Camp Chase Camp Chase was a military staging , training and prison camp in Columbus , Ohio , during the American Civil War . All that remains of the camp today is a Confederate cemetery containing 2 , 260 graves . The cemetery is located in what is now the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus , Ohio . History . Camp Chase was a Civil War camp established in May 1861 , on land leased by the U . S . Government . It served as a replacement for the much smaller Camp Jackson . The main entrance was on the National Road west of Downtown Columbus , Ohio . Boundaries of the camp were present - day Broad Street ( north ) , Hague Avenue ( east ) , Sullivant Avenue ( south ) , and near Westgate Avenue ( west ) . Named for former Ohio Governor and Lincoln ' s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P . Chase , it was a training camp for Ohio volunteer army soldiers , a parole camp , a muster outpost , and a prisoner - of - war camp . The nearby Camp Thomas served as a similar base for the Regular Army . As many as 150 , 000 Union soldiers and 25 , 000 Confederate prisoners passed through its gates from 1861 – 1865 . By February 1865 , over 9 , 400 men were held at the prison . More than 2 , 000 Confederates are buried in the Camp Chase Cemetery . Four future Presidents passed through Camp Chase : Andrew Johnson , Rutherford B . Hayes , James Garfield , and William McKinley . It also held Confederates captured during Morgan ' s Raid in 1863 , including Col . Basil W . Duke . Early in the war , the prison section held a group of prominent western Virginia and Kentucky civilians suspected of actively supporting secession , including former 3 - term United States Congressman Richard Henry Stanton . The camp was closed in 1865 , and by September 1867 , dismantled buildings , usable items , and 450 patients from Tripler Military Hospital ( also in Columbus ) were transferred to the National Soldier ' s Home in Dayton . In 1895 , former Union soldier William H . Knauss organized the first memorial service at the cemetery , and in 1906 he wrote a history of the camp . The Memorial Arch was dedicated in 1902 . From 1912 to 1994 , the United Daughters of the Confederacy held annual services . The Hilltop Historical Society now sponsors the event on the second Sunday in June . The Lady in Gray . The Lady in Gray is purportedly an apparition that haunts Camp Chase Cemetery . The story goes that the ghost is looking for her lost love , and cannot find him in the cemetery . The woman is described as young , in her late teens or early twenties , dressed entirely in gray , and carrying a clean white handkerchief . The legend of the Lady in Gray dates back to just after the Civil War , when visitors to Camp Chase spotted the woman walking through the cemetery , trying to read the carved names on the marked grave markers . She was seen quite often for several years , before disappearing completely . Camp Chase today . Aside from the Confederate Cemetery , which still exists , the land that formerly housed Camp Chase is now a residential and commercial area known as Westgate , a community in the Hilltop section of west Columbus . This development was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s .