Camp Morton
Camp Morton was a military training ground and a Union prisoner-of-war camp in Indianapolis, Indiana, during the American Civil War. It was named for Indiana governor Oliver Morton. Prior to the war, the site served as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. During the war, Camp Morton was initially used as a military training ground. The first Union troops arrived at the camp in April 1861. After the fall of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh, the site was converted into a prisoner-of-war camp. The first Confederate prisoners arrived at Camp Morton on February 22, 1862; its last prisoners were paroled on June 12, 1865. At the conclusion of the war, the property resumed its role as the fairgrounds for the Indiana State Fair. In 1891 the property was sold and developed into a residential neighborhood known as Morton Place, a part of the Herron-Morton Place Historic District.
Camp Morton was established on a tract of land that bordered present-day Central Avenue and Nineteenth, Twenty-second, and Talbott Streets. It was among the largest of the Union's eight prison camps established for Confederate noncommissioned officers and privates. Between 1862 and 1865, the camp's average prison population was 3,214; it averaged fifty deaths per month. Its maximum prison population reached 4,999 in July 1864. More than 1,700 prisoners died at the camp during its four years of operation.
While the military facilities at Camp Morton no longer exist, the remains of 1,616 Confederate soldiers and sailors who died while prisoners at the camp are interred at Indianapolis's Crown Hill Cemetery. Several monuments and historical markers commemorate Camp Morton, including a bust of Richard Owen, a camp commandant, at the Indiana Statehouse, and memorials to the Confederate prisoners who died at the camp at Indianapolis's Garfield Park and Crown Hill.The memorial at Garfield Park was dismantled on June 8, 2020.
Union training camp
Camp Morton served as a military camp for Union soldiers from April 1861 to February 1862. Two days after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, Indiana's governor Morton offered to raise and equip ten thousand Indiana troops in response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion and preserve the Union. Morton and his adjutant general, Lew Wallace, chose the site of the Indiana State Fairgrounds for a mustering ground and military camp at Indianapolis. The site had served as the state fairgrounds since 1859, and had previously been known as Henderson's Grove, named after Samuel Henderson, the first mayor of Indianapolis. The tract of partially wooded farmland north of the city loosely bordered present-day Central Avenue and Nineteenth, Twenty-second, and Talbott Streets.After the fairgrounds were converted into a military camp, it was renamed Camp Morton in honor of Morton, who served as the governor of Indiana from January 16, 1861, to January 23, 1867. The first recruits arrived at the facility on April 17, 1861, four days after the surrender at Fort Sumter. The camp's barracks were converted cattle and horse stalls, a hospital was established in the power hall, the dining hall became the commissary, and office space was converted into military offices and guardhouses. Existing buildings could not house all the incoming troops, so new sheds were built with bunks; however, the soldiers had to bathe in Fall Creek. The hastily built facility had difficulties accommodating so many men with equipment, tents, and food, but order was established within a few weeks. Many residents of Indianapolis saw the camp as a center of attraction.
Military prison camp
Indianapolis's Camp Morton was among the largest of the Union's eight prison camps established for Confederate noncommissioned officers and privates. Other large prison camps included Camp Douglas, Camp Chase, and Camp Butler. General officers for the Confederacy were sent to an island in Boston Harbor, where Fort Warren was located, and lesser commissioned officers from the Confederacy were sent to Johnson's Island in Ohio's Sandusky Bay.When Camp Morton was established in 1862, it was initially under state control until the U.S. government assumed responsibility for its prisoners. The camp reopened in 1863 with the intention of housing only infirm prisoners, but others were detained at the facility as well. From July 1863 until the parole of the last Confederate prisoner on June 12, 1865, the camp's average prison population was 3,214 and it averaged fifty deaths per month. The maximum prisoner population at Camp Morton during that time reach 4,999, in July 1864, and the maximum of deaths reached 133.
1862
On February 17, 1862, two days after the fall of Fort Donelson, near present-day Clarksville, Tennessee, Morton informed Union general Henry W. Halleck that Indianapolis could, if necessary, hold three thousand Confederate prisoners. Captain James A. Ekin, assistant quartermaster general of the Union Army, was charged with converting Camp Morton to a prison camp. Stalls were converted into sleeping quarters for the prisoners and additional barracks and latrines were built. A walled palisade was constructed of wood around the perimeter of the camp; it also included reinforced gates and a walkway for sentry patrols. Initially, there was no hospital within the camp; other Indianapolis facilities were used to treat the prisoners.On February 22, the first Confederate prisoners arrived by train at Indianapolis. Additional prisoners arrived at the camp over the next three days, bringing the number of prisoners to thirty-seven hundred men. Local residents helped provide the necessary food, clothing, and nursing to the incoming prisoners. The death rate among the unfortunate Confederate prisoners was high. In March 1862, 144 prisoners died at the camp. By April 1 the camp's inhabitants, including prisoners and guards, numbered five thousand. More prisoners arrived in subsequent months, including a group of a thousand prisoners from the battle at Shiloh.
Confederate officers who had commissions were separated from their men and quartered in a barracks on Washington Street and elsewhere in the city until they could be moved to the prison camps in Ohio and Massachusetts. Noncommissioned officers and privates were taken to Camp Morton. Poorly clothed, ill fed, unused to the northern climates, and weakened from recent battles, many of the prisoners fell ill and were taken to makeshift facilities outside the camp for treatment.
Colonel Richard Owen took over as commandant of the prisoner-of-war camp and served in that role until June 20, 1862, when his regiment was called to active duty and he departed Indianapolis with his men. Camp Morton's first prison guards came from the Fourteenth Light Artillery, Fifty-third Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, and the Sixtieth Regiment of Indiana Volunteers. Quarters for the camp's prison guards were established at Camp Burnside, a Union camp located between Nineteenth and Tinker Streets, south of Camp Morton. The guards were understaffed and overworked. On May 4, 1862, Owen reported less than one regiment plus 202 men from another were guarding more than four thousand prisoners at Camp Morton. In comparison, two regiments guarded about a thousand prisoners at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio.
Few guidelines were provided for operating Union prison camps, so Owen devised his own, which served as a model for other camps. Owen's policies were sympathetic to the prisoners' needs. Under his command, camp discipline was strict, but humane, and allowed for self-government among the prisoners, which local leaders criticized on occasion. Early challenges at the camp included equitable distribution of rations and supplies. A camp bakehouse was erected and in operation by mid-April 1862. It provided prisoners a place to work and the means to earn money to purchase small amenities. A fund established from the cash value of the camp's excess rations provided prisoners with additional supplies. While trade with unauthorized vendors did occur, most of the items sold to prisoners came from the camp's sutler.
Recreational activities included music and sports. Prisoners formed musical clubs and theatrical groups and attended band concerts at the camp. Books and periodicals were available in the camp, and a photographer was allowed to make daguerrotypes of the prisoners' likenesses to send to their friends and families in the South. Other pastimes included ballgames and whittling. No visitors or communication between the prisoners and the camp guards or local citizens were allowed, but mail correspondence and small packages were delivered to prisoners after they had been inspected. Contraband was removed before delivery, and outgoing letters were censored and inspected before they were mailed. Attempts to escape were rare while Owen was commandant. Only thirteen of its forty-two hundred prisoners escaped during his command of the camp.
Although later expanded, the hospital on Camp Morton's grounds was not large enough to serve all the camp's prisoners. Indianapolis's City Hospital served Union troops; only a few Confederate prisoners were taken there until its facilities were expanded in May 1862. In the meantime, additional facilities for Confederate prisoners were established in two buildings on Meridian Street, known as Military Hospital Number 2 and Military Hospital Number 3, set up in an old post office on Meridian Street, near Washington Street. A few prisoners were cared for in private homes. No epidemics swept the camp or area hospitals, but there were reports of dysentery, typhoid fever, and typhoid pneumonia, among other diseases.
David Garland Rose succeeded Owen as Camp Morton's commandant on June 19, 1862, and tightened the camp's rules. New volunteers from Indiana's military companies served as replacements for the camp's prison guards. On August 22, 1862, prisoner exchanges were arranged and final orders were given for the removal of the Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton. The prisoners were sent to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where they were exchanged for Union prisoners held in Confederate prison camps. Camp Morton's remaining Confederate prisoners whose names did not appear on the prisoner exchange rolls left the camp by September 1862. Following their departure, Camp Morton was used as a military training ground for Union troops and Indiana volunteers who were sent home on parole. The paroled Union soldiers were not permitted to perform duties that would free other troops for active service. Instead, they guarded and maintained the camp until they were allowed to continue active military service.