Indianapolis once hosted a Confederate prisoner camp

We’re looking again at Indiana historical past. All this week, Information 8’s Adam Pinsker is looking at Indiana’s function within the Civil Conflict. That is the fourth of 5 entries in our newest INside Story collection.

Half 1 | Half 2 | Half 3 | Half 4

Camp Morton first served as a recruiting floor for Union troops.

Amy Vedra, director of reference providers on the Indiana Historic Society, mentioned, “The troops would go there, they might muster in and they’d be despatched to the place they might be preventing.”

In 1862, following a significant Union victory at Fort Donelson in northern Tennessee, the grounds have been transformed right into a prisoner of conflict camp for Accomplice prisoners.

“Throughout that February after Fort Donelson, 4,000 Accomplice troopers got here to Indianapolis to be housed at Camp Morton,” Vedra mentioned.

The camp was named after Oliver Morton, Indiana’s governor in the course of the Civil Conflict.

Camp Morton was on 36 acres that bordered present-day Central Avenue and nineteenth, twenty second and Talbot streets. The positioning had been beforehand used for the state honest, and was once more used for the honest after the conflict. At the moment, it ‘s a residential neighborhood often known as Morton Place.

In a yr’s time, 9,000 prisoners handed via the camp. Roughly 1,700 of them died there from illness.

“Many prisoner of conflict camps handled points of unpolluted water to help those who have been there, as a result of their latrine services weren’t at all times as clear lower from the water services,” Vedra mentioned.

Those that survived have been launched and went again to their properties within the south.

“A few of them even stayed and took the oath of allegiance to the USA as those that have declared their allegiance,” Vedra mentioned.

The Accomplice troopers who died at Camp Morton are buried in a particular part at Crown Hill Cemetery on the town’s north facet.