Illinois

If you were a Confederate prisoner during the Civil War, you might have ended up in this infamous military prison in Chicago.

More Confederate soldiers died in Chicago's Camp Douglas than on any Civil War battlefield. Originally constructed in 1861 to train forty thousand Union soldiers from the northern third of Illinois, it was converted to a prison camp in 1862. Nearly thirty thousand Confederate prisoners were housed there until it was shut down in 1865. Today, the history of the camp ranges from unknown to deeply misunderstood. David Keller offers a modern perspective of Camp Douglas and a key piece of scholarship in reckoning with the legacy of other military prisons.

Southwestern Illinois played a fierce and pivotal role in the national drama of a house divided against itself. St. Clair County sheltered Brooklyn, founded by freed and fugitive slaves and a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Alton was the home of Elijah Lovejoy, gunned down defending his press from an anti-abolitionist mob, as well as Lyman Trumbull, who wrote the Thirteenth Amendment. After the outbreak of war, Alton's prison was packed with thousands of Confederate captives, a smallpox epidemic and the cross-dressing double agent Mary Anne Pitman. John J. Dunphy continues the story of the Civil War and abolitionism beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and Appomattox, seeking out the enduring legacy those struggles left in his corner of Illinois.

Meet the men from Southwestern Illinois who served in the Civil War. Learn about their lives prior to enlistment, follow them into battle, and bear witness to their legacy.

The men of southwestern Illinois, both white and Black, rallied to the Union banner when the Civil War broke out. Lewis Martin, an escaped slave, enlisted in the Union army and suffered horrendous injuries at the Battle of the Crater. Shurtleff College’s entire 1864 class joined up, and so many men from McKendree College served in the Illinois 117th that it became known as the “McKendree Brigade.” Some of the volunteers came from pioneer American stock, like Franklin Moore, whose forefathers fought in the War of 1812 and the Revolution. Others, such as Swiss-born John Kuhn, were immigrants. Author John J. Dunphy follows the men from southwestern Illinois who risked their lives to end the Southern rebellion.

The first settlers came to the area that would become Palatine in 1837, shortly after a treaty with the local Indians. Farmers arrived first, merchants and tradesmen followed, and Palatine Township was formed in 1850. Joel Wood laid out a town and brought the railroad in 1855, and men of the area formed a Palatine company that fought in the Civil War.
 On April 2, 1866, 73 men voted to incorporate the Village of Palatine. The town served as a commercial center for the farms surrounding it. Growth was slow, and the population of Palatine in 1945 was still only 4,000. Then came the post-World War II boom. Chicagoans spread out searching for affordable housing, and the jobs and highways followed. Palatine, 35 miles northwest of the city, thus came to be considered a suburb of Chicago and is one of its oldest to the northwest. Its population today exceeds 72,000 residents. The village held special events throughout 2016 to celebrate its sesquicentennial. The articles in this book, which were published in the Daily Herald, were part of that celebration.