History
During the Civil War, Camp Butler was the second largest military training camp in Illinois, second only to Camp Douglas in Chicago. After President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861, the U.S. War Department sent then Brigadier-General William T. Sherman to Springfield, Illinois to meet with Governor Richard Yates for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for a training facility.
Since Governor Yates was unfamiliar with the land around Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, he enlisted the aid of then-State Treasurer William Butler, who along with Oziah M. Hatch, Secretary of State of Illinois, took a carriage ride with William T. Sherman to examine land about 5 and 1/2 miles northeast of downtown Springfield. An area near Riverton, Illinois (then known as "Jimtown", short for Jamestown) was selected, and named in honor of William Butler. A Union training facility was officially established there on August 2, 1861.
Originally the camp was designed to train and "muster-in" Illinois troops for the Civil War, it was quickly pressed into service to house the approximately 2,000 Confederate soldiers who had been taken prisoner at the surrender of Fort Donelson, in Tennessee on February 16, 1862. By the war's end, over 200,000 Union troops would pass through Camp Butler.
An area was set aside for the burial of Confederate prisoners of war who died at the camp. As many as 700 prisoners died in 1862 when smallpox and other diseases were rampant in the camp. The situation was aggravated by the poor living conditions the prisoners endured there, and they were interred in the cemetery in their own Confederate section. A total of 866 Confederate prisoner's graves can be found today in the National Cemetery. The Confederate graves are easily distinguishable by the pointed headstones, which were instituted under the superstition that it was a means of preventing the devil from sitting on their graves. They are buried side by side with 776 graves of Union soldiers and enlistees, making a total of 1,642 Civil War graves.
Along with the soldiers who fought on both sides of the Civil War, veterans who lost their lives in the Spanish-American War, both World War I and World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are also buried at Camp Butler. There are also German and Korean prisoners of war buried there, relocated from a cemetery near Indianapolis, Indiana.
Read more about this topic: Camp Butler National Cemetery
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