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AND_030828_018.JPG: From a sign:
In 1865, as Clara Barton raised the United States Flag over the cemetery, the site was dedicated to recognize this somber place as a National Cemetery. The headstones which are placed close together are those of Union prisoners. The remaining headstones, placed farther apart, represent more recent wars. The cemetery, along with the prison site, was transferred from the US War Department to the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service in 1970.
Prison Burials:
The prisoners' headstones are only inches apart. As the death rate at Andersonville escalated to 100 per day, officials abandoned the use of pine-box coffins and had the bodies buried shoulder to shoulder in trenches.
At first, only numbered stakes marked the prisoners' graves. The dead might have remain unidentified except for the efforts of Dorence Atwater, a former prisoner.
Prison officials assigned Dorence Atwater to keep records of the dead. Hoping to notify bereaved relatives after the war, Atwater made a second copy of the death list, which he smuggled out in the lining of his jacket. When he accompanied Clara Barton to Andersonville in July 1865, they were able to match his list with the numbered stakes. Each prisoner could then be honored by name.
AND_030828_019.JPG: The Illinois state memorial
AND_030828_064.JPG: From the sign:
The Raiders' Graves
These six graves were deliberately set apart; these six prisoners were buried with dishonor.
Only enlisted soldiers were imprisoned at Andersonville. With no Union officers to maintain order, life in the pen became anarchy. A gang known as the Raiders roamed the prison yard, bullying, robbing, and even murdering other prisoners. Eventually, with the blessing of Commandant Wirz, the prisoners formed a police squad called the Regulators, arrested the Raiders, and tried and hanged the six ringleaders. ...
Before their execution, the six Raider leaders were court-martialed by their peers. Confederates provided lumber for the gallows, which was erected near the prison's South Gate. The remaining Raiders were forced to run a gauntlet formed by their fellow prisoners. ...
The names on these headstones may not be accurate. Several of the Raiders were deserters who re-enlisted under aliases.
AND_030828_071.JPG: The New York state memorial. From the sign:
Massive Monuments
In 1911, the state of New York erected this granite monument to honor its troops who died in Andersonville prison. Large monuments were a fashion of the time, built on a scale that would symbolize enormous sacrifice.
There are twelve monuments in this cemetery and eleven at the nearby prison site. Each has a unique design. Because so little remains of the historic prison, the monuments form a permanent part of the Andersonville landscape.
AND_030828_079.JPG: This is the back of the New York memorial, which I imagine most people never see.
AND_030828_098.JPG: The Connecticut state memorial. Its inscription is: "In memory of the men of Connecticut who suffered in southern military prisons 1861-1865." A statue identical to this is on the grounds of the Connecticut state capital.
AND_030828_107.JPG: Pennsylvania's state memorial
AND_030828_117.JPG: An unusual memorial. The text says: American former prisoners of war, Stalag XVII-B: Erected by an in honor of all Americans held prisoners of war in a German prison camp known as Stalag XVII-B in Krems, Austria 1943-1945. And in memory of all Americans held as POWs in European Theatre in WWII.
AND_030828_134.JPG: The Minnesota state memorial
AND_030828_155.JPG: The Iowa state memorial
AND_030828_169.JPG: We're in the prison now. Note the indicators for "Stockade" (the wall) and "Deadline". If you crossed the deadline, you would be shot without warning.
AND_030828_174.JPG: From the sign:
Providence Spring.
During a heavy rainstorm on August 14, 1864, a spring suddenly gushed from this hillside. The prisoners were desperate for fresh water, and over time the event became legendary. Several men claimed to have seen lightning strike this spot just before the spring burst forth.
This damp slope, with its many natural seeps, would appear to be a likely site for a spring. Workmen may have inadvertently buried the spring's outlet while digging the stockade trench. Whether an act of nature or divine providence, the effect of the stream was an answer to thousands of prayers. ...
Providence Spring was not exactly at the Pavilion site but on this slope within the deadline. At first, prisoners reached the spring by tying cups to tent poles, but guards later allowed them to trough the water into camp.
AND_030828_184.JPG: The tablets on either side say the following:
This pavilion was erected by the Woman's Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, in grateful memory of the men who suffered and died in the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia from February 1864 to April 1865.
The prisoner's cry of thirst rang up to heaven. God heard, and with his thunder cleft the earth and poured his sweetest waters gushing here.
Erected 1901.
This fountain erected by the National Association of Union Ex-Prisoners of War. In memory of the 52,345 comrades who were confined here as prisoners of war and of the 13,900 comrades buried in the adjoining national cemetery. Dedicated Memorial Day, May thirtieth nineteen hundred and one.
James Atwell, National Commander
SM Long, Adj't Gen'l
JD Walker, Ch'n Ex Committee
AND_030828_190.JPG: The sign says:
The North Gate
The trail follows in the footsteps of newly arrived prisoners. Captured Union soldiers marched from the village railroad station [in Andersonville], past this spot, and uphill to the North Gate, the main prison entrance.
After prisoners passed through the outer door, it was barred behind them. Then the inner gate swung open on the prison yard. New arrivals, or "fresh fish" as they were often called, had no idea what awaited them there.
"Five hundred weary men moved along slowly through the double lines of guards. Two massive wooden gates, with heavy iron hinges and bolts, swung open as we stood there, and we passed through into the space beyond. We were in Andersonville." -- Pvt John McElroy, 16th Illinois Cavalry ...
The stockade had only two entrances in its 3/4-mile perimeter. ...
AND_030828_214.JPG: From the signs:
The "Sinks"
This downstream end of Stockade Branch was the site of the camp "sinks" or latrines. According to the Confederates' original plan, prisoners would get drinking water upstream and use latrines downstream, where the current would flush sewage out of the camp.
Inadvertently, the prison was designed for death. Stockade posts slowed the drainage, and during dry spells the creek became more swamp than flowing stream. Dysentery swept the camp.
Stockade Branch
This stream, a branch of Sweetwater Creek, was the prison's water supply. Today's neatly dredged channel is misleading. When the prison was built, the stockade posts slowed the current, turning the stream banks into acres of stagnant swamp.
The prisoners' latrines stood downstream. Overcrowding soon fouled the water, and the sluggish current failed to wash sewage out of the prison. The stream's bacteria quickly became lethal. ...
To Confederate officials, this source of fresh water made Andersonville an ideal site for a prison. Just upstream, however, the bakehouse and guards' camp polluted the creek before it even entered the stockade.
AND_030828_232.JPG: Michigan's state memorial
AND_030828_239.JPG: From the sign:
Shebangs (Prisoner Shelters)
Prisoners at Andersonville had to provide their own shelters. With sticks and pieces of clothing, the prisoners improvised leaky tents and lean-tos. Many prisoners had no shelter at all.
Protection from rain, dew, and broiling sun became a matter of life or death. Exposure aggravated many illnesses and infections and contributed to the soaring mortality rate.
AND_030828_252.JPG: The structures above are called pigeon-roosts. From the sign:
Pigeon-Roosts
Sentry boxes or "pigeon-roosts" were mounted every 100 feet along the top of the stockade. The guards there had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed the deadline. Otherwise, they had little control over conditions inside.
Perched above the camp, the guards themselves became prisoners of tedium and anxiety -- always fearful of prisoner uprising or Union cavalry attack. After a while, the noise, the stench, and the view across acres of ragged men and shelters must have numbed the senses.
The guards also suffered from many of the same health problems as the prisoners, resulting in a high death rate in that group as well.
The guards -- mostly old men and young boys from the Georgia Reserve Corps -- were reluctant witnesses to the misery of Andersonville. More seasoned troops were sent to stop Sherman's drive toward Atlanta.
Wikipedia Description: Andersonville National Historic Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Andersonville prison, officially known as Camp Sumter, served as a Confederate Prisoner-of-war camp during the American Civil War. The site of the prison is now Andersonville National Historic Site in Andersonville, Georgia. Most of the site actually lies in extreme southwestern Macon County, adjacent to the east side of Andersonville. It includes the site of the Civil War prison, the Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum. In all, 12,913 of the approximately 45,000 Union prisoners died there because of starvation, malnutrition, diarrhea, and disease.
Conditions:
The prison, which opened in February 1864, originally covered about 16.5 acres (67,000 m2) of land enclosed by a 15-foot (4.6 m) high stockade. In June 1864 it was enlarged to 26.5 acres (107,000 m2). The stockade was in the shape of a parallelogram 1,620 feet (490 m) by 779 feet (237 m). There were two entrances on the west side of the stockade, known as "north entrance" and "south entrance".
A Union soldier described his entry into the prison camp:
"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then."
At Andersonville, a light fence known as "the dead line" was erected approximately 3 feet (0.9 m) inside the stockade wall. It demarcated a no-man's land that kept prisoners away from the stockade wall, which was made of rough-hewn logs about 16 feet (4.9 m) long. Anyone crossing this line was shot by sentries located in the pigeon roosts.
Andersonville Prison was frequently undersupplied with food. Even when sufficient quantities were available, the supplies were of poor quality and poorly prepared. During the summer of 1864 Union prisoners suffered greatly from hunger, exposure and disease. Within seven months, about a third of them died from dysentery and scurvy and were buried in mass graves, the standard practice by Confederate prison authorities at Andersonville. Dorence Atwater, a soldier in the 2nd New York Cavalry, kept a record of deaths at the camp.
The water supply from Stockade Creek became polluted when too many Union prisoners were housed by the Confederate authorities within the prison walls. Part of the creek was used as a sink and the men were forced to wash themselves in the creek.
The guards, disease, starvation and exposure were not all that prisoners had to deal with. A group of prisoners, calling themselves the Andersonville Raiders, attacked their fellow inmates to steal food, jewelry, money and clothing. They were armed mostly with clubs and killed to get what they wanted. Another group rose up to stop the larceny, calling themselves "Regulators". They caught nearly all of the Raiders, who were then tried by a judge (Peter "Big Pete" McCullough) and jury selected from a group of new prisoners. This jury, upon finding the Raiders guilty, set punishment that included running the gauntlet, being sent to the stocks, ball and chain and, in six cases, hanging.
In the autumn of 1864, after the capture of Atlanta, all the prisoners who were well enough to be moved were sent to Millen, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina. At Millen, better arrangements prevailed, and after General William Tecumseh Sherman began his march to the sea, the prisoners were returned to Andersonville, where conditions were somewhat improved.
During the war, 45,000 prisoners were received at Andersonville prison, and of these 12,913 died. A continuing controversy among historians is the nature of the deaths and the reasons for them. Some contend that it was deliberate Confederate war crimes toward Union prisoners and others that it was merely the result of disease promoted by severe overcrowding, the shortage of food in the Confederate States, the incompetence of the prison officials and the refusal of the Confederate authorities to parole black soldiers, which resulted in the imprisonment of soldiers from both sides, thus overfilling the stockade.
A young Union prisoner, Dorence Atwater, had been chosen to record the names and numbers of the dead at Andersonville for the use of the Confederacy and the federal government after the war ended. He believed the federal government would never see the list, and was right in this assumption, as it turned out. He sat next to Henry Wirz, who was in charge of the prison pen, and secretly kept his own list among other papers. When Atwater was released, he put the list in his bag and took it through the lines without being caught. It was published by the New York Times when Horace Greeley, the owner, learned that the federal government had refused and given Atwater much grief. It was Atwater's opinion that Andersonville was indeed trying to make soldiers unfit to fight.
Aftermath:
After the war Henry Wirz, commandant at Camp Sumter, was court-martialed on charges of conspiracy and murder. The trial was presided over by Union General Lew Wallace and featured chief JAG (Judge Advocate General)'s prosecutor Norton Parker Chipman.
A number of former prisoners testified on conditions at Andersonville, many accusing Wirz of specific acts of cruelty. Some of these accounts have subsequently been determined by historians to have been exaggerated or false. The court also considered official correspondence from captured Confederate records. Perhaps the most damaging was a letter to the Confederate surgeon general by Dr. James Jones, who in 1864 was sent by Richmond to investigate conditions at Camp Sumter. Wirz presented evidence that he pleaded to Confederate authorities to try to get more food and tried to improve the conditions for the prisoners inside.
Some of the monuments at Andersonville
Unfortunately for Wirz, President Abraham Lincoln had recently been assassinated, so the political environment was not sympathetic. Wirz was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. On November 10, 1865, he was hanged. Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the Civil War. The revelation of the sufferings of the prisoners was one of the factors that shaped public opinion in the North regarding the South after the close of the Civil War.
In 1891 the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Georgia bought the site of Andersonville Prison from membership and subscriptions. The site was purchased by the federal government in 1910.
National Prisoner of War Museum:
The National Prisoner of War Museum opened in 1998 as a memorial to all American prisoners of war. Exhibits use art, photographs, displays and video presentations to focus on the capture, living conditions, hardships and experiences of American prisoners of war in all periods. The museum also serves as the park's visitor center.
Andersonville National Cemetery:
The cemetery is the final resting place for the Union prisoners who perished while being held at Camp Sumter as POW. The prisoners' burial ground at Camp Sumter has been made a national cemetery. It contains 13,714 graves, of which 921 are marked "unknown".
The cemetery is currently active as an honored burial place for present-day veterans and their dependents.
Historic Prison Site:
Visitors can walk the 26.5 acres (10.7 ha) site of Camp Sumter, which has been outlined with double rows of white posts. Two sections of the stockade wall have been reconstructed, the north gate and the northeast corner.
References in Popular Culture:
* Andersonville is a novel by MacKinlay Kantor concerning the Andersonville prison. It was originally published in 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.
* Doonesbury cartoon by G.B. Trudeau, May 5th, 2010.
* The Highlander episode "The Messenger" featured a backstory about the main character, Duncan Macleod, being held in Andersonville. In the series, the camp was commanded by Immortal William Culbraith, and Duncan faced him again and took his head.
* In the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sentenza aka "Angel Eyes" (Lee Van Cleef) while masquerading as a Sergeant in a Union Prison Camp makes reference to the treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville.
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