Andersonville National Historic Site

Andersonville National Historic Site is located in Andersonville, Georgia. It includes the site of the Civil War prison, the Andersonville National Cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum. It was the location of Camp Sumter, the largest Confederate military prison during the American Civil War. More than 13,000 Union prisoners died there, mostly of diseases. Captain Henry Wirz, commandant, was the only Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

Related Topics:
Andersonville, Georgia - Confederate - Military prison - American Civil War - Henry Wirz - War crime

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

From November 1863 until the end of the Civil War it was a Confederate military prison. A tract of 16.5 acres (67,000 m²) of land near the village was cleared of trees and enclosed with a stockade. Prisoners began to arrive in February 1864, before the prison was completed and before adequate supplies had been received, and in May their number amounted to about 10,000. In June the stockade was enlarged so as to include 26.5 acres (107,000 m²), but the congestion was only temporarily relieved, and in August the number of prisoners exceeded 33,000. No shelter had been provided for the inmates: the first arrivals made rude sheds from the debris of the stockade; the others made tents of blankets and other available pieces of cloth, or dug pits in the ground.

Related Topics:
1863 - Stockade - 1864

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Owing to the slender resources of the Confederacy, the prison was frequently short of food, and even when this was sufficient in quantity it was of a poor quality and poorly prepared on account of the lack of cooking utensils. The water supply, deemed ample when the prison was planned, became polluted under the congested conditions. During the summer of 1864 the prisoners suffered greatly from hunger, exposure, and disease, and in seven months about a third of them died. In the autumn, after the capture of Atlanta, all the prisoners who could be moved were sent to Millen, Georgia and Florence, South Carolina. At Millen better arrangements prevailed, and when, after General William Tecumseh Sherman began his march to the sea, the prisoners were returned to Andersonville, the conditions there were somewhat improved.

Related Topics:
1864 - Atlanta - Millen, Georgia - Florence, South Carolina - William Tecumseh Sherman

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

During the war 49,485 prisoners were received at the Andersonville prison, and of these about 13,000 died. The terrible conditions obtaining there were mostly due to disease (promoted by severe overcrowding), the shortage of food in the Confederate States, the incompetence of the prison officials, and the refusal of the Federal authorities in 1864 to make exchanges of prisoners, thus filling the stockade with unlooked-for numbers. After the war Henry Wirz, the superintendent, was tried by a court-martial on charges of war crimes and on November 10, 1865, was hanged, and the revelation of the sufferings of the prisoners was one of the factors that shaped public opinion regarding the South in the Northern states, after the close of the Civil War. The prisoners' burial ground at Andersonville has been made a national cemetery, and contains 13,714 graves of which 921 are marked "unknown".

Related Topics:
1864 - Henry Wirz - Court-martial - November 10 - 1865 - Hanged - National cemetery - Unknown

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~