Andersonville prison

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Andersonville National Historic Site

Location:	Georgia, United States
Nearest city:	Americus, Georgia
Coordinates:	32°12′00″N, 84°07′46″W
Area:	495 acres (2 km²)
Established:	October 16, 1970
Visitation:	132,466 (in 2005)
Governing body:	National Park Service

The Andersonville prison, located at Camp Sumter, was the largest Confederate military prison during the American Civil War. The site of the prison is now Andersonville National Historic Site in Andersonville, Georgia. It includes the site of the Civil War prison, the Andersonville National Cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum. 12,913 Union prisoners died there, mostly of diseases. Captain Henry Wirz, commandant, was the only Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

1 History
2 See also
3 External links
4 Notes

[edit] History

Early in the Civil War, prisoners of war were commonly paroled and sent home to await a formal exchange before they could return to active service. As the war progressed, Federal authorities began to hold captives in formal prison camps rather than paroling them. Confederate military and political leaders began to likewise construct prison camps to hold Union prisoners. Maj. Gen. Howell Cobb, a former Governor of Georgia, suggested the interior of that state as a possible location for one of these new camps, as it was thought to be quite far from the front lines, and would be relatively immune to Federal cavalry raids. A site was selected in Sumter County and the new prison opened in February 1864.

Image:Andersonville pow tents photo.jpg

Because of the scarce resources of the Confederacy, Andersonville 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 due to dysentery. 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.

Image:Andersonville birdseye ransom.jpg

The execution of Henry Wirz before the US Capitol as the trap door is sprung

During the war almost 45,000 prisoners were received at the Andersonville prison, and of these 12,913 died (40% of all the Union prisoners that died throughout the South).<ref>National Park Service</ref> A continual controversy among historians is the nature of the deaths and the reasons for it, with many contending that it was deliberate Confederate war crimes toward Union POW's and others contending 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 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. Wirz was the only prominent Confederate to have his trial heard and concluded (even the prosecution for Jefferson Davis dropped their case). 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".

Many guards of Andersonville also died for the same reasons as the prisoners.