CHICAGO (CBS) — Camp Douglas – once located in what is now the Bronzeville neighborhood – was once called “The North’s Andersonville.”
How could that be, you might ask? Andersonville is located a good 10 miles north and a few miles west of the historic site along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive where the Illinois state historical marker for Camp Douglas is found.
That’s not the Andersonville they were talking about. The Chicago neighborhood with its antique stores, fashionable bars and restaurants, and Swedish flag replica water tank shares a name with an infamous Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War in Georgia. The prison camp – officially known as Camp Sumter – was overcrowded and notorious for unsanitary conditions – and nearly 13,000 Union soldiers died there.
Camp Douglas in Chicago was a Union prisoner-of-war camp – and while the death rate there was not as high, it had a similar reputation for squalor and poor treatment.
Chicago History Museum / Getty Images
As Tony Szabelski of Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours told us for this all-new addition of Chicago Hauntings, the site also now has a reputation for ghosts.
As recalled by the Encyclopedia of Chicago, Camp Douglas was founded in the fall of 1861 – initially as a training camp and staging center for Union troops. It was named for U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, who donated the land for the camp from his 53-acre Oakenwald estate. Part of the site had been used as a fairground prior to the war, according to a publisherd report.
The nearly 60-acre camp spanned…
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