Camp Chase was a military staging and training camp established in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

, in May 1861 after the start of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. It also included a large Union-operated prison camp for Confederate prisoners during the

. The camp was closed and dismantled after the war and the site has been redeveloped for residential and commercial use, except for the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, which contains 2,260 graves of Confederates who died in captivity both in Camp Chase and in

Camp Dennison Camp Dennison was a military recruiting, training, and medical post for the United States Army during the American Civil War. It was located near Cincinnati, Ohio, not far from the Ohio River. The camp was named for Cincinnati native William ...

near

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

. Camp Chase was located in what is now the Hilltop neighborhood of

. Camp Chase is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

History

Camp Chase was an

training and prison camp established in May 1861, on land leased by the

U.S. Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executi ...

. It replaced the much smaller Camp Jackson which was established by Ohio Governor

William Dennison Jr William is a masculine given name of Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is ...

as a place for Ohio's union volunteers to meet. It originally operated from a city park. The main entrance was on the

National Road The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road) was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the road connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a main tran ...

west of

Downtown Columbus, Ohio Downtown Columbus is the central business district of Columbus, Ohio. Downtown is centered on the intersection of Broad Street (Columbus, Ohio), Broad and High Street (Columbus, Ohio), High Streets, and encompasses all of the area inside the Inn ...

. Boundaries of the camp were present-day Broad Street (north), Hague Avenue (east), Sullivant Avenue (south), and near Westgate Avenue (west). Named for former Ohio Governor,

Salmon P. Chase Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States from 1864 to his death in 1873. Chase served as the 23rd governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860, r ...

, who was Lincoln's

Secretary of the Treasury The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...

; it was a training camp for Ohio volunteer army soldiers, a parole camp, a muster outpost, and later a prisoner-of-war camp. The nearby

Camp Thomas Camp Thomas was a United States Regular Army training facility located in North Columbus, Ohio (now Columbus), during the American Civil War. It was primarily used to organize and train new infantry regiments for service in the Western Theater. ...

served as a similar base for the

Regular Army A regular army is the official army of a state or country (the official armed forces), contrasting with irregular forces, such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies, mercenaries, etc. A regular army usually has the following: * a ...

. As many as 150,000 Union soldiers and 25,000 Confederate prisoners passed through its gates from 1861 to 1865. By February 1865, over 9,400 men were held at the prison. More than 2,200 Confederates are buried in the Camp Chase Cemetery.

Western Virginia Western Virginia is a geographic region in Virginia comprising the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia. Generally, areas in Virginia located west of, or (in many cases) within, the piedmont region are considered part of western Virginia. T ...

and

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

civilians suspected of actively supporting

secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

, including former three-term

United States Congressman The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the ...

Richard Henry Stanton Richard Henry Stanton (September 9, 1812 – March 20, 1891) was a politician, lawyer, editor and judge from Kentucky. A Democrat, he served three terms as a Congressman from Kentucky and was imprisoned during the Civil War. Stanton was born i ...

were held at the facility. The prison camp also held Confederates captured during

Morgan's Raid Morgan's Raid (also the Calico Raid or Great Raid of 1863) was a diversionary incursion by Confederate States Army, Confederate cavalry into the Union (American Civil War), Union states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia during the A ...

in 1863, including Col. Basil W. Duke. The camp was closed in 1865, and by September 1867, dismantled buildings, usable items, and 450 patients from Tripler Military Hospital (also in

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, the capital city of the U.S. state of Ohio * Columbus, Georgia, a city i ...

) were transferred to the new National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Dayton, Ohio (Now Dayton VA.) Building materials taken from dismantled buildings were sent to help build the Dayton facility which opened in 1867 and became the largest veterans home in the nation. In 1895, former Union soldier William H. Knauss organized the first memorial service at the cemetery. In 1906 he published a history of the camp. The Confederate Soldier Memorial was dedicated in 1902. From 1912 to 1994, the

United Daughters of the Confederacy The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, a ...

held annual services to commemorate Confederate soldiers who had been held and died there. The Hilltop Historical Society now sponsors the event on the second Sunday in June.

Prison conditions

The living conditions at Camp Chase were inadequate for a number of reasons. The prisoners were never intentionally starved, but because the Union army focused on feeding its own soldiers first it often left the prisoners with little to no food. The largest number of soldiers and officers held at Camp Chase at a single time was in 1863 when the prison camp held around 8,000 men. Because of the large number of prisoners crowded in a relatively small area, there was also a large outbreak of

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...

and other deadly diseases. This resulted in the death of hundreds of prisoners in the winter of 1863–1864. Many

POW POW is "prisoner of war", a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. POW or pow may also refer to: Music * P.O.W (Bullet for My Valentine song), "P.O.W" (Bull ...

camps had the same conditions on both sides of the war. Because of this, the Union and the CSA agreed to exchange prisoners to stop the suffering of men on both sides. Ultimately around 10,000 soldiers were exchanged between both sides.

The Lady in Gray

The Lady in Gray is purportedly an apparition that haunts Camp Chase Cemetery. The story goes that the ghost is looking for her lost love, and cannot find him in the cemetery. The woman is described as young, in her late teens or early twenties, dressed entirely in gray, and carrying a clean white handkerchief. The legend of the Lady in Gray dates back to just after the Civil War, when visitors to Camp Chase spotted the woman walking through the cemetery, trying to read the carved names on the marked grave markers. She was seen quite often for several years, before disappearing completely.

Camp Chase today

Aside from the two-acre Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, the land that formerly housed Camp Chase has been redeveloped as a residential and commercial area known as Westgate. A corner stone to the camp is located in front of the Westgate #623 Masonic Temple, in a community in the Hilltop section of west Columbus. This development was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Camp Chase is listed on the

. Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery is managed along with five National Cemeteries by the Dayton National Cemetery.

Vandalism

On August 22, 2017, part of a chain of

removal of Confederate monuments and memorials There are more than 160 Confederate monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America (CSA; the Confederacy) and associated figures that have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five of which have been sin ...

, the statue of a Confederate soldier on top of the camp memorial was pushed off the arch and in the process had its head broken off. The vandals were never found. They stole the head of the

Confederate A confederation (also known as a confederacy or league) is a political union of sovereign states united for purposes of common action. Usually created by a treaty, confederations of states tend to be established for dealing with critical issu ...

statue but not the hat. The statue has been repaired under the auspices of the

Dayton National Cemetery Dayton National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in the city of Dayton, Ohio, Dayton in Montgomery County, Ohio. It encompasses and as of July 18, 2019, had 55,359 interments. In January, 2014, it was one of only fourteen c ...

and was re-installed in May 2019.

Photos

File:Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio. Prison of the rebels captured by U. S. forces. LCCN2007675765 (cropped).jpg, Camp Chase File:Camp chase 2.jpg, The Confederate Soldier Memorial before vandals broke off the statue at the top in 2017 File:Camp Chase, Colombus, OH, US (13).jpg, The memorial after vandals broke off the statue in 2017 File:Camp_Chase,_Colombus,_OH,_US_(08).jpg, Gravestones and the main memorial File:Camp_Chase,_Colombus,_OH,_US_(04).jpg, Text of the carved stone

References

* Historical Marker #27-25, located at 2900 Sullivant Avenue, Columbus, Ohio, installed by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission, 1999. Miller, Robert Earnest, "War Within Walls: Camp Chase and the Search for Administrative Reform," Ohio History 96 (Winter Spring 1987): 33 56

External links

*
Comprehensive Camp Chase Cemetery headstone inventory

Aerial photo of Camp Chase

Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery
at Find a Grave
Letters from Camp Chase inmate

Knauss, William H.; The story of Camp Chase; 1906

* * ttp://CampChase.us Columbus Sons of Confederate Veterans: Camp Chase Website
Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery - National Cemetery Administration
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Chase Chase or CHASE may refer to: Businesses * Chase Bank, a national American financial institution * Chase UK, a British retail bank * Chase Aircraft (1943–1954), a defunct American aircraft manufacturer * Chase Coaches, a defunct bus operator in ...

Forts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio American Civil War army posts

American Civil War prison camps Defunct prisons in Ohio Historic American Landscapes Survey in Ohio History of Ohio Ohio in the American Civil War American Civil War military monuments and memorials 19th century in Columbus, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Columbus, Ohio 1861 establishments in Ohio Cemeteries in Columbus, Ohio Reportedly haunted locations in Ohio Reportedly haunted prisons