Andersonville Prison

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Andersonville Prison
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Background

• Prisoners held near Richmond were too numerous
• Needed another site
• Hastily built stockade in S. GA (Camp Sumter)
• Built to accommodate 10,000 prisoners
• By July, 1864, crammed with 32,000

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Background

• Open air stockade w/20 foot walls, 26 acres
• Conditions grew increasingly intolerable
• Stream ran through camp filthy, stagnant stream
  called Sweet Water Branch
• Used as a sewer as well as drinking and bathing!
• South barely able to feed own soldiers

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Conditions

• Men received starvation rations
• Rancid grain, a few tablespoons of beans or peas
• Poor food, lack of sanitation, shelter, health
  care, crowding, scorching Georgia sun took a toll
• Dysentery, scurvy, malaria, exposure
• In summer, 100 died per day

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Conditions

• Others killed by thieves and marauders
• Andersonville Raiders
• As Sherman advanced, many were sent to other
  camps
• Remained in operation until the end of the war
• Held more than any other camp (45,000)
• 30 died

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Aftermath

• Outraged citizens wanted retribution but North
  had bad prisons too
• Mismanagement and shortages more to blame than
  deliberate mistreatment
• Prison commander, Capt. Henry Wirz was hanged in
  1865 for impairing the health and destroying the
  lives of prisoners.
• Created a national cemetery monument for the
  prisoners still used to bury veterans

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Capt. Henry Wirz
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