Camp Chase
The West Virginia Origins of a Classic American Fiddle Tune
In 2020 Kentucky fiddler Tyler Childers released his fourth studio album, Long Violent History, a collection of traditional fiddle tunes capped off with a protest song about the state of the contemporary state of the nation. Among the selections on this excellent record is Childers’ interpretation of an old fiddle tune called “Camp Chase.” The tune has no words, but its Civil War origin story makes it a very fitting inclusion on Childers’ Long Violent History. And it is a West Virginia original.
The story of how the fiddle tune “Camp Chase” came to be reveal much about West Virginia’s Civil War which was a war not characterized by large armies facing off in dramatic and decisive battles, but rather a story of divided loyalties, occupying armies, guerrilla insurgencies and localized, tit-for-tat violence. When soldiers from the flatlands of Ohio and Indiana arrived in this mountainous region in late May of 1861 they arrived with the goal of protecting local Unionists and helping to restore the Union. And indeed, many loyal western Virginias, were happy for their arrival. But these green soldiers also soon became the targets of men who sought to do them harm—Confederate allied “bushwhackers” who exploited every opportunity to fire at them from hiding spots in the mountain laurel thickets that lined the region’s roads.
One such bushwhacker was Solomon “Devil Sol” Carpenter, a resident of Clay County, who also happened to be a gifted fiddle player. Confederate Bushwhackers kept Union forces on their heels, undermined their ability to secure the region, and contributed to a growing suspicion by federal soldiers of nearly every local they encountered. Union General George Crook, fresh from the Indian Wars of the West, and by no means a neutral observer, described the situation in western Virginia his memoir:
This country was the home of counterfeiters and cut-throats before the war, and it was the headquarters of the bushwhackers. It was well adapted for their operations, for, with the exception of a small clearing here and there for the cabins of the poor people who inhabited it, it was heavily timbered, with thick underbrush, rocky and broken, with dense laurel thickets here and there. . . . It was here that the cowardly bushwhackers would waylay the unsuspecting traveler, and shoot him down with impunity. Their suppression became a military necessity, as they caused us to detach much of our active force for escorts, and even then no one was safe. It was an impossibility for them to be caught after shooting into a body of men, no difference as to its size. The question was how to get rid of them.
Being fresh from the Indian country where I had more or less experience with that kind of warfare, I set to work organizing for the task. I selected some of the most apt officers, and scattered them through the country to learn it and all the people in it, and particularly the bushwhackers, their haunts, etc.
Very soon they commenced catching them, and bringing them in as prisoners. I would forward them to Camp Chase for confinement, by order of Gen. Rosecrans. It was not long before they commenced coming back, fat, saucy, with good clothes, and returned to their old occupations, with renewed vigor. As a matter of course, we were all disgusted at having our hard work set at naught, and have them come back in a defiant manner, as much as to say “Well, what are you going to do about it?”
In a short time no more of these prisoners were brought in. By this time every bushwhacker in the country was known, and when an officer returned from a scout he would report that they had caught so-and-so, but in bringing him in he slipped off a log while crossing a stream and broke his neck, or that he was killed by an accidental discharge of one of the men’s guns, and many like reports. But they never brought back any more prisoners.
--Martin F. Schmitt, ed., General George Crook: His Autobiography (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). 86-7.
Camp Chase was constructed on the west side of Columbus, Ohio at the beginning of the war as a place for mustering in volunteers and providing initial training. By the summer of 1861, it also became a convenient place for holding western Virginians seized by Union troops, accused of disloyalty, spying, sabotaging or bushwhacking. These early detainees were not regular soldiers in the Confederate army, but civilians resisting Union occupation, some organized into irregular groups of partisans. By the Spring of 1862 it also became a destination for Confederate soldiers captured at the Battle of Shiloh and other major battles. Today all that remains of Camp Chase is a cemetery, where over 2000 Confederate prisoners of war were buried after dying in the prison camp’s increasingly harsh conditions by war’s end. For more stories about the Camp Chase Cemetery and its current condition, see my blog post, The Trees of Camp Chase.
The surviving records of Camp Chase indicate that Devil Sol Carpenter was detained there at least twice, and possibly a third time, during the war years. His first detention was relatively brief. Sent to Camp Chase on March 17th, 1862, he was released less than a month later. A second recorded detention on March 7, 1863 identified him as a “horse thief and bushwhacker.” Devil Sol appeared to be one of those “fat, saucy” insurgents who kept coming back from Camp Chase after brief detentions, frustrating Union soldiers and tempting them to murder, rather than detain, the bushwhackers they captured. Carpenter family tradition explains his quick release from one of these detentions as being the result of his fiddling skills. As Union prison guards came to learn that many of the western Virginians they detained were accomplished fiddlers, they organized a fiddle contest for the prisoners, with the prize being the early release of the winner. All participants in the fiddle contest would play the same song—a traditional fiddle tune called “George Booker.” Devil Sol managed to secure victory by offering up his own version of the tune, adding a few notes that helped it stand out. When he returned to western Virginia just a few short weeks after his departure, he shared the story of his release and named his new tune “Camp Chase.” Was the fiddle contest just a family story, or did it really happen? Given the lax rules at Camp Chase it is a thoroughly plausible story. Also, by Devil Sol’s own account, he was not simply released without condition—he was expected to take a loyalty oath to the Union, which he did, and promptly broke as soon as he got home.
Over the years many fiddlers have recorded versions of “Camp Chase,” including Devil Sol’s grandson French Carpenter. In the years since the Civil War, the Carpenter family has produced a great number of gifted fiddle players, carrying down many of the tunes Devil Sol played during his lifetime.
A version recorded by Devil Sol’s grandson French Carpenter can be heard at this link:
Fiddler Mike Campbell also tells part of the story of the song and provides his own interpretation in the video below:
And here’s a version of George Booker, the song Camp Chase was derived from: