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The war of the rebellion:
a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.
Series 2 - Volume 5
NEW YORK, May 10, 1863.
Hon. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War.
SIR: By direction of the executive committee of the United States Sanitary Commission I have the honor to ask your attention to the deplorable condition of the hospitals containing rebel prisoners at Camp Douglas, near Chicago, Ill., and in Gratiot Street [Prison], Saint Louis, Mo., which in the deliberate judgment of the committee is disgraceful to us as a Christian people and should be promptly remedied by those
possessing authority.
More than a year ago the very bad condition of Camp Douglas and its hospital was recognized by the president of the Sanitary Commission on personal visit and inspection and reported to Colonel Hoffman, U. S. Army, agent of the War Department in charge of rebel prisoners.
It was promised by this officer that the evil should be remedied.
By recent reports under date of April 5 ultimo from two eminent members of the medical profession, Drs. Thomas Hun and Mason F. Cogswell, of Albany, N. Y., employed by the Sanitary Commission as special inspectors of hospitals, it is evident that the improvements promised by Colonel Hoffman have not been made and that the state of the hospitals in question is many degrees worse than when his attention was called to the condition of its inmates.
The high character held in this community by Doctors Hun and Cogswell and their eminent fitness to form a sound and judicious opinion as to the requirements of humanity in the treatment of the sick under any circumstances make it proper for me to subjoin the words employed in their report, premising that the report was special in its character in consequence of the urgent necessity which was recognized for the prompt remedy of the evils it set forth:
ALBANY, April 5, 1863.
* * * We desire most earnestly to call the attention of the Sanitary Commission and the Government to the condition of these hospitals. In our experience we have never witnessed so painful a spectacle as that presented by their wretched inmates; without change of clothing, covered with vermin, they lie in cots without mattresses or with mattresses furnished by private charity, without sheets or bedding of any kind except blankets often in rags, in wards reeking with filth and foul air.
The stench is most offensive. We carefully avoid all exaggeration of statement but we give some facts which speak for themselves. From January 27, 1863, when the prisoners (in number about 3,800) arrived at Camp Douglas, to February 18, the (day of our visit, 385 patients have been admitted to the hospitals, of whom 130 had died. This mortality of 33 per cent. does not express the whole truth, for of the 148 patients then remaining in hospital a large number must have since died.
Besides this about 130 prisoners had died in barracks, not having been able to gain admission even to the miserable accommodations of the hospital, and at the time of our visit 150 persons were sick in barracks waiting for room in hospital.
Thus it will be seen that 260 out of the 3,800 prisoners had died in twenty-one days, a rate of mortality which if continued would secure their total extermination in about 320 days. Under the circumstances the rate of mortality would increase rather than diminish. We read this morning in the papers that 100 died there
last week.
* * * At Saint Louis we found the condition of the barracks far worse than that of the hospitals. The bunks in which the prisoners sleep are made to hold two persons in each tier and are three tiers high, amid these are placed so close together that there is scarcely space to pass between them. As in the hospitals, no bedding is furnished, but blankets or bits of carpet to take the place of blankets. The floor is incrusted with dirt so as to be more like an earthen than a plank flour.
In these rooms the prisoners spend day and night, for the small yard of the prison is scarcely sufficient to contain a foul and stinking privy. The day we visited this prison was warm so that all the windows were open, amid the air was more tolerable on that account, but it is difficult to conceive how human beings can continue to live in such an atmosphere as must be generated when the windows are closed at night or in stormy weather.
Here were persons lying sick with pneumonia, dysentery and other grave diseases waiting for admission to the hospital.
* * * As we were sent to inspect hospitals it may be said that we are going beyond our duty in speaking of the comidition of prisons, but since in the prisoners' quarters there were numerous sick persons unable to gain admission to the hospitals and dying in great numbers before reaching the hospital it cannot be said we exceeded the spirit of our instructions. Besides this the barracks in their crowded and filthy condition serve as a hot-bed for generating diseases for the hospital and for this cause also we feel bound to report their condition.
However this may be, the fact has come to our knowledge and we report it to the Commission that in these prisons and hospitals a condition exists which is discreditable to a Christian people. It surely is not the intention of our Government to place these prisoners in a position which will secure their extermination by pestilence in less than a year. We believe that this state of things cannot be known to those who have the power to cause it to cease. From the circumstances under which we were admitted we feel that we have not the right to speak publicly of what we have seen, but for this reason do we the more earnestly urge on the Commission the necessity of taking immediate steps to put a stop to such atrocities.
* * * We can suggest no remedy short of a complete change in these establishments; all the sick ought to be removed from Gratiot Street [Prison], Saint Louis.
* * * The ground at Camp Douglas is most unsuitable for a hospital or even for barracks, being wet and without drainage. We think it ought to be abandoned.
We were told that within a short distaiice are high grounds, well drained and adapted or such purposes.
We are, with great respect, your obedient servants,
THOMAS HUN, M. D.
MASON F. COGSWELL, M. D.
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I am directed to state that a digest of the report from which these extracts are made was laid before the Surgeon-General at once in accordance with the regulations of the central office of the Commission at Washington, and I am informed that this officer has taken the measures he deems proper in the case, but I am also aware that he does not possess the power to remedy the evil, that power resting alone in your
hands or in those of His Excellency the President.
The executive committee recognizing its responsibilities to the nation and the Government has therefore decided to move in the matter, and has directed me to ask you respectfully and most earnestly to issue such orders as will secure humane and proper treatment for the sick prisoners whom the fortunes of war under your energetic administration places in your power.
I have the honor to be, with much respect, your obedient servant,
WM. H. VAN BUHEN, M. D.
Camp Douglas was in operation at the end of the war.
The conditions were never corrected and no one was ever held accountable for the conditions and actions at Camp Douglas.
According to 80 Acres of Hell, a television documentary produced by the A&E Network and The History Channel, Camp Douglas contracted with an undertaker who sold the bodies of Confederate prisoners to medical schools and had the rest buried in shallow graves without coffins. Some were even dumped in Lake Michigan only to wash up on its shores.
The DVD is available at the History Channel Web Site.
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