Camp Butler - Springfield, IL
Posted by: 
cldisme
N 39° 49.910 W 089° 33.407
16S E 281206 N 4412220
At the start of the Civil War, Camp Butler was a mustering point for Union volunteers from Illinois, then became a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Confederates. Today, it is a National Cemetery for all veterans.
Waymark Code: WM37HM
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 02/23/2008
Views: 31
From the Veteran's Administration website:
In 1861, the War Department dispatched General William Tecumseh Sherman to Springfield, IL, to select a site for a military training camp. Illinois Governor Richard Yates tasked the state treasurer, William Butler, with assisting the general. The men found an ideal location six miles outside of Springfield with a high ground for camping purposes and a lower, more-level area for drills and training, as well as space for a cemetery. General Sherman was pleased with the site and named it Camp Butler to honor his companion.
The first troops arrived at Camp Butler in August 1861 and by the end of the month, 5,000 men occupied the camp. As the war progressed, additional uses were found for the grounds, including a prisoner of war camp. In February 1862, approximately 2,000 Confederate soldiers captured when Fort Donelson was surrendered, arrived at Camp Butler. As the POWs arrived–from all 11 southern states except Florida—they were put to work constructing a stockade and hospital. The hastily constructed barracks were inadequate and poorly constructed. Sanitation facilities were primitive and the daily ration of food often consisted of little more than hard biscuits and a cup of thin coffee. Almost immediately, the POWs began to die at a rapid rate. The heat of the summer combined with the severe winter cold, as well as diseases such as smallpox, typhus and pneumonia, decimated the prisoner population. Roughly 700 POWs died in the smallpox epidemic of summer 1862.
Today, Camp Butler is a National Cemetery with not only Union and Confederate graves (which are marked with a pointed-peak gravestone instead of the more familiar rounded one), but also soldiers from all the subsequent wars.
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