Joseph H . Tucker Joseph H . Tucker ( 1819 – October 22 , 1894 ) was a banker , businessman and Illinois militia colonel during the first two years of the American Civil War ( Civil War ) . He was given initial responsibility for building Camp Douglas at Chicago , Illinois , and was the first commander of the camp . Originally a training camp for Union Army recruits , in 1862 and 1863 Camp Douglas was converted into a prison camp for Confederate States Army prisoners captured by the Union Army . Tucker was commander of the camp from the start of its construction in October 1861 until September 28 , 1862 , except between February 26 , 1862 , and June 19 , 1862 . During this time , the camp was used as a training facility and had its initial use as a prisoner of war camp . Tucker was never mustered into the Union Army , remaining a colonel in the Illinois militia during the term of his service in the Civil War . Early life . Joseph H . Tucker was born in New York in 1819 , the son of a Baptist minister . Tucker had been a banker and businessman in Cumberland , Maryland , before he moved to Chicago , Illinois , in 1858 . He was a successful businessman , banker and stock trader . American Civil War service . Background . On April 15 , 1861 , the day after the U . S . Army garrison surrendered Fort Sumter to Confederate forces , President Abraham Lincoln called 75 , 000 state militiamen into federal service for ninety days to put down the insurrection . Lincoln made further calls for volunteers on May 3 , 1861 , and the U . S . Congress retroactively approved Lincoln ' s actions and authorized another one million three – year volunteers in July 1861 . The states and localities had to organize and equip the volunteer regiments until late in 1861 when the federal government became sufficiently organized to take over the project . Soon after President Lincoln ' s calls for volunteers , many volunteers from Illinois gathered in various large public and private buildings in Chicago and then overflowed into camps on the prairie on the southeast edge of the city . Senator Stephen A . Douglas owned land next to this location and had donated land just south of the camps to the original University of Chicago . Building Camp Douglas , First Tucker command . Illinois Governor Richard Yates assigned Judge Allen C . Fuller , soon to be adjutant general for the State of Illinois , to select the site for a permanent army camp at Chicago . Judge Fuller selected the site that was already in use for the makeshift camps because it was only four miles from downtown Chicago , prairie surrounded the site , nearby Lake Michigan could provide water and the Illinois Central Railroad ran within a few hundred yards of the site . Fuller was not an engineer and did not realize that the site was a poor choice for a large camp because of its wet , low – lying location . The camp initially lacked adequate medical facilities , sewers , latrines and drainage and when the camp opened , it had only one water hydrant . Governor Yates put Colonel Joseph H . Tucker , commanding the 60th Regiment , Illinois State Militia , in charge of building the camp and appointed Tucker as the camp ' s first commander . State militia troops called the Mechanics Fusiliers , who were apprentice and journeyman carpenters , built the barracks in October and November 1861 . Regular troops had to suppress rioting construction troops and restore order to the camp when the State tried to convert them to infantry and reneged on a promise of extra pay . This was only the beginning of Tucker ' s problems . By November 15 , 1861 , Camp Douglas housed about 4 , 222 volunteer soldiers from 11 regiments . In an ominous preview of the effects of living at the camp on the future prisoners , the recruits , who were in better physical condition than the later prisoners , suffered forty - two deaths from disease by February 1862 . Colonel Tucker ' s job as camp commander was not easy even before the camp was converted to a prison camp . He had to use increasingly hard measures to curb considerable drunk and disorderly conduct by recruits in camp and in the city of Chicago , where the soldiers abused pass privileges . On February 16 , 1862 , the Union Army under then Brigadier General Ulysses S . Grant captured Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River near Dover , Tennessee and with it about 12 , 000 to 15 , 000 Confederate prisoners . The army was unprepared to handle this large group of prisoners and scrambled to find places to house them . Colonel Tucker told General Grant ' s superior , Major General Henry W . Halleck , that Camp Douglas could accommodate 8 , 000 or 9 , 000 prisoners , which was about the same number of recruits that the camp was supposed to be able to accommodate . As it turned out , the camp and its staff could not even easily handle the 4 , 459 prisoners who were sent to it . The first Confederate prisoners of war arrived at Camp Douglas on February 20 , 1862 to find a camp but no real prison . They were housed for their first few days at the camp in the White Oak Square section along with newly – trained Union soldiers about to depart for service at the front . The army sent sick prisoners to the camp , where there were no medical facilities at the time , even though army staff were specifically warned not to do so . On February 23 , 1862 , the Union troops vacated the camp except for an inadequate force of about 40 officers and 469 enlisted men left to guard the prisoners . About 77 escapes were recorded at Camp Douglas by June 1862 . On February 26 , 1862 , General Halleck ordered Colonel Tucker to report to Springfield , Illinois and a Union Army officer from Illinois , Colonel James A . Mulligan , took command of the camp until June 14 , 1862 . Between June 14 and June 19 , 1862 Colonel Daniel Cameron , Jr . was in charge . Colonel Mulligan ' s command . The first group of prisoners was treated reasonably well under the circumstances and despite the inadequacy of the grounds , barracks and sewer and water systems , they were given clothing and enough to eat , although not a balanced diet . They received enough to eat , cooking stoves and utensils and clothing . Nonetheless , sickness and death among the prisoners , and even among some guards , reached epidemic levels . Frozen hydrants led to a water shortage . One in eight of the prisoners from Fort Donelson died of pneumonia or various diseases . After the Union Army victory at the battle of Shiloh and capture of Island No . 10 in the spring of 1862 , Camp Douglas housed 8 , 962 Confederate prisoners . Conditions at the camp further deteriorated with the overcrowding . Escapes increased . Some escapes were aided by Southern sympathizers in Chicago and others were facilitated by lax administration by Colonel Mulligan and the guards . Second Tucker command . Even though he remained in the Illinois militia and was not taken into federal service , Colonel Tucker returned to command the camp on June 19 , 1862 . To deal with local civilian sympathizers who might be aiding escapes , Colonel Tucker declared martial law on July 12 , 1862 . When twenty – five prisoners escaped on July 23 , 1862 , Tucker arrested several citizens whom he believed aided the escapees . In addition , he brought in Chicago police to search the camp . This action caused much lasting animosity from the prisoners because the police confiscated many of the prisoners ' valuables . The police also confiscated five pistols and many bullets . Twenty of the escapees were recaptured within two weeks . In the summer of 1862 , Henry Whitney Bellows , president of the U . S . Sanitary Commission , wrote the following to Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman , Union Army commissary general of prisoners , who had considerable authority over Union prison camps , after visiting the camp : " Sir , the amount of standing water , unpoliced grounds , of foul sinks , of unventilated and crowded barracks , of general disorder , of soil reeking miasmatic accretions , of rotten bones and emptying of camp kettles , is enough to drive a sanitarian to despair . I hope that no thought will be entertained of mending matters . The absolute abandonment of the spot seems to be the only judicious course . I do not believe that any amount of drainage would purge that soil loaded with accumulated filth or those barracks fetid with two stories of vermin and animal exhalations . Nothing but fire can cleanse them . " Hoffman already had made requests for improvements in the camp , but he kept the report secret because he did not want to take a position contrary to that taken by any superior such as Quartermaster General Meigs , who opposed costly improvements to the camp . The camp was such an unhealthy place that one of Colonel Tucker ' s sons who served with him at the camp , Captain Lansing Tucker , became ill and died in the summer of 1862 . Conditions at the camp improved that summer as almost all the prisoners left by September 1862 . About one thousand prisoners took an oath of allegiance to the United States and were freed . All prisoners who were not too ill to travel were exchanged due to implementation of the July 22 , 1862 Dix – Hill prisoner cartel between the Union and Confederate armies . By October 6 , 1862 , the few remaining prisoners who had been too ill to leave earlier also were gone . Through September 1862 , 980 Confederate prisoners and 240 Union Army trainees and guards had died at Camp Douglas , almost all from disease . In the fall of 1862 , Camp Douglas again briefly became a training camp for Union army volunteers . The Union Army then used the camp for its most unusual purpose . Final service with Tyler . Union soldiers who were paroled after their capture by Confederate Lieutenant General Thomas J . " Stonewall " Jackson at the Battle of Harpers Ferry , Virginia ( later West Virginia ) on September 15 , 1862 were sent to Camp Douglas for temporary detention . Under the terms of the prisoner cartel , they had to await formal exchange before they could leave the camp . These 8 , 000 paroled Union soldiers began to arrive at Camp Douglas on September 28 , 1862 . Brigadier General Daniel Tyler relieved Colonel Tucker of command of the camp . Under Tyler ' s command these Union soldiers had to live under similar conditions to those endured by the Confederate prisoners from Fort Donelson . In fact , the conditions were worse because the camp had become filthy and even more run down during its occupancy by the prisoners . The paroled soldiers were fortunate to have only about a two – month stay . They were able to tolerate the conditions somewhat better than the previous Confederate prisoners could because the Union parolees were more warmly dressed and in better physical condition . The damp conditions and bad food still took their toll on the parolees . By November , forty soldiers of the 126th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment were dead and about another sixty were ill with fevers . Soon after Tucker ' s resignation from the Illinois militia , Brigadier General Jacob Ammen became the camp commander . Later life . Having lost two of his sons in the war , Tucker left Chicago in 1865 , never to return . He became a businessman and Member of New York and Consolidated Stock Exchanges in New York City until he became an invalid by 1887 . Joseph H . Tucker died in New York City on October 22 , 1894 , aged 74 or 75 . The obituary notice stated that Tucker had been born in New York , had daughters living in Chicago , and would be buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago .