In 2019, a monument recognizing the 140 confederate soldiers who died at Camp Randall in Madison was taken down by order of Mayor Paul Soglin and given to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.1 In recent years, debate over the monument, which marked Confederate Rest, the northernmost corner of Madison’s Forest Hill cemetery where the soldiers are buried, has overshadowed the story of the 1,224 soldiers and noncombatants from Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana who were imprisoned at Camp Randall during six weeks in the spring of 1862—and the complicated politics surrounding their arrival in Wisconsin. Political tensions over treatment of the monument are no less complex than the divides among Wisconsinites during the early years of the Civil War. Looking closely at these differing views paints a stark picture of the divide between those who supported the war, many of whom hoped to see an end to the system of enslavement, and those who did not, the majority of whom were fearful of abolition and its possible outcomes. On all sides of the conflict, the presence of the prisoners—and the increasing number of prisoner deaths at Camp Randall—became fodder for political debate in the partisan press.
It was mid-April 1862, and the United States was entering the second year of a civil war that not only ripped the young nation in two but also divided the opinions of those on either side of the conflict. In Wisconsin, two forces were at work that would impact the attitudes of Wisconsinites toward the war. One was the increase in the number and influence of the Peace Democrats, also known as Copperheads, anti-abolitionists who opposed the war and wanted to push for a swift, peaceful resolution with the Confederates. The other was a band of Confederate prisoners of war who had recently been captured at Madrid Bend in the Mississippi River and were being sent to Camp Randall in Madison, which until this point had served primarily as a mustering and training ground for Union soldiers.2 Though the prisoners would be at the camp for only six weeks, from mid-April through May 1862, their presence served as a flashpoint for Wisconsinites’ reactions to the war.
Attitudes toward the war and its goals were indelibly shaped by the newspapers of the day, and prisoners of war were one of many charged subjects. As historian Elizabeth C. Bangert writes, “The press’s opinions, positive and negative, factual and exaggerated, had a significant impact on how Americans viewed the prisons … and the prisoners themselves. The press used the representation of prisoners as a major focus for civilian mobilization, loyalty, enthusiasm, and sometimes outrage.”3 In Wisconsin, the Democratic press, sympathetic to the Copperheads, used the presence of the prisoners, their declining health, and their high death rate to reinforce criticism of the war. In contrast, the Republican press, which backed the Union’s cause, used the prisoners as a symbol for the suffering of the nation, reinforcing the sense of Confederate treachery at Fort Sumter to stoke pro-war sentiment.
Newspapers were the ideal vehicle to communicate to a mass audience. Technological advances made newspapers widely accessible; by 1860, type-revolving “Lightning Presses” were turning out twenty thousand impressions per hour. The telegraph and the railroad made it possible to relay stories from paper to paper throughout the country.4 These technologies allowed partisan views of the war to proliferate and spread, as 80 percent of newspapers in the country were connected to a particular ideology and political party.5 In Wisconsin, newspapers benefitted from the new technology and served partisan interests just as they did in the rest of the country.
The story of Camp Randall’s Confederate prisoners began at Madrid Bend, an S-shaped course of the Mississippi River adjoining New Madrid, Missouri; Tiptonville, Tennessee; and Island No. 10, located just south of the Kentucky border. Stationed at Madrid Bend was the remnant of a force that had been the centerpiece of the Confederate defense of the river since early in the war. By March 1862, having been under siege by Union forces for
