A Wet Day at Camp Douglas, Near Chicago, Illinois

At any period the sanitary conditions at Camp Douglas were not satisfactory. The ground was low and always flooded after a rain, as seen in this photograph, and stagnant pools of water stood there with no means of draining them off. The highest rate of mortality for any one prison during one month of the war was reached at Camp Douglas in February, 1863. Unused to the rigors of the Northern climate, the Southern prisoners died like flies in their unsanitary surroundings. The mortality rate for this one month was ten per cent. Judging from the men shown in this photograph, some of the prisoners were fairly comfortable. The Confederate gray of some of the uniforms can be plainly discerned. The pipes show that, they were not denied the luxury of tobacco.