Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy

By Roger Pickenpaugh

Discusses an important yet often misunderstood topic in American History

Camp Chase was a major Union POW camp and also served at various times as a Union military training facility and as quarters for Union soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Confederacy and released on parole or exchanged. As such, this careful, thorough, and objective examination of the history and administration of the camp will be of true significance in the literature on the Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9780817380359

Book preview

Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy

ROGER PICKENPAUGH

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2007

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: ACaslon

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pickenpaugh, Roger.

   Camp Chase and the evolution of Union prison policy / Roger Pickenpaugh.

          p. cm.

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1582-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

   ISBN-10: 0-8173-1582-9 (alk. paper)

   e-ISBN: 978-0-8173-8035-9

 1. Camp Chase (Ohio)—History. 2. Camp Chase (Ohio)—Administration—History. 3. Ohio—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Prisoners and prisons. 4. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Prisoners and prisons. 5. Prisoners of war—Ohio—History—19th century. I. Title.

  E616.C4P53 2007

  973.7'72—dc22

                                                                                                                 2007007449

For Marion

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Training Camp

2. Improvised Prison Camp

3. Parole Camp

4. Exchange and Escape

5. The Search for Stability

6. The Lives of the Prisoners

7. The Health of the Prisoners

8. i think i feel a change

Afterword: Keeping Alive the Memory

Notes

Bibliographical Essay

Index

Illustrations

1.  Camp Chase, Prison 3

2.  Another view of Prison 3

3.  The headquarters building at Camp Chase

4.  The barracks for Union recruits, sutler store, and post office

Acknowledgments

It may be a tired cliché, but it is also an accurate one: nobody produces a book like this by himself, and in writing this one I have incurred numerous debts. Among those to whom I owe thanks are the staff members at the institutions where research for this work was conducted. They were uniformly polite, professional, and most of all, patient.

Among those who were particularly helpful are Stuart Butler (now retired from the National Archives); Jeff Flannery (Library of Congress); David Simmons (Ohio Historical Society); Nan Card (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center); Gregory Stoner (Virginia Historical Society); Rebecca Rice and Jim Holmberg (Filson Historical Society); Naomi Nelson (Emory University); Carlos Torres (Western Reserve Historical Society); Janie Morris (Duke University); Merilyn Hughes (Tennessee State Library and Archives); and Ed Frank (University of Memphis). At other institutions I dealt with individuals too numerous to list, but to them also I offer gratitude.

The memory of Camp Chase remains strong in the Columbus area thanks to a number of local historians. Two of them, Lois Neff and Paul Clay, provided valuable assistance and encouragement. Another Columbus resident, Dr. Rick Nelson of the Ohio State University Hospitals, answered medical questions I encountered.

Mary Lou Podlasiak, Gary S. Williams, and Ken Williams, all of the Noble County, Ohio Authors' Guild, each read the entire manuscript. All made significant contributions to the final product. Equally important, all understood what I was going through, having been there themselves.

I am very fortunate to work in the Noble County School District, and I am particularly blessed to work at Shenandoah Elementary School. Every day at work I remember how thankful I am to have landed in the elementary building, where I am surrounded by professional and supportive colleagues. Deserving special mention is English teacher David Arbenz. Dave has proofread virtually everything I have ever submitted for publication, and his assistance with this project was especially helpful. Although now retired from teaching, he remains an active, albeit unpaid, freelance proofreader. My thanks also go to principals Mike Romick and Sandy Goff for their tremendous support.

Finally, I am grateful to my family. My sister and brother-in-law, Jill and Gene Stuckey, always offer moral support. On a more practical level, their residence in the heart of the Confederacy was an appreciated base of operations. Similarly, work in the Washington, DC area was made more enjoyable by the opportunity to visit stepdaughters Anya Crum and Jocelyn Brooks and son-in-law Patrick Brooks. I must confess, however, that the birth of Parker Diane Brooks has made it a lot tougher to leave for a day's work at the National Archives.

My mother, Fern Pickenpaugh, also served as a keen proofreader and eager supporter. Having a mother with a darkroom is also a tremendous asset for any writer who includes photos in his work.

And then there is Marion. She was with me on virtually every research trip. My wife likens research to a treasure hunt, and she dives in with tireless enthusiasm. Her patience and persistence have led her to many sources I would have missed. Beyond that, she is a proofreader, an indexer, and a patient listener as I spout out incoherent ideas about every book. Above all else, she is my friend.

Introduction

In 1861, with the guns of Fort Sumter still resounding in their imaginations, most citizens in what remained of the United States had one thought—On to Richmond! Initially not wanting to believe that the war would come, most now chose to believe that it would be a quick, easy, and relatively bloodless affair. Even President Abraham Lincoln, who would soon become a grim military realist, seemed caught up in this idealistic vision. In his first call for volunteers, he asked that the eager recruits sign up for only a three-month term of service.

Among the few realists was Gen. Montgomery Meigs. As quartermaster general of the Union army, it was his job to address the mundane details and logistical challenges necessary to keep the Northern war machine functioning smoothly. On July 12 Meigs turned his attention to the question of military prisoners. Writing to Secretary of War Simon Cameron, he predicted that in the conflict now commenced it is likely to be expected that the United States will have to take care of large numbers of prisoners of war.…Arrangements should be at once made for their ac-comodation.¹

On October 3 the arrangements Meigs called for began to fall into place. The quartermaster general named Lt. Col. William Hoffman, an 1829 West Point graduate and career officer, to the post of commissary general of prisoners. Four days later Meigs dispatched Hoffman to Lake Erie with orders to locate an island that would be a suitable site for a Union prison. The commissary general recommended Johnson's Island, near the city of Sandusky, Ohio. For the next five months Hoffman oversaw the construction of the depot to the exclusion of virtually all other duties. The few prisoners that the Union took during 1861 ended up in Atlantic coastal fortifications. Commanders of those facilities were largely on their own in fashioning regulations concerning their captives.

On February 26, 1862 Hoffman proudly informed Meigs that his Lake Erie depot would soon be ready to house six hundred prisoners. He apparently did not realize that events in Tennessee had already rendered Johnson's Island woefully inadequate. On February 16 Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had captured Fort Donelson. His famous demand for unconditional surrender left Grant with fifteen thousand prisoners. It is a much less job to take them than to keep them, Grant informed his superiors, and they soon learned that the Union's emerging hero was correct.² Unprepared for this deluge of Confederate captives, Henry Halleck, Grant's commanding general, scrambled to find places to put them. Some ended up in an abandoned medical school in St. Louis. Others were placed in a former state prison in Alton, Illinois. Most made their way to a variety of military camps in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. These facilities had served as training camps, and many still housed recruits when the Fort Donelson prisoners arrived.

For most of these early captives, their stay in a Union prison would not be lengthy. From the start of the war informal prisoner exchanges had gone on between commanders on either side. Even Grant, who would soon become a determined foe of the practice, had agreed to limited exchanges in 1861. As the war grew in scope and intensity in 1862, and thousands of Union soldiers fell into the hands of the Confederates, citizens began to demand that their government negotiate an agreement to exchange prisoners. Their elected representatives soon joined the clamor. Both Lincoln and Edwin Stanton, who had succeeded Cameron as secretary of war, opposed any formal agreement, fearing that it would imply a recognition of the Confederacy. The pressure was great, however, and the two men finally relented. On July 22, 1862 Gen. John Dix, representing the Union, and Confederate general Daniel Harvey Hill signed an exchange cartel. Based on a similar agreement reached by the Americans and the British during the War of 1812, the cartel established a sliding scale of prisoner value determined by rank.

Thanks to the cartel, thousands of captives on each side returned home. A large percentage likely owed their lives to the agreement. Despite this, the cartel was doomed to failure. The reasons were part practical and part moral. Under the terms of the cartel, captured soldiers were generally paroled and sent home to wait until they were formally exchanged for equivalent forces from the other side. Only then could they return to the field. Union soldiers quickly realized that capture would result in an immediate furlough. At the same time, Northern leaders realized that their superior population meant the Union could more easily afford to have both sides retain prisoners rather than exchange them. This gave them a reason to hope—and work—for the collapse of the cartel. The South provided the means when it refused to recognize and exchange black soldiers. Charges of cheating on both sides also entered into the mix, as did 1863 Union victories, which gave the North an advantage in the number of prisoners held. No conclusive evidence proves the motivation of Northern leaders, but by the late summer of 1863, exchange was a dead letter.

While the cartel remained in effect, the populations of most Northern prisons dwindled to a few hundred. A few, however, became home to unruly Union soldiers who had been captured and paroled. Stanton, upset by the propensity of some soldiers to surrender on purpose, demanded that parolees not be allowed to return home. Instead they were confined at various parole camps, where they encountered conditions no better than those endured by the departing Confederates. Some protested quietly, some snuck home, and some rioted, burning buildings and otherwise destroying camp property. The spectacle provided another reason for Union authorities to welcome the collapse of the cartel.

The end of prisoner exchanges opened a new and much harsher chapter in the story of Civil War prisons. For one thing, despite frequent camp rumors of new exchange agreements, most prisoners realized that their stays were likely to be lengthy. Escape attempts became more common and often more desperate. At many camps prisoners formed into battle units, charging the fences while pelting the guards with rocks and other weapons. At the same time, victories at places such as Gettysburg and Chattanooga placed thousand of additional prisoners in the hands of the Union. Despite the opening of such new depots as Point Lookout, Maryland, and Elmira, New York, Northern prisons became more crowded. As they did, captives quickly learned that nervous sentinels were suddenly more prone to open fire at the slightest provocation.

In 1864 retaliation became Union policy, adding extreme hunger to the other hardships of prison life. The policy was a response to reports of the alleged Confederate abuse of Union captives. The emaciated condition of many prisoners returning while the cartel was in operation confirmed much of what had been reported. Any extenuating factors, such as the Confederacy's lack of resources, were not taken into account as Stanton and other Union officials considered how to respond. By the summer of 1864 they had cut rations at Union prisons by 20 percent. Prisoners were also no longer allowed to receive packages of food from friends or relatives, nor could those with money purchase food from camp sutlers.

So things remained until the waning days of the war. In late 1864 Confederate officials were allowed to send a shipment of cotton to New York, with the proceeds to go for the purchase of clothing for the captives in gray. In February 1865, with Union victory in sight, exchange resumed. The ever-practical Grant and Stanton insisted, however, that it begin with prisoners who were wounded or too ill to be of use to the Confederacy. It was only after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox that the prisons began to empty for good. By the summer of 1865 they were virtually unoccupied, bringing to a close one of the ugliest aspects of the war.

Although neither the largest nor the worst of Union prison camps, perhaps none was more representative of evolving Northern prison policies than Camp Chase. Located four miles west of Columbus, Ohio, Camp Chase started, as did so many other prisons, as a training camp for eager Union recruits. By late 1861 it was also housing Confederate prisoners. Many were political prisoners, citizens who were suspected of disloyalty. The evidence against some was substantial. In many other cases it consisted merely of alleged disloyal utterances. Many came from western Virginia. They ended up at Camp Chase simply because it was the closest large Union post to which they could be sent.

With the fall of Fort Donelson, the number of prisoners at Camp Chase increased dramatically. Along with Camp Morton in Indianapolis, Chicago's Camp Douglas, the Alton, Illinois Prison, and Camp Butler near Springfield, Illinois, it became a major Union prison. Battles at Island No. 10 and Shiloh increased the prison population even more. As at those other facilities, officials at Camp Chase scrambled to accommodate the large influx of Confederate captives.

With the signing of the exchange cartel, Camp Chase's role once again changed. As Confederate prisoners departed, Union parolees arrived to take their place. Most were sent to Camp Lew Wallace, a new facility established nearby to house them, but many remained at Camp Chase. Disappointed at not being allowed to go home, they arrived in an uncooperative frame of mind. Many also arrived without officers, creating discipline problems that had not existed even with Confederate prisoners. Some deserted. Others simply headed for home without leave, intending to return after they were exchanged. Those who remained at the camps took out their frustrations on camp buildings, officers, and each other.

When the cartel collapsed, Camp Chase resumed its role as a military prison. Union officials had hoped to abandon the facility, but the renewed wave of prisoners made that hope impossible. For the next two years the camp's officers faced all the challenges experienced by officers at the Union's other major prisons; and its prisoners faced all the hardships that plagued prisoners throughout the North. Escape attempts were made. Some were successful, but most failed. Disease, especially smallpox, was an almost constant challenge. So, too, was hunger, especially after the Union instituted its policy of retaliation. Guards shot prisoners—sometimes with cause, sometimes without. Boredom was the prisoners' constant companion, although they devised a number of activities to battle it.

When the war finally ended, Camp Chase had one more role to fulfill. As the captives who had survived departed for Dixie, this time for good, Union soldiers arrived in Columbus to be mustered out of service. Many had been held in Confederate prisons. For a camp that had started out as a training facility populated by enthusiastic recruits, the arrival of these war-weary veterans marked a sobering close to its career. In the four years between, Camp Chase had evolved as a prison camp, reflecting the efforts of civilian and military officials to fashion a coherent prison policy.

1

Training Camp

April 12, 1861 fell on a Friday. The Ohio Senate was in session, trying to go on in the ordinary routine of business, Senator Jacob Cox later recalled, but with a sense of anxiety and strain which was caused by the troubled condition of national affairs. The previous fall, Abraham Lincoln had been elected the sixteenth president of the United States. In the months that followed seven Southern states had left the Union, formed a provisional government, and chosen Jefferson Davis as their president. Now the attention of all Americans, Union and Confederate, was focused on a military installation that rested in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. As the senators met in Columbus, their thoughts drifted to that suddenly important fort, hoping almost against hope, Cox wrote, that blood would not be shed.¹

Suddenly a senator dashed in from the lobby and shouted to the presiding officer, Mr. President, the telegraph announces that the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter! The chamber fell into a solemn and painful hush, quickly broken by the voice of a woman in the gallery. Glory to God! she shouted. It was Abby Kelly Foster, a veteran abolitionist, present that day to urge passage of a women's rights bill.²

Miss Foster's exuberance was not shared by the senators. With most of us, Cox recalled, the gloomy thought that Civil War had begun in our own land overshadowed everything, and seemed too great a price to pay for any good. Despite this gloom and any doubts its citizens may have harbored, Ohio responded quickly and decisively to the crisis. When President Lincoln asked for seventy-five thousand recruits from the states remaining in the Union to put down the rebellion, Governor William Dennison put out the call for thirteen thousand men to fill the thirteen regiments that would make up Ohio's quota. The general assembly appropriated $1 million to provide for the defense of the state, and for the support of the federal government against the rebellion. Around the state a similar sense of patriotic resolution led to the formation of twenty companies by April 18.³

It was a scene familiar throughout the North as the states competed with each other to demonstrate their devotion to the cause. In major cities and rural villages mass meetings produced a flood of enthusiastic volunteers. So serious was the movement that it would result in 640,000 men by December. The rush to get these new military units to Washington was intense. In Massachusetts the first two regiments to be raised listened to a rousing farewell address from Governor John Andrew as a tailor sewed buttons on their overcoats. Thousands of men, imbued with an ardent spirit of patriotism, were soon descending on Columbus, so many that Governor Dennison could soon boast of fifty Ohio regiments. The boys were perfectly crazy with joy all the way from home, a Hancock County soldier wrote of the train ride to the state capital. Cigars, &c., were passed liberally, and joy and good feeling seemed to be the order of the day. A member of the Fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry raised in the north-central part of the state later recalled the departure of the boys from his hometown. The recruits were greeted on all sides by waving handkerchiefs and flags, he wrote, the ready hat high in the air, and words of cheer of the gathered thousands. As they departed, Never was there a gayer set of men.⁴

The enthusiasm of these early recruits was matched by the residents of the communities they passed en route to the capital. A Cincinnati enlistee wrote, "Every city, town, and village along the line of the [rail]road was resounding with cheers for the Union, the Constitution and the young militaire." Writing to the Stark County Republican, VOLUNTEER, a member of the Canton Zouaves, wrote that loud cheers followed his outfit to Columbus. We acceptably returned all compliments, he explained, with ‘three times three and a Zouave Tiger,' in consequence of which we are all pretty hoarse. Fayette County recruit G. W. Ross reported, At all the principal stations along the [Cincinnati, Wilmington, & Zanesville Railroad] we received most tremendous cheerings. At the village of Morrow, Ross continued, the crowd remained large although several companies had passed through previously. They met the same response at Cedarville and London, and some of our company received cards and bouquets.⁵

Following this triumphal journey the eager soldiers-to-be reached a capital city that was not quite sure what to do with them all. The response to Dennison's call for volunteers had exceeded his expectations, and the state government did not have the capacity to house the hoards of recruits that arrived. Last evening, reported the Ohio State Journal on April 26, all the public halls and armories, the two Legislative Chambers, Supreme Court room, the large apartments in the Asylums &c., were called into requisition, and still there was a demand for more sleeping accommodations. A company from Highland County found quarters in the state library, but only after a state senator gave assurances to library officials that no injury would be done to the room or books. The state penitentiary and Starling Medical College were also pressed into service. Companies of what would become the Fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry were scattered in a wide variety of public buildings. One company was first quartered in the Capitol, sleeping on the building's marble floors. Later the soldiers moved to the Asylum for the Blind, where, noted one recruit, they