison at Danville, Va.

**  Libby Prison was in an old tobacco warehouse.  Prisoners there experienced horrible conditions.

--Old Secesh

Camp Douglas POW Prison in Chicago: Deaths of 62nd North Carolina Infantry Prisoners

From ncgenweb  "Rock Island, Illinois  Confederate POW Camp and Cemetery.

Deaths of Prisoners of War from the 62nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, Camp Douglas Prisoner of War Camp.

Go to Confederate graves; Rock Island, Il  NCGenWeb.

The 62nd North Carolina was surrendered by its commanding officer on 10 September 1863, at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, after which 442 of its members were transferred to Camp Douglas.

Forty-four percent of them died there, including David Messer who I wrote about in the previous post.

There is a list of all the members of the regiment who died at Camp Douglas at the site.

--Old Secesh

Black Group Disrupts Confederate Memorial Service in Chicago-- Part 1

From the April 23, 2018, Chicago Sun Rimes  "Confederate memorial on South Side sparks protest" Mitch Dudek.

A Sons of Confederate Veterans memorial service at a mass grave of thousands of Confederate soldiers who died in a Chicago prison during the war was disrupted Saturday when 50 mostly-black protesters showed up to mark the nearby grave of Civil Rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells. They used loudspeakers to drown out the Confederate service claiming that the service just was more white supremacists.

The SCV Camp Douglas (Camp 516) group, so named for the Chicago prison (sometimes called the North's Andersonville) in which anywhere between 4,500 and 6,000 Confederates died under unbelievably harsh conditions, has held memorial observations at the site for almost twenty years and the other group had never shown up in that time.

Seems like quite a coincidence, especially since neither Ida B. Wells' birth or death were on April 22.    Someone was just wanting to provoke a confrontation.

Coincidence, I Think Not.  --Old Secesh

New Book on Camp Douglas

For many years, not much was said about the infamous Union prison camp in Chicago with most attention always given to Andersonville in Georgia.

Now, a new book has been published about the infamous Douglas, located about three miles from Chicago's Loop.

"Camp Douglas: Chicago's Civil War Prison" by Kelly Pucci seeks to address the lack of information. Starving prisoners caught stealing from the camp garbage dump were tortured and shot.

Fearing a prisoner revolt, the camp's commander declared martial law in the city of Chicago. Camp Douglas closed down at the end of the war and its buildings demolished. Records were either lost or destroyed and the exact number of dead is unknown, but estimated at least 6000 who are buried in a southside cemetery by an impressive Confederate monument.

The History Channel had a special on it and there is a Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp named after it.

Dimitri Rotov editor of the Civil War Book News Blog at http://acwbn.blogspot.com

SCV News

I belong to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, despite the fact that I live in Illinois (just a few miles from the Wisconsin border) quite a ways behind enemy lines so-to-speak. I belong to the Camp Douglas Memorial Camp which is named after the horrific prison camp located in Chicago, where over 6000 Confederate prisoners died during their incarceration. We felt this would be a way to honor their memory. To my knowledge, no other camp in the SCV is named after a prison.

The annual SCV Reunion will be in Charlotte, NC, July 16-19th of 2008. I hope to be attending since this is my home state. I can go from there and visit my family in Goldsboro. Maybe also catch some beach time down at Topsail Beach.

I'm also glad to see the SCV is going to reinstate the policy of giving compatriots a SCV logo sticker on renewal of membership.

Just Some SCV News. --BRunner