A Nation in Crises: A Community Responds

A Nation in Crises: A Community Responds. . , Our community's response to the Civil War crisis was immediate and diverse. , After years of debate over slavery, this national crisis erupted into civil war in April of 1861. In Cleveland, the response to President Lincoln's call for Union soldiers was immediate and diverse. The young and not so young rushed to volunteer for military service, often organized within neighborhoods or ethnic communities. African Americans from Cleveland volunteered as early as April of 1861 but were denied the right to join the war effort until 1863. Working with the US Sanitary Commission, the Women's Soldiers Aid Society of Northeast Ohio organized and coordinated a supply chain to outfit, feed and provide moral support to troops from Ohio, wherever they might be., As a result of this crisis, the military created a local hospital and training camps, including Camp Cleveland. , As you travel the Towpath Trail between University and Marquardt Avenues, you are passing the eastern edge of the site of Camp Cleveland, the largest of the training camps in the area. Wooden barracks, instead of tents, housed the recruits. From 1862 to 1865 over 15,000 troops began or ended their Army life here, Raw recruits learned drills and discipline and tired soldiers returned here to be mustered out of the Army., Over 3,000 troops ended their time in the army hospitalized at the United States General Hospital Cleveland (U.S.G.H.C), located a block east of the camp. The hospital was built in pavilion style, to allow fresh air to circulate and with separate wings for different ailments. Wounded and diseased soldiers filled the 320 beds of this place in a time when medical knowledge was often sketchy. This hospital, however, was well equipped for its time and offered comfort and ease many miles away from the action of the war., On August 23, 1865, the last soldiers left Camp Cleveland and by the end of September 1865 the hospital and camp buildings were disassembled with the lumber and government equipment sold at auction. The empty space was soon filled with houses for workers needed in the post-war industrial boom., "Light and Shadows of Army Life" , "Barracks-life... was like a long- continued gala day and night picnic... Social pleasures were varied and pleasing, vocal and instrumental music could be heard day and night." , "...each one confidently felt that he held special immunities from death and disease... Alas! for those who were in error, for some of them saw no more on earth their home, or friends." , - Annals of Nineteenth Ohio Battery Volunteer Artillery 1878, , Theodore C. Tracie