The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

During the first months the medical staff was inexperienced, and the Camp was scourged by smallpox which was, in fact, seldom absent for any length of time. Later, a new medical officer brought order out of confusion, but the staff here was never so efficient as at some other prisons. A very expensive hospital was erected, paid for from the ‘ prison fund,’ which amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in 1865.

Camp Douglas, in Chicago, was a large instruction and recruiting camp, of which the prison formed a comparatively small part. The Camp was on low ground, which was flooded with every rain, and during a considerable part of the winter was a sea of mud. The barracks were poor and conditions generally were unsanitary. President H. W. Bellows of the Sanitary Commission says, June 30, 1862, speaking of the barracks, ‘ Nothing but fire can cleanse them,’ and urges the abandonment of the Camp as a prison. The place was not abandoned, however; and in February, 1863, out of 3884 prisoners, 387 died. This mortality rate, almost exactly ten per cent. for the month, was not reached in any month, in any other large prison during the war, so far as the ‘ Official Records’ indicate.

Camp Chase, at Columbus, Ohio, was another instruction Camp turned into a prison to accommodate the prisoners captured at Forts Henry and Donelson, in February, 1862, and used as such until the end of the war. Conditions here were similar to those at Camp Morton in general features, as were also those at Camp Butler, near Springfield, Illinois, which was, however, abandoned for prison purposes in 1862.

After the suspension of the agreement to exchange prisoners, May 25, 1863, the numbers in confinement began to exceed the provision made for them, and in May, 1864, some barracks on the Chemung River near Elmira, New York, were enclosed for prison purposes. Before the end of August, the number of prisoners reached almost ten thousand. Conditions