Existing comment:
Plan of Contraband Camp [Camp Barker], 1863:
Camp Barker had previously served as a cemetery, brickyard, and finally as temporary barracks for a detachment of dragoons from Chicago led by Major Charles W. Barker, after whom the camp was named. It was located near 13th Street between R and S Streets, which was then beyond the city limits. A deep excavation on the 13th Street side had filled with water and become a swamp. As William O. Stoddard described it in 1890, "a tight barrier of six-foot pin boards" fenced in the camp, probably as much to keep out intruders as well as to keep in the inmates. The only fresh water in the camp came from a contaminated well which caused diarrhea. Today on the site where Camp Barker stood, just two blocks from the fashionable neighborhood of Logan Circle, there are no remnants of the suffering and sickness that prevailed there at the time of the Civil War. |