“The prisons at this post are in a very bad condition, dirty, filled with vermin, little or no ventilation and there is an insufficiency of fireplaces …. It is a matter of surprise that the prisoners can exist in the close and crowded rooms, the gas from the coal rendering the air fetid and impure. [A single pot-bellied stove was installed on each floor of the building.] The prisoners have almost no clothing, no blankets, and a very small supply of fuel …. The mortality…about five per day, is caused, no doubt, by the insufficiency of food…and for the reasons…stated above. This state of things is truly horrible….”

No wonder my great uncle, Francis A. Boring, Co. A, 18th Georgia Infantry, CSA, said Camp Douglas caused his rheumatism. He spent a year as guest of the Yankees, from July 1864 to the end of June, 1865, then walked home to Georgia. When captured, he was recuperating from a wound received at Spotsylvania. He eventually lost the use of his left arm, and was house bound the last twelve years of his life. He died in 1899. His widow ontinued the pension applications each year until 1924, when she said, "He went to the war, and it killed him." She got the pension. Stan