Camp Chase Prison: A Study of Power and Resistance on the Northern Home Front, 1863

Politics, Prison, and Punishment

On January 17, 1864, Lt. Col. A. H. Poten, assistant commandant of Columbus at Ohio’s Camp Chase Prison, penned a long report to his superior, Comm. William Wallace, reflecting on the turbulent year that had just concluded. In November and December 1863, stewards and detectives inside Camp Chase reported a conspiracy among the prisoners, “in connection with Vallandigham sympathizers outside, to overpower the guard and break out.” The lieutenant colonel added that prisoners were undermining the prison walls in many places, that arms were found in the inmates’ possession, and that prisoners’ “mutinous conduct was increasing to such an extent that the guard had to be increased every night.”¹ For a young officer monitoring prison administration, Poten’s report reveals a great deal of anxiety.

Lieutenant Colonel Poten was not imagining things. The challenge to federal authority in Columbus was quite real and had been brewing for some time. For months, Peace Democrats outside the walls of Camp Chase had been conspiring with inmates to liberate prisoners and otherwise destabilize the Northern community. The tense political situation that evolved in Columbus in 1863 demonstrates how Camp Chase was not merely an island within a Northern community but a fully integrated part of the Northern home front.

Scholarship on Civil War prisons in general, and on Camp Chase in particular, focuses on prisoner privations, retaliatory measures by prison authorities, the failed exchange system, or the Union’s treatment of prisoners in relation to Confederate prison administration and conditions in Southern camps.² The examination of these themes, while valid, isolates military prisons from the war’s larger narrative and fails to question how military events, political undercurrents, and civilian attitudes influenced prison administration or how the prisons’ management, prisoner activity, and the prisoner-of-war crisis affected local dynamics. If we step back from the specific episode or anecdote, it quickly becomes clear that military campaigns and civilian demonstrations of support or opposition to the Union or Confederate causes affected Northern and Southern cities that housed military prisons. These home front dynamics, in turn, influenced the administration and internal dynamics of prison camps.

Throughout the Civil War, Union officers charged with administering Camp Chase were sensitive to events that occurred outside of prison walls. Camp Chase’s founding as a training ground for Union soldiers in 1861, establishment as a permanent holding facility for Confederate prisoners in 1862, and its general operation and administration demonstrate that Columbus civilians’ support of, or opposition to, the Union cause repeatedly forced federal authorities to alter camp regulatory policies. More significantly, from July to December 1863, events on the Northern home front created tension in opposition to the Union cause in Columbus. In late July, Confederate general John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry raid of southern Ohio filled Camp Chase with rowdy Confederate prisoners, while the Northern Peace Democrat, or Copperhead, movement, spearheaded by Clement L. Vallandigham as he bid for the Ohio governorship, heightened opposition to the Union cause.³ This opposition inspired a mutinous attitude among Confederate inmates and led to an unsuccessful Peace Democrat plot to liberate the prisoners at Camp Chase. During the gubernatorial campaign, Union guards challenged dissenting civilians outside of Camp Chase’s walls. Inside the prison, guards readily used firepower to prevent inmates’ escape or to correct violations of prison regulations. As tensions rose, Union officials reasserted their control over the prison by killing five Confederate inmates and implementing rigid disciplinary measures. Ultimately, the tense political situation in 1863 caused federal authorities to tighten administrative regulations at the prison in order to counter the perceived threats that the presence of Copperhead dissent engendered. Politics outside the prison walls had a direct impact on events within the prison, frequently creating tension between inmates and guards.

Columbus Politics

Columbus’s political atmosphere was divisive from the city’s early years and throughout the Civil War. All through the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, the city’s residents clung to different elements of Democratic, Whig, and Republican ideologies. Residents sought to preserve...