"Did Wirtz, the commandant of Andersonville prison, ever do anything as inhumanly brutal as was inflictedon Confederate prisoners in Camp Douglas?" Sgt. T. B. Clore, Camp Douglas survivorThe Chicago doctors who inspected the facility in 1863 called Camp Douglas an "extermination camp." It quickly became the largest Confederate burial ground outside of the South. What George Levy's meticulous research, including newly discovered hospital records, has uncovered is not a pretty picture. The story of Camp Douglas is one of brutal guards, deliberate starvation of prisoners, neglect of the sick, sadistic torture, murder, corruption at all levels, and a beef scandal reaching into the White House.As a result of the overcrowding and substandard provisions, disease ran rampant and the mortality rate soared.

By the thousands, prisoners needlessly died of pneumonia, smallpox, and other maladies. Most were buried in unmarked mass graves. The exact number of those who died is impossible to discern because of the Union's haphazard recordkeeping and general disregard for the deceased.Among the most shocking revelations are such forms of torture as hanging prisoners by their thumbs, hanging them by their heels and then whipping them, and forcing prisoners to sit with their exposed buttocks in the ice and snow. Andersonville never saw such gratuitous barbarity.In To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65, Levy's primary sources include original camp records only recently discovered after a church fire in Chicago, as well as baptismal books kept by a priest who visited the camp.