Andersonville: The Worst Place on Earth
Confederate officials searching for a place to hold thousands of Union prisoners as the war intensified in late 1863 found what they thought was a perfect place, on the Georgia Southwestern Railroad track at what they called Station Number 8, and the tiny adjacent village inhabitants called Andersonville. Captain William Sidney Winder, the officer in charge of the search, apparently had no intention of creating a hellhole when he chose this location. On the contrary, in his official report he mentions the “plentiful food” and water available, easily accessible transportation, and location far from the battle lines as the makings for a fine location.
Until well into the second year of the war, the old European tradition of exchanging and “paroling” prisoners prevailed. After a given battle, equal numbers of prisoners from both sides were released, and those left were allowed to sign an oath that they should not take up arms again and were sent home. In theory this system worked rather well for the holding side; by allowing the prisoner to go home, you no longer had to feed, house, or guard him, and by virtue of his oath he had become a noncombatant.
This system required the mutual cooperation and honesty of each side, which did exist in the early part of the war. What makes the study of the Civil War so fascinating to many researchers is this very period, when war was conducted almost on a medieval model. Officers exchanged salutes before battle, quarter was given when requested, and opponents were addressed with the same honor and courtesy as fellow officers and men. General Robert E. Lee took this concept to a high level; throughout the war he was noted for his refusal to refer to the Union Army or any member of it as the “enemy,” preferring the terms “those people over there” or “our friends opposite us.”
Prisoners, and in particular officers, were usually quite well treated during the brief period they spent in captivity. It was routine for relations on opposite sides to “look each other up” if in the same area; tobacco, whiskey, and rations were often exchanged between inmates and guards; and even newspapers, debating societies, dances, and other parties were organized at some prisons. No one expected to have to house and feed prisoners for any serious length of time.
Both sides were so unprepared to deal with any real number of prisoners in the beginning, in fact, that some were held in local jails along with murderers, thieves, and other riffraff. The North began using old coastal fortifications and the South old factory buildings to hold the rapidly increasing numbers. Even with exchanges and paroles, the administrative bottlenecks soon caused overcrowding in each side’s prisons.
The situation finally became critical after July 1863, when the exchange system collapsed because it became increasingly obvious that while Northern POWs honored their parole and went home to stay, the Confederates either went back to their units or joined another one. Numbers of POWs on both sides rapidly climbed, helped in no small part by the increasing number and severity of battles then taking place. The North attempted to control the problem by appointing a central authority over all the prison camps. Colonel William H. Hoffman (who had been a POW himself at the beginning of the war) set up a vast bureaucratic network of regulations, inspections, and standards for his camps. The South followed suit by appointing Brigadier General John H. Winder to a similar position, putting him in charge of all the Richmond POW camps, where nearly all the Union prisoners were being held at first.
Again in theory, the system should have worked to encourage both sides to treat prisoners in a relatively humane manner, but unfortunately neither side lived up to its charge. Both in the North and in the South, camps became crowded very rapidly, and space to house prisoners and build more camps became harder to find. By early 1864 both sides resorted to building simple wooden enclosures with no interior housing to “corral” the prisoners—in short, building nothing more than concentration camps.
Map showing the specifics of the stockade that was known as Andersonville Prison
At that time the South was barely able to feed its own army and citizens, and despite the efforts of camp commandants, most Union prisoners barely subsisted on diets of rough corn bread occasionally supplemented by half-rotted and spoiled meat. This was frequently what the camp guards and staff were eating as well. Rail routes were being decimated by Union attacks, and what little food was being produced often rotted in warehouses for lack of transportation.
News leaking out of the South about these conditions was seized on and amplified by the Northern press. Indignant articles about the Southern “abuses” of POWs enraged the public, which demanded that “justice be done” and that the Confederate prisoners be treated the same. Some Union officers were more than happy to satisfy this misplaced lust for vengeance; at war’s end, Hoffman returned $1.8 million to the federal treasury (roughly equivalent to $38 million in today’s dollars), bragging that this was money he had saved by cutting prisoner rations.
More than 150 prison camps were built on both sides during the war. Almost all were filthy, disease-ridden hellholes fit for no man. Many prisoners vomited uncontrollably on entering the gates of Andersonville or its Northern counterpart, Elmira; the overpowering stench of open sewers, dead bodies, and rotting flesh hung like a cloud over the open field. At most prisons, “fresh fish” (new prisoners) had to be shoved through the doorway, where they would stand for hours at first, trying not to touch or sit on anything. The walls and floors of prison buildings were normally covered with thick layers of greasy slime, dirt, mold, dead lice, and other vermin.
The prisoners themselves were nearly universally filthy, lice- and flea-infested, and covered with open sores and rashes. Many became despondent, not caring what happened to themselves or others, and quit bothering to use the slit latrines to relieve themselves or even to cover up the mess afterwards. Diarrhea, dysentery, and typhoid fever ran rampant, killing many more prisoners than starvation or failed escape attempts.
Boredom was an equally lethal killer; by the height of the war many camps were so crowded that it could take literally hours to walk from one side to another, and most activities were forbidden for security reasons. Sitting in the same spot day after day, too hungry to sleep and too tired to talk, with the noise from dying and delirious fellow prisoners ringing in their ears day and night, wearing encrusted and filthy clothes, and with all hope for release or exchange gone, some prisoners finally chose suicide as a means of escape. Andersonville became notorious during the war for its “deadline,” a small wooden fence 20 feet inside the main stockade wall, where guards could and usually did shoot anyone who ventured inside it (actually, most open prisons on both sides had this feature). Some prisoners “went over” just to end their suffering.
The filth that these prisoners existed in on both sides cannot possibly be overstated. Several prisoners wrote in their journals that their skin actually changed color from the layers of grime; and a Northern surgeon testified that it took months of bathing to completely remove the encrusted dirt. Most prisoners were not allowed to bathe for most or all of their incarceration; many reported that if they were allowed a bath, it would be six months or longer before another.
Andersonville Prison as it was photographed on August 17, 1864
By the third year of the war, vast numbers of prisoners were falling into Southern hands, times were tough for everyone as a result of the Union naval blockade and the cutting of railroads throughout the Confederacy, and few were in the mood to deal kindly with the “Northern invaders.” However, although this chapter deals specifically with the most notorious prison of all, it is important to note that the North did not treat their prisoners much better.
Roughly 29 percent of Andersonville’s 45,000 prisoners died in captivity, where conditions were wretched for all concerned, but 24 percent of the 12,123 Confederates held at Elmira, New York, died in captivity as well. Elmira suffered from many of the same supply and environmental problems Andersonville faced, but there is a great deal of evidence that at least part of their prisoners’ suffering was deliberately induced. The evidence is much stronger for this deliberate retaliation at other notorious Union prisons—Camp Douglas (Chicago) and Rock Island, Illinois; and Camp Morton, Indiana—all of which had relatively high prisoner mortality rates.
Andersonville Prison at Camp Sumter, drawn by Thomas O’Dea from memory, as it appeared on August 1, 1864, when 35,000 prisoners were incarcerated there
Construction of the new camp near Andersonville was delayed for a few months after the initial scouting report, both by local opposition to the project (fear of vindictive escaped prisoners) and a general shortage of labor. By the time work crews started on the new facility, in early January 1864, shortages of money and rapidly increasing numbers of Union prisoners caused the Confederate government to order a strong fence built, without any interior buildings to house the POWs. Under pressure to have the facility ready at the earliest opportunity, the workmen simply stripped the entire area of all but two trees, using the tall pines to build a 15-foot-high double wall of roughly shaved logs butted closely together. Guard towers, known as “pigeon roosts,” were built against the outside of the interior wall and spaced every 30 feet.
A “star fort” (a simple fort built with protruding artillery redoubts, which from above looks like a four-, five-, or six-pointed star) on the southwest corner and six other earthwork emplacements guarded against any Union cavalry attempt to free the prisoners, and inward-facing cannon guarded against prisoner uprisings. A smaller enclosure called Castle Reed located a half-mile west housed the officer prisoners sent to this area until they were transferred to Macon’s Camp Oglethorpe in May 1864. Afterwards, only enlisted prisoners languished in Camp Sumter.
The first prisoners moved in on February 25, 1864, even before the stockade walls were completed. Within a week the first escape attempt was mounted, when prisoners climbed the stockade wall using a rope handmade of torn shirts and blankets. All were caught within a day or two, but their attempt inspired construction of the ill-famed deadline.
Lacking even the crudest sort of structure to protect themselves from the elements, the first arrivals were able to use leftover scraps of wood to build rude huts. Later prisoners built “shebangs” by digging shallow pits in the red clay ground and covering them with some sort of tarp. Others simply sat out in the open—totally exposed to the sun, wind, and rain.
The commandant of the camp in early 1864 and through most of the early buildup was Colonel Alexander W. Persons, replaced by General Winder (Captain Winder’s father) on June 17. By that date the prison already held more than twice the number it was designed for. Many of the arriving prisoners had been held at other Confederate POW camps and arrived already filthy, weak, sick, and diseased. The stage was set for a real disaster to take place, the responsibility for which would be placed on the next arrival, Winder’s subordinate, Captain Henry Wirz.
Wirz was not only not a Southerner—he was not even American. A native of Switzerland, he had immigrated to the United States and was living in Louisiana when the war broke out. Wounded during the Battle of Seven Pines in the spring of 1862, he was promoted and assigned as adjunct general to General Winder in Richmond. Given various tasks after that, including a strange “secret mission” to carry documents to Confederate agents in Europe, he was eventually assigned as keeper of the inner stockade of Camp Sumter in March 1864.
Overcrowding and little if any shelter led to disastrous conditions at Andersonville.
Wirz had a disagreeable personality and no real flair for command. Some of his more outrageous orders and comments were later used as “evidence” against him in his war crimes trial. Many prisoners attempted to escape by tunneling under the walls, digging in the open under the pretense of digging wells for water (there also were some legitimate wells dug by the prisoners). Wirz decided at one point that the Union prisoners were “covering up” this digging with their shebangs, so he ordered that no prisoner build or inhabit any sort of overhead shelter. This insane command was soon overturned.
There were also quite a few reports that Wirz habitually walked around the stockade with pistol in hand and that he personally shot several prisoners (although this last point is the object of heated debate). Camp Sumter’s best-known inmate, Private John Ransom (author of Andersonville Diary), certainly was no great fan of Wirz:
The execution of Captain Wirz for war crimes, November 1865
May 10.—Capt. Wirtz [sic] very domineering and abusive. Is afraid to come into camp anymore. There are a thousand men in here who would willingly die if they could kill him first. Certainly the worst man I ever saw.
By the end of the summer of 1864, Camp Sumter’s population reached 33,000, making it the fifth-largest city in the entire Confederacy. One thousand three hundred prisoners occupied each acre of land within the compound, and things went from bad to worse. Atlanta was under siege, and Sherman’s cavalry was ranging all through the northern half of Georgia and Alabama, laying waste to railroads and warehouses. Rations started to get short and then nearly disappeared. Salt was the first to go, then what few fresh vegetables that had been available, and then meat totally disappeared. Most prisoners started to subsist on rough cornmeal delivered only four days a week and turned to eating rats and even birds that the stronger men were able to catch.
Some of the less-enlightened guards started amusing themselves by dropping bits of food over the wall into the mass of prisoners, just to laugh at the riot that would ensue. A few of the nastier ones would drop food within the deadline, just to get the opportunity to kill a prisoner.
A very small stream runs through the stockade site; when the camp opened, it was the only source of drinking, bathing, and toilet water in the entire facility. Needless to say, it became overwhelmed and contaminated in short order, and no other source of decent water was to be had. When a violent thunderstorm in August 1864 reopened an old spring that had been covered up by construction debris, the prisoners insisted that God himself had opened the spring with a lightning bolt and named the spot Providence Spring.
The number of prisoners dying from diarrhea and dysentery skyrocketed soon after the camp opened, claiming more than 4,500 in just a five-month period. Deaths were so common that some prisoners managed to escape by pretending they were dead, waiting until after they were carried outside the walls to the rude “death house” to make their escape. By the end of the war, exactly 12,914 had died and another 329 had escaped. Largely through the work of a single prisoner, Private Dorence Atwater of the 2nd New York Cavalry, only 460 of the graves are marked as “unknown.” Atwater was assigned the responsibility of recording the names of all those who died at the camp, and fearing the loss of this record in the Confederate archives, he painstakingly handwrote another, which he kept in hopes of notifying the families of the deceased.
Prisoners were also stalked by some of their own number. A group of thugs known as the “Mosby Raiders” beat, robbed, terrorized, and even murdered their fellow prisoners quite openly for many months. Led by a particularly unpleasant character, Private William “Mosby” Collins of Company D, 88th Pennsylvania Infantry, they were finally brought down by another group of prisoners. With Wirz’s cooperation, the Raiders were subjected to a trial by the prisoners themselves, and six were hanged. Three others were later beaten to death by their former victims. The six hung are buried in a special part of the cemetery, away from any other prisoner by the prisoners’ request.
After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, many prisoners were quickly relocated to other camps, farther away from the action. Only the sickest 8,000 remained by the end of September; all but about 1,300 of that number died by the end of November. The camp stayed open with a much-reduced number of prisoners, operating mainly for the sick and dying until war’s end.
Andersonville National Historic Site
496 Cemetery Rd.
Andersonville, GA
(229) 924-0343
Camp Sumter today would be unrecognizable to the more than 45,000 Union prisoners who passed through its gates. The original burial site of prisoners who died in camp was established as Andersonville National Cemetery on July 26, 1865, just after the end of the war, primarily to preserve and honor the graves of 12,914 who died in the adjacent POW camp over a 14-month span. Initially there was no attempt to preserve or mark the site of the notorious camp and stockade site, but the land was finally purchased in December 1890 by the Georgia Department of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union Army veterans group. This group was unable to properly care for or maintain the property and shortly after sold it for $1 to the Women’s Relief Corp (WRC), the national ladies’ auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).
The WRC proved good caretakers, making many improvements and keeping the grounds in good shape until donating the entire site to the U.S. government in 1910. The War Department and subsequent Department of the Army took care of the site until 1970, when the National Park Service was given the responsibility. Both the GAR and the army were primarily concerned with the national cemetery, and it wasn’t until the Park Service took over that real efforts were made to preserve the stockade site and initiate education programs about it.
Today the site has a triple charge; in addition to protecting the National Cemetery and stockade site of Camp Sumter, construction began in 1996 on a new National Prisoner of War Museum, which is charged with preserving the memory and telling the story of all American prisoners of war throughout our many conflicts. This museum, opened in an emotional ceremony on April 9, 1998, is designed from the ground up as a powerful reminder to each visitor of the intensity of the stories it holds.
Walking toward the building from the parking lot, you are forced to walk in single file through a narrow passage between two brick buildings reminiscent of guardrooms. This, plus the black entry gates, gives the proper sense of foreboding and tension that a real prisoner would have faced. Once inside, the atmosphere is lightened by the high ceiling and skylights (make sure to notice the painted murals above), but the stark hallways of the exhibit corridors seem far too peaceful to hold the pictures and stories that seem almost to explode off the wall. A quiet place for reflection is provided under two small sunlit towers.
In back of the museum, on the side facing the stockade site, is the Commemorative Courtyard with a small brick-lined stream flowing past brick and bronze statuary. A short pathway takes you from the courtyard to the partially reconstructed northeast corner stockade wall of Camp Sumter.
The entire site is haunting and disturbing, as it should be. On entering the grounds you drive through a quiet woods and then turn right into the National Cemetery. The closely packed, militarily straight, and in proper file and rank tombstones seem almost like formations of ghostly infantry drawn up in some vast line of battle. It seems impossible to comprehend that so many thousands of dead actually lie in such a small space; men were buried shoulder to shoulder without a coffin in long trench-like graves and covered with about 3 feet of earth. These are not true mass graves, as each man was buried more or less independently and properly interred by the Confederate work details, not just hastily dumped in a hole.
Driving the short distance over to the stockade site, we were struck by how peaceful and quiet the vast open space is; similar to the site of many violent battlefields, it is as if all the energy was sapped from the very ground by the overwhelming suffering and carnage that took place here. A few state memorials dot the northwest corner, and white stakes placed every 50 feet or so show where the stockade wall and deadline were. Except for these and two short sections of reconstructed walls, the place is utterly empty.
A narrow paved road allows one to do a driving tour of the 26-acre site. A small memorial building built after the war by grateful ex-POWs houses Providence Spring, and the star fort and most of the earthworks are still intact. Several markers on the roadway contain photos of what the scene looked like during the war, and in most places the contrast between that period and the modern one is startling.
The National Cemetery is still active, with veterans of all the American wars (including the American Revolution) interred here, and about 150 burials take place each year. Please be respectful if you visit during a ceremony.
The visitor center and museum has a 20-minute orientation film, narrated by Colin Powell, introducing both Andersonville and the general topic of POWs. It also contains an excellent small bookstore and research library as well as the before-mentioned exhibits. Admission is by donation, and the grounds are open year-round. Water and restrooms are available, and picnicking is permitted in a designated area, but no food is sold on the grounds.
There is a single small bed-and-breakfast in the Civil War village of Andersonville, A Place Away Cottage (109 Oglethorpe St.; 229-924-1044; $). Peggy Sheppard is the innkeeper. The village also features one restaurant, Andersonville Restaurant, with an adjacent RV park; call the visitor center to check on hours and availability at the park (229-924-2558). The nearest hotels and motels are in Americus, 10 miles to the southwest on GA 49, such as the Windsor Hotel (125 West Lamar St., Americus, GA; 229-924-1555; www.windsor-americus.com; $$$–$$$$). Several chain motels and the usual fast-food restaurants are on GA 49 as you enter town and US 19 as you leave to the west. Going back to I-75, you have a wide range of chain hotel, motel, and restaurant choices clustered around Cordele (exits 101/102), Vienna (exit 109), Perry (exits 135/136), Fort Valley (exit 142), and Byron (exit 149).
Andersonville village is worth visiting after leaving the historic site. The hamlet contains a seven-acre pioneer farm, several antiques and craft shops, and the Drummer Boy Civil War Museum (109 Church St.), which has garnered praise for its high-quality private collection. Right smack in the middle of town is a 45-foot-tall obelisk memorial to Captain Henry R. Wirz, the last commandant of Camp Sumter. This may be the only monument to a convicted war criminal in this country and has inscribed upon it the “unreconstructed” view of Wirz and the POW situation. After the war there were quite a number of people who refused to accept that the Confederacy had been finally and decisively defeated. There are still folks around who believe that the Lost Cause was a spiritual one as well as a political and military one, and that at some point in the future, “The South will rise again,” to quote frequently seen bumper stickers. For more information on Andersonville village, see www.andersonvillegeorgia.com.
We highly recommend a trip to Columbus, about 60 miles west of Andersonville, while you are in this part of the state. Take GA 49 through Americus and turn right on US 280. This will take you straight into Columbus, with the side benefit of going through Plains, the birthplace, residence, and historic site of President Jimmy Carter. Just before you enter Columbus you will drive through Fort Benning Military Reservation, which contains an exquisite collection of Civil War artifacts in its excellent National Infantry Museum (1775 Legacy Way, Fort Benning, Columbus, GA; 706-685-5800; www.nationalinfantrymuseum.com). Admission is free, but there is small charge for the theater and other attractions.
US 280 is called Victory Drive within Columbus, and 2 miles before it goes over the Chattahoochee River into Alabama is the National Civil War Naval Museum, which houses the remains of the never-finished 224-foot ironclad ram CSS Jackson and the 130-foot wooden gunboat CSS Chattahoochee, as well as a nice collection of models, weapons, and artifacts of the Confederate Navy. A warning: Although there are a few signs pointing the way, it is easy to get confused about where to enter the parking lot for this museum due to the very heavy traffic and urban blight of Victory Drive. Turn left off Victory Drive at the large sign marking south commons, the Columbus Civic Center, and then go through the large parking lot to the right until you see the museum building. The museum is located at 1002 Victory Dr., Columbus (706-327-9798; www.portcolumbus.org).
Another interesting day trip is to Jefferson Davis Memorial Historical Site near Irwinville, the site of the Confederate president’s capture by Union troops at the end of the war. Take I-75 south to GA 32 (exit 78), and travel east approximately 15 miles into town. Turn left onto Jeff Davis Park Road; the site is about 1 mile on the left. Run by the state of Georgia, the 13-acre park contains a small museum and a few markers commemorating the event. The major attraction here is an impressive 12-foot-tall granite monument with a bronze bust of Davis on top, depicting his capture.
Unfortunately, the carved scene hints at one of the sillier myths of the war—that Davis was captured wearing women’s clothing. Davis had been traveling west through southern Georgia to Texas or possibly Mexico, to try to continue the war from the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A unit of Union cavalry was in hot pursuit, and just before dawn on May 10, 1865, they suddenly raided his camp. In the confused skirmish, two columns of Union cavalry started firing on each other, killing two troopers before realizing their mistake.
Hearing the gunfire, Davis jumped up and threw on his wife’s cloak by mistake in the darkened tent, ran outside, and tried to mount his horse to escape. A Union officer drew down on him, as his wife, Varina, ran up and threw her arms around him to shield him from being shot. Union soldiers in a very high spirit after his capture exaggerated the event, claiming that Davis had on bloomers and even a hoopskirt!
You can find the site and the museum at 338 Jeff Davis Park Rd., Fitzgerald, GA (229-831-2335; www.gastateparks.org/jeffd). Admission to the park is free.