Camp Douglas (Chicago) - The 1864 'Camp Douglas Conspiracy' To Break Out Prisoners

The 1864 'Camp Douglas Conspiracy' To Break Out Prisoners

The Camp Douglas Conspiracy, thought to have been a serious plot to assault the camp and free the prisoners, was supposed to have come to fruition on November 8, 1864. To this day, historians do not agree on whether the plot was real, or a hoax devised by self–seekers. Attorney and historian George Levy maintains the "conspiracy" began as a con aimed at Confederate agents that evolved into a hoax exploited by Colonel Sweet for his own advantage. Levy wrote that believing in the Camp Douglas conspiracy was a matter of faith: Confederate agents thought they had created a workable plot, and Colonel Sweet made their dream come true. On the other hand, Kelly did not adopt this reasoning and wrote that Sweet seemed to believe the plot was real. Eisendrath also treated the plot as real. Closer to the event, but undoubtedly more biased, Bross also describes the plot as real.

In the Spring of 1864, the Confederate government did send agents to Canada to plan prison escape attempts and attacks in the North. One of the agents, Captain Thomas Hines, did believe he could raise a force of about 5,000 Confederate sympathizers in Chicago to free the prisoners from Camp Douglas. On the other hand, no evidence of elementary planning of the details for the assault has been found for the period before Hines himself began to plan the operation in mid–August 1864. He soon found that he had only 25 untrained volunteers for the difficult mission. He apparently gave up on the scheme as the Democratic convention in Chicago, which was supposed to provide volunteers and cover for execution of the plan, ended at the end of August. Sweet kept the tale alive, however, and told superiors he was about to crush a dangerous uprising. Among the reasons this does not seem true to Levy is that Sweet made no effort to prevent the 196th Pennsylvania Infantry from leaving the camp 11 days earlier.

On November 6, 1864, Brigadier General John Cook in Springfield, IL authorized Colonel Sweet to arrest two Confederate agents at Chicago but Sweet sent a message, by hand delivery not by telegraph, to Cook in which he said that Colonel Marmaduke of the Rebel army and other officers were in town plotting to release the prisoners. Therefore, Sweet claimed he had to act immediately and also to arrest two or three prominent citizens who were actively involved in the plot.

Without a warrant, Sweet's men searched the home of Charles Walsh, leader of the "Sons of Liberty," who were sympathetic with the South, and discovered a cache of guns and ammunition. These arms were not found in the quantity needed to arm 2,000 men as the plot supposedly called for. Sweet in effect extended martial law from the few blocks surrounding the camp to the entire city of Chicago. Sweet stated that 106 men were arrested, including Walsh and Judge Buckner Stith Morris of the Circuit Court of Illinois, treasurer of the organization. Over half of those arrested were promptly released. Curiously, seventy–eight more guns were found in a further search on November 11. Only six of eighteen Camp Douglas prisoners from Chicago were arrested on November 6 while the others were arrested between November 12 and 16. Sweet found only fifty–one of the sixty–nine Chicagoans on his list of 108 suspects on November 6. The other Chicagoans were seized later and the other suspects were arrested outside Chicago in their home counties. Sweet's claim to have arrested leaders of the Clingmann gang of southern Illinois draft resisters and Southern sympathizers is not borne out by the records. Sweet confined those he arrested in a church before moving them to Camp Douglas.

Secretary of War Stanton approved of Sweet's action, Generals Hooker and Cook sent him reinforcements and Governor Yates put the Chicago militia at Sweet's disposal. Sweet then had about 2,000 troops available. Sweet arrested five more members of the Sons of Liberty on November 14, including Richard T. Semmes who was not the brother of the Confederate Admiral, Raphael Semmes, as Sweet asserted. He also arrested Vincent Marmaduke, who was not the Confederate colonel according to Levy. After the release of a number of the suspects, the total number of leaders and foot soldiers in the alleged plot to assault the camp and free the prisoners was only sixty–six men. The army agreed with Sweet's advice to try those arrested before a military commission but ordered that this trial take place in Cincinnati, not in Chicago. Sweet did not arrest Mary Morris, the young pro–Southern wife of Judge Morris, but the prosecutor, Major Henry L. Burnett, ordered her arrested. Yet she was not charged, probably as part of a deal in return for her testimony. Her later self–incrimination led to the exoneration of her husband.

Sweet's main agent, John T. Shanks, a Confederate prisoner who was a former Morgan's Raider and a convicted criminal turned informer to Sweet, testified against the defendants. Sweet kept the pretense that Shanks was not his agent and lied that Judge Morris had aided Shanks escape from Camp Douglas. In a recently discovered letter of March 29, 1865 from Sweet to Hoffman, Sweet admitted his use of Shanks to Hoffman and asked for approval of one year's pay from the prison fund for him. No record of a reply from Hoffman has been found. Shanks criminal past was disclosed to the military commission, but they convicted many of the defendants in any event. On December 12, 1864, President Lincoln awarded Sweet the rank of brevet brigadier general United States Volunteers to rank from December 20, 1864, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the award on February 14, 1865. Shanks was recruited as a "Galvanized Yankee" in 1865 and as captain commanding Company I of the 6th U.S. Volunteer Infantry, was the only former Confederate prisoner commissioned as an officer.

The first use recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary of the phrase, to hell in a hand basket, was in The Great North-Western Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details, an account by I. Windslow Ayer of events surrounding the Camp Douglas Conspiracy. Ayer alleges that, at an August meeting of the Order of the Sons of Liberty, the Judge Morris noted above said: "Thousands of our best men were prisoners in Camp Douglas, and if once at liberty would ‘send abolitionists to hell in a hand basket.'"