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Each page listed below has up to 50 thumbnail photos to click on, so click on a page to discover and relive the event.
Page1 - Saturday Battle
Page2 - Camp Scenes, Night Scenes, Prison
Page3 - Sunday Battle
Panorama's - Andersonville Cemetery
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The railroad terminal at Andersonville, Georgia was the arrival point for 45,000 Federal prisoners destined for incarceration at Camp Sumter also known as the Andersonville Civil War Prison. Prisoners were marched the quarter mile from the depot to the prison. After becoming the supply center for the prison, the small town of Andersonville was also the location for the office of Captain Henry Wirz, keeper of Andersonville Prison. The town of Andersonville holds a fair every October at its Civil War village. There is food, music, gunfights on the street, crafts of every kind, and a Civil War Reenactment.
I attended the reenactment this year in October. I captured photos from
Saturdays battle Page1, evening scenes and night firing Page2, parts of the cemetery Page2 + Panopage, Sundays battle Page3 and scenes around camp and photos of the ground where the infamous prison once stood Page2
Andersonville Georgia website
National Park Service, Andersonville prison website
-adapted from: The Civil War Society's "Encyclopedia of the Civil War."
Officially named Camp Sumter, the most notorious Civil War stockade was hastily constructed in early 1864 near the town of Andersonville in southwest Georgia. The number of Union soldiers held near Richmond had swelled with the breakdown of prisoner exchange agreements, posing a threat to the Confederate capital's security and taxing Virginia's already limited resources.
In late February, Federal prisoners began to be transferred to the still-unfinished Georgia facility. By July, Andersonville, built to accommodate up to 10,000 captured soldiers, was jammed with over 32,000, almost all enlisted men. The open-air stockade, enclosed by 20 foot-high log walls, grew to 26 acres, but remained horribly overcrowded and conditions became more and more intolerable. Running in the middle of the camp was a stagnant, befouled stream, absurdly named Sweet Water Branch, used as a sewer as well as for drinking and bathing. There were no barracks; prisoners were forbidden to construct shelters, and while some did erect tents and flimsy lean-to's, most were left fully exposed to the elements. Medical treatment was virtually nonexistent.
With the South barely able to feed its own men, the prisoners, who were supposed to get the same rations as Confederate soldiers, starved-receiving rancid grain and perhaps a few tablespoons a day of mealy beans or peas. The poor food and sanitation, the lack of shelter and health care, the crowding, and the hot Georgia sun all took their toll in the form of dysentery, scurvy, malaria, and exposure.
During the summer months, more than 100 prisoners died every day. Others fell victim to thieves and marauders among their fellow captives. The desperate situation led a Confederate medical commission to recommend relocating those prisoners who were not too ill to move, and in September 1864, as William T. Sherman's advancing army approached, most of Andersonville's able-bodied inmates were sent to other camps.
Remaining in operation until the end of the war, Andersonville held more captured Union soldiers than any other Confederate camp, a total of more than 45,000, nearly 30 percent of whom died in captivity. The North had learned of the camp's appalling conditions well before the emaciated survivors were released in 1865, and outraged citizens urged retribution on Southern prisoners of war. That was hardly necessary: the Union had its own wretched prison camps, including Elmira, New York, where the death rate approached Andersonville's, even though the North was far better equipped to cope with captured soldiers. Mismanagement and severe shortages were more to blame for the horrors of Andersonville than any deliberate attempt to mistreat prisoners.
Nevertheless, many Northerners insisted that the abuse was deliberate and demanded vengeance. Consequently, after being tried by a U.S. military court and convicted of war crimes, the prison's commander, Captain Henry Wirz, was hanged in November 1865 for "impairing the health and destroying the lives of prisoners." Meanwhile, Clara Barton and other government workers compiled a list of 12,912 prisoners who had died at the camp. Andersonville's mass graves were replaced by a national cemetery, which is today still used as a burial ground for American veterans.
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It is also worthy to note that President Lincoln was informed of the crowded conditions at Andersonville and yet refused to reinstate the prisoner exchanges that had previously been a common practice. This undoubtedly contributed to the overcrowding. He also refused to meet with a delegation of Union prisoners sent from the prison to state as much. At Henry Wirz's trial he was not allowed to present his witnesses and it was determined after his execution that many of the prosecutions witnesses were not interred at his camp as they claimed. Many of them were never interred at all. Henry Wirz was the human sacrifice that appeased the North's anger and no other high ranking members of the Confederacy were hanged.
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