Existing comment:
After Harpers Ferry: The Faces of Camp Douglas:
The Confederate victors paroled all 12,500 Union soldiers captured at Harpers Ferry. The captured soldiers swore an oath not to fight again until they were exchanged for Confederate prisoners. During their long incarceration at Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, boredom, humiliation, and filth weakened morale well before the last Northern paolee [sic -- should be "parolee"] returned to active duty four months later. Still, these so-called "Harpers Ferry cowards" longed for a chance to reclaim their honor.
"Says I must keep the lice off, and if I had not got a comb you would send me one. It is not the kind that needs combs. If you would send anythin send a horse rake, I have seen lice in these barracks as large as a kernel of wheat... I never saw a body louse until we came here. But I see something new every day. There are more rats here than I ever saw before, and they are big enough to carry a knapsack. They come out at nights and drill in squads."
-- Private thomas Freen, 111th NY |