"The Arkansas Post POWs arrived in February 1863, not February 1862. Camp Douglas was apparently "Reb free" from September 1862 until February 1863"
Hugh,
Its kind of hard to disagree with the OR's but according to an afadavit submited on behalf of my Great Grand Father Alex Moore by one Jerimiah Quirk, Mr. Quirk says that he first met Alexander in Spetember of 62 when they were guarding prisoners at Camp Douglas and the Ill. AG's history of the 90th Illinois says that they were taken into service in Spetember of 62 and were guarding prisoners at Camp Douglas from Sept. 7, 62 until Nov 27, 62 at which time they "shipped out) {my term} for Cairo. I guess that perhaps they were armed at that time. It is possible that troops who came after them were not armed because those who went before them had all the arms that were available. That kind of makes sense of things to me. I find it interesting that there was a period when there were no POW's there. Thank you for that. Kind of like reading about Almyria. As bad as things were there, they only had POW's for about a year. I recall reading about Camp Butler, even tho they had many deaths there, a lot of them were from a Diptheria epidemic most of the rest are from Pneumonia. My point being that there were lots of deaths not caused by neglect. I read once that the Rebs were housed in "rude cabins". In the last few days I find during a "Google" search that they were housed in standard barracks buildings that were 24 by 90 feet. So I guess if we search we can find out lots of things.
FC