Page 1
Preface
I’ve done an extensive amount of original research into one of Iowa City’s two Civil War training camps and want to share what I found with my readers in this essay. For ease of reading online, I have broken it up into pages, each with a topical theme. The table of contents below will help you navigate them. Please enjoy!
Contents
1. Preface and Contents
2. Introduction
3. Lincoln’s Call for 300,000 Men
4. Life in Camp: Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs
5. Life in Camp: Newspaper Stories and other First Hand Accounts
6. The Regiments
7. Twenty-Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment
8. Twenty-Eighth Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment
9. Fortieth Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment
10. Location and Description
11. Conclusion
________
Note: I welcome comments on all my posts. Feel free to leave yours here.
Thank you so much for your hard work on this incredibly detailed account of Camp Pope! My great-great-grandfather, John Weno, was a member of E Company in the 28th Iowa. Mortally wounded at Champion Hill, he died sometime after the battle. I had no idea of Camp Pope or that my ancestor trained just over a mile of where I grew up! Wonderful job! Thanks again.
Chuck Weno
Hi, Charles. Thank you for your comment. I am really happy to have made this connection!
A comment from the Contact Form By Julia DeSpain
Hi Tim,
Great blog, fascinating to read more about Camp Pope. I live at 704 Clark and was always told it possibly was part of the camp (there’s a marker in our yard suggesting so) but it looks like that isn’t the case! Seems like your work shows our house was built after Camp Pope was no longer operational? Disappointing but interesting!
Julia
I appreciate your comments!
To answer your question, the research for the signs did not look at the Iowa City Assessor’s information. The late Marlin Ingalls was with a group that was invited to look at the house for confirmation if it were an old barracks. While I since discovered no house other than the old Coldren Home for Ladies was mentioned in accounts of the camp, it does not seem likely your house existed at the time the camp was located there. We were unable to rule out the building was constructed from left-over lumber from the barracks. For more context, the signs were designed and thought up by Will Thomson of Armadillo Arts. I was voted to do the initial research by a group led by the late Chuck Felling. Will added Lynda Leideger as writer and editor. She ran the sign information past the late Bob Hibbs.
Bill Whittaker left a comment in the Contact Form saying,
Your history of Camp Pope is very well done, it sheds a lot of light on an important and poorly understood part of Iowa and Iowa City history.
Thanks for your kind words, Bill!