Painting of Andersonville (Click to Enlarge)	Bird's Eye View of Andersonville (Click to Enlarge)	Men at Andersonville 1864 (Click to Enlarge)	Graves of the Raiders

Andersonville Prison, military stockade of the Confederate army during the American Civil War, near Andersonville, Georgia, used to confine captured Union army enlisted men. A total of 49,485 prisoners were detained at Andersonville between February 1864 and April 1865. As many as 30,000 men were confined there at one time. More than 13,700 prisoners died in confinement. The prison burial ground is now a national cemetery, and the prison site and surrounding area were designated a national historic site in 1970. The National Prisoner of War Museum, which memorializes the prison experiences of all Americans captured during wartime, is also located at the site.

Constant exposure to the elements, together with inadequate food, impure water, congestion, and filth, led inevitably to epidemics of scurvy and dysentery. As a result, the two Confederate medical officers appointed to investigate the prison in 1864 recommended that the majority of the prisoners be transferred elsewhere, and many prisoners were removed that fall to Millen, Georgia, and to Florence, South Carolina. A year later the superintendent of the prison, Major Henry Wirz, was tried by a U.S. military court, convicted of murder, and hanged.

The pen initially covered about 16 1/2 acres of land enclosed by a 15 foot high stockade of hewn pine logs. It was enlarged to 26 1/2 acres in June of 1864. The stockade was in the shape of a parallelogram 1,620 feet long and 779 feet wide. Sentry boxes, or "pigeon roost" as the prisoners called them, stood at 30 yard intervals along the top of the stockade. Inside, about 19 feet from the wall, was the " DEADLINE ," which the prisoners were forbidden to cross upon threat of death. Flowing through the prison yard was a stream called Stockade Branch, which supplied water to most of the prison. Two entrances, the North Gate and the South Gate, were on the West side of the stockade. Eight small earthen forts located around the exterior of the prison were equipped with artillery to quell disturbances within the compound and to defend against feared Union cavalry attacks. The first prisoners were brought to Andersonville in February, 1864. During the next few months approximately 400 more arrived each day until, by the end of June, some 26,000 men were confined in a prison area originally intended to hold 13,000. The largest number held at any one time was more than 32,000- about the population of present-day Sumter County- in August, 1864. Handicapped by deteriorating economic conditions, an inadequate transportation system, and the need to concentrate all available resources on the army, the Confederate government was unable to provide adequate housing, food, clothing, and medical care to their Federal captives. These conditions, along with a breakdown of the prisoner exchange system, resulted in much suffering and a high mortality rate. On July 9, 1864, Sgt. David Kennedy of the 9th Ohio Cavalry wrote in his diary: ' Wuld that I was an artist & had the material to paint this camp & all its horors or the tounge of some eloquent Statesman and had the privleage of expressing my mind to our hon. rulers in Washington, I should gloery to describe this hell on earth where it takes 7 of its ocupiants to make a shadow.'

Andersonville Prison ceased to exist in May, 1865. Some former prisoners remained in Federal service, but most returned to the civilian occupations they had before the war. During July and August, 1865, Clara Barton, a detachment of laborers and soldiers, and a former prisoner named Dorence Atwater, came to Andersonville cemetery to identify and mark the graves of the Union dead. As a prisoner, Atwater was assigned to record the names of deceased Union soldiers for the Confederates. Fearing loss of of the death record at war's end, Atwater made his own copy in hopes of notifying the relatives of some 12,000 dead interred at Andersonville. Thanks to his list and the Confederate records confiscated at the end of the war, only 460 of the Andersonville graves had to be marked " Unknown U.S. Soldier."

Today the National Park Service oversees this National Historic Site which includes a National Cemetery, the site of the prison camp and the National Prisoner of War Museum. An historic drive which encompasses Andersonville and other local sites is called the Andersonville Trail. Nearby Plains, GA, is the home of President Jimmy Carter and his family.

The National Prisoner of War Museum has many interesting exhibits pertaining to all U.S. Wars since the Civil War. Films and artifacts are on display and there is a gift shop where books, post cards and other items may be purchased. The museum also has two computers which are available for visitors so that they may search the Andersonville POW databases. Ex-POWs volunteer as docents. .