To Die in Chicago

Often overlooked in Civil War history, Camp Douglas was deemed an "extermination camp" by its own inspectors and became the largest Confederate burial ground outside the South. George Levy's meticulous research, including newly discovered hospital records, unearths a shocking picture of deliberate brutality. He reveals widespread corruption, a White House beef scandal, sadistic torture, murder, and the systematic neglect and starvation of prisoners that led to thousands of needless deaths from disease, buried in unmarked mass graves. Revelations include prisoners hung by their thumbs or heels, whipped, and forced to sit exposed in ice and snow. Levy argues that the gratuitous barbarity at Camp Douglas far surpassed that of even the infamous Andersonville.

Archival Categorization Notes

This literature has been indexed under the primary pillar of American Civil War. It was manually vetted for the Read For Truth database because it provides educational insights into Beyond the Combat, assisting researchers in locating established secondary research within this specific taxonomy.