Springfield's Camp Butler National Cemetery provides amazing military history

If ghosts could tell stories, Camp Butler National Cemetery would be an amazing place to hear them spin their yarns. The cemetery, located a few miles northeast of Springfield, occupies approximately 53 acres and is the site of over 20,000 interments encompassing most American wars.

Civil War training camp

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 Tecumseh Sherman to Springfield to meet with Governor Richard Yates for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for a training facility. Sherman, after examining the land with State Treasurer William Butler and Illinois Secretary of State Oziah M. Hatch, approved of the land. A Union training facility, named after Butler himself, was officially established there on August 2, 1861.

The first small units reported the next day. Shortly afterward, Governor Yates appointed Captain Thomas G. Pitcher, the Federal mustering officer for Illinois, commandant of Camp Butler with the rank of Colonel. The entire camp covered an area of about a mile and a half, into which poured nearly 20,000 men during a five-month period. By the middle of October 1861, Pitcher had helped to train and organize more than 16,000 men. By the time the camp disbanded in 1866, nearly 200,000 soldiers passed through the encampment. Before the camp closed, one major service was required of the camp. On May 4, 1865, the train bearing President Abraham Lincoln’s body arrived in Springfield. Men from Camp Butler were assigned as a guard of honor for the funeral and later as sentries at the gravesite at Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Confederate prisoner camp

Colonel Pitcairn Morrison took command of Camp Butler on January 31, 1862. By early February 1862, only a few troops remained and on February 22, 2,000 out of 15,000 Rebels captured at Fort Donelson were escorted into camp. Just 50 days later, Morrison’s task was further complicated by the arrival of over 1,000 more Confederates captured at Island No. 10, located in the great bend of the Mississippi River. Many prisoners escaped and many became ill. Hardly a day passed without the removal of four or five bodies from the prison hospital wards.

Colonel Morrison was relieved of his duties on June 22, and his replacement was Major John G. Fonda. An enormous recruitment followed, and Governor Yates opened temporary camps throughout the state. Colonel Fonda later became the new commander of the 118th Illinois Infantry, and Colonel William F. Lynch was appointed commandant of Camp Butler. In January 1863, 1,665 Confederates captured at Arkansas Post and Murfreesboro were on their way to Springfield, and 500 additional men arrived during the next two months. The camp was not prepared for such an influx of prisoners. Supplies were slow in coming and weather conditions were deplorable. Many prisoners came down with pneumonia and smallpox claimed a number of victims, forcing the creation of a separate hospital in a building outside the stockade. Lynch was then ordered to prepare the prisoners for exchange. By May 19, 1,834 were on their way to City Point, Virginia.

Total Civil War losses

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 during the smallpox and pneumonia epidemics. A total of 866 Confederate prisoners’ graves can be found today in the National Cemetery. The Confederate graves are easily distinguishable by pointed headstones. They are buried side by side with 776 graves of Union soldiers and enlistees, making a total of 1,642 Civil War graves.

Other interments

Along with the soldiers who fought on both sides of the Civil War, veterans who lost their lives in the Spanish-American War, World War I, 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 here, relocated from a cemetery near Indianapolis. Seaman John H. Catherwood, Medal of Honor recipient for action in the Spanish-American War, and Colonel Otis B. Duncan, highest ranking African American officer during World War I, are also buried here.

Directions and other information

Camp Butler is easy to find. If visitors travel I-55, they would take exit 100 going east toward Clinton. The cemetery is 2-3 miles east on the left-hand side, and its address is 5063 Camp Butler Road. Cemetery grounds are open daily from sunrise to sunset, while office hours are held from 7:30am-4pm on weekdays.

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