The Alabama in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Streight Raid
In Response To: Re: Streight Raid ()

Brandon, You might want to read the chapter on Lew Wallace's autobiography which can be read online to help understand what it was like to be a paroled Union prisoner at Camp Chase.

By September of 1862 the majority of Confederate military prisoners had been paroled and on their way home from Camp Chase to be exchanged per the Dix-Hill Cartel.

Union General Lew Wallace had been ordered by General Hallack to report to Camp Chase to take charge of the 6,000 paroled Union prisoners yet to be exchanged at Camp Chase on September 18, 1862. General Wallace was ordered to enlist the Union paroled prisoners to fight the Sioux Indians in Minnesota which by the way was in violation of the Dix-Hill Cartel agreement. When he arrived in Columbus he was told that the citizens of Columbus were scared of the Union prisoners at Camp Chase. General Wallace ask them why they were afraid and they replied "Fire." Even the governor of Ohio was calling for more troops to protect the city from the paroled Union troops at Camp Chase. A provost marshal with his company guarded the outside of the Camp Chase prison. Wallace ask what the conditions were like at Chase and was told it was too incredible to describe. You're have to see it for yourself sir was the reply. General Wallace was advised to have a company with him when he entered Camp Chase. Wallace ask why he needed an escort in visiting his own soldiers? The response was and I will paraphrase they are not Union soldiers any longer they are beasts and they run in herds. One man whom Wallace ask to accompany him to Chase said his life insurance policy had expired.

Wallace after visiting Camp Chase said after the war, it was like Andersonville only it was not run by Confederates but rather by the United States government for its own troops, in his autobiography after the war. Some of the Union paroled prisoners were naked and all lived in filth and were disliked by their guards and the people of Columbus, Ohio. General Wallace stated he always remembered the odor once he entered Camp Chase so much so that it made him nauseous. Wallace was greeted by chants of "Liar" and "Get Out!" It was General Lew Wallace who presided over the trial of Henry Wirz at Andersonville, after the war.

His exact words were: "We are in the habit of speaking and thinking of Andersonville as the acme of horrors; it may have been so, indeed, but of this I am certain, Camp Chase was next to it, the difference being that Andersonville was a Confederate hell for the confinement of enemies taken in arms, while Camp Chase was a hell operated by the old government for friends and sworn supporters - its own children."

This account of Camp Chase was written by General Lew Wallace himself. It can be read using google books and entering "Lew Wallace an autobiography" Part Two

General Wallace did move some of the paroled Union prisoners to another location and named the parole camp as Camp Lew Wallace. His stay in Columbus was a short one perhaps less than sixty days.

By the end of 1862 Camp Wallace was abandoned and paroled Union prisoners were again sent to Chase. The paroled Union soldiers in large part did not go to Minnesota. In 1863 a Union paroled soldier named Cornelius Driscoll was shot and killed by a Union guard. Private Driscoll had been with Streight's Raid and was a member of the 3rd Ohio Infantry. The members of the 3rd Ohio as paroled prisoners at Chase then began setting fires to the guards barracks. A riot was about to take place probably much to the amusement of the Confederate prisoners of war. It ended as quickly as it started.

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