The State of Illinois established Camp Butler in August 1861 after President Abraham Lincoln's second call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. Named for state treasurer William Butler, the camp was first located on Clear Lake, where measles and typhoid swept through by October and men who died were buried near the infantry encampment. In December 1861, the military moved the camp to higher ground six miles southwest of Springfield with reliable road and rail connections, and Union troops departed in early February 1862. Until fall 1863, the facility served as a prison camp for Confederates, then resumed its role as a Union training camp after the last prisoners left. Over the course of the Civil War, more than 200,000 Union soldiers passed through it, and the camp formally closed on June 19, 1866. The original 6.5-acre cemetery was created in 1862, and more than 700 Union soldiers who died in Camp Butler Hospital were buried there along with a similar number of Confederate prisoners. Unlike most national cemeteries established after the Civil War, its first interments were not arranged in regular rows, and for nearly a decade a picket fence separated Union graves in the cemetery proper from Confederate graves. By the 1870s a brick wall enclosed the property, wooden headboards temporarily marked all graves, permanent headstones for Union graves were installed after 1873 and for Confederate graves in 1908, and in 1938 the army replaced small square marble markers on unknown soldiers' graves with upright headstones for a uniform appearance. An 1867 law required each national cemetery to have a superintendent who was at first to be a meritorious and trustworthy army enlisted man disabled in service, though later the law allowed any honorably mustered-out or discharged commissioned officer or enlisted man to serve. James McCaulley, who lost an arm while serving in the 25th Indiana Infantry, was the first superintendent and saw the first permanent lodge constructed and flagstaff installed, with stone gateposts and an iron archway reading National Cemetery at the entrance. From 1906 to 1930, Spanish-American War veteran George W. Ford, an African American, served as superintendent, oversaw construction of the current lodge, and was buried there after his death in 1939 in Section 3, Grave 869.
