Camp Thomas Camp Thomas was a United States Regular Army training facility located in North Columbus , Ohio ( now Columbus ) , during the American Civil War . It was primarily used to organize and train new infantry regiments for service in the Western Theater . Establishment . With the outbreak of the Civil War and the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina , President Abraham Lincoln called for 100 , 000 volunteers to put down the growing rebellion . Colonel Henry B . Carrington had been commissioned to raise troops for the expanded United States Army in Ohio , Indiana , and Pennsylvania . In July 1861 , he established a training camp on the Solomon Beers farm along the Delaware Road , four miles north of the city of Columbus . He named the new facility " Camp Thomas " in honor of Colonel Lorenzo Thomas , the Adjutant General of the U . S . Army . Camp Thomas augmented the nearby Camp Chase , a similar military camp established for the state ' s regiments raised for the volunteer Union Army . The camp was located on property owned by Soloman Beers , north of the present day Dodrige Street . Temporary structures were erected for the new camp ' s headquarters , as well as the guard room and hospital . Streets were lined out and tents erected as shelters for the incoming new recruits , who began arriving in mid - August . Among the prominent officers at Camp Thomas during the war was Captain William J . Fetterman , who arrived five days after Carrington opened the camp . He would later be killed and his troops massacred by Sioux Indians . Major William Axton Stokes , later a leading Philadelphia attorney , for a period commanded Camp Thomas . 18th U . S . Infantry . For most of the war , Camp Thomas served as the headquarters for the 18th U . S . Infantry , with the roster of the First Battalion being filled by Colonel Carrington and his recruiters in early September . Later in the month , Carrington organized the Second Battalion of six additional companies . In October , General - in - Chief Winfield Scott arrived in Columbus to tour the camp and review the new regiment . The 18th Infantry drilled at the camp for several weeks before moving to the front lines in Kentucky . A similar camp was authorized by Scott at Perryville , Maryland , to train regiments for duty in the Eastern Theater . On 3 November 1861 , a battalion of the 16th U . S . Infantry under Major Sidney Coolidge arrived at Camp Thomas after its home base , Camp Slemmer in Chicago , Illinois , was closed . Additional recruits arrived and , by the end of the month , two additional companies had been raised to join the four from Illinois . The camp remained active throughout the war as headquarters for the 18th U . S . Infantry , and served as a training base for fresh recruits needed to refill the ranks after significant combat losses at battles such as Stones River . ( The 16th U . S . Infantry moved its base to Fort Ontario in New York . ) For most of the war , Camp Thomas was under the jurisdiction of Brig . Gen . John S . Mason . A few volunteer regiments and artillery batteries , such as the 22nd Ohio Battery , also trained at Camp Thomas for various periods . Frequent attempts were made to convince the Army to erect more permanent structures than tents and the three canvas - roofed timber buildings , but these were denied . Columbus officials hoped that brick or stone buildings would prove more lasting ( and keep the base open after the war ) ; they also wanted a military cemetery established for the dead of the 18th U . S . Infantry . Nothing came of the plans . Following the Civil War , the camp was decommissioned . By order of the Secretary of War , Camp Thomas was discontinued as a recruiting depot for the Regular Army early in October 1866 . Buildings erected for the camp were sold , with some converted to houses in the vicinity of the camp . By 1900 most traces of the camp were essentially gone . The final known ( and documented ) wooden structure from the camp ( that had been used as a barber shop well into the late 20th Century ) was razed in the early 1990s .