Back to Southern Comfort Andersonville prison
Aerial View of Andersonville	30,000 where 10,000 should be.	Tent City
Click on thumbnail for larger view

Andersonville National Historic Site is the only park in the National Park System to serve as a memorial to all American prisoners of war throughout the nation's history.   The 495-acre park consists of the historic prison site and the national cemetery.   Congress stated in the authorizing legislation that this park's purpose is "to provide an understanding of the overall prisoner of war story of the Civil War, to interpret the role of prisoner of war camps in history, to commemorate the sacrifice of Americans who lost their lives in such camps, and to preserve the monuments located within the site".   In 1998 the National Prisoner of War Museum opened at Andersonville, dedicated to the men and women of this country who suffered captivity.   Their story is one of sacrifice and courage.

In November 1863, Confederate Captain W. Sidney Winder was sent to the village of Andersonville in Sumter County, in south-central Georgia, near the present-day towns of Americus and Plains, to assess the potential of building a prison for captured Union soldiers. The Deep South location, the availability of fresh water, and its proximity to the Southwestern Railroad, made Andersonville a favorable prison location. The settlement of Andersonville, with an 1863 population of less than 20 persons, could not politically resist the building of such an unpopular facility. Andersonville thus became the site for a prison that was soon to become infamous in the North for prison conditions and the thousands of prisoners that would die there before war's end.

After the prison site was selected, Captain Richard B. Winder was sent to Andersonville to construct a prison. Arriving in late December of 1863, Captain Winder adopted a prison design that encompassed roughly 16.5 acres which he felt was large enough to hold 10,000 prisoners. The prison was to be rectangular in shape with a small creek flowing roughly through the center of the compound. The prison was given the name Camp Sumter.

In January of 1864, slaves from local farms were impressed to fell trees and dig ditches for construction of the prison stockade. The stockade enclosure was approximately 1010 feet long and 780 feet wide. The walls of the stockade were constructed of pine logs cut on site, hewn square, and set vertically in a wall trench dug roughly five feet deep. According to historical accounts, the poles were hewn to a thickness of eight to 12 inches and "matched so well on the inner line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world" (Hamlin 1866:48-49). A light fence known as the deadline was erected approximately 19-25 feet inside the stockade wall to demarkate a no-man's land keeping the prisoners away from the stockade wall. Anyone crossing this line was immediately shot by sentries posted at intervals around the stockade wall.

A prison for enlisted soldiers, it was designed to hold 10,000, but by August 1864, due to deteriorating resources and the breakdown of the prisoner exchage system, the prison population had swelled to over 32,000. This atrocious overcrowding quickly led to health and nutritional conditions that resulted in 12, 912 deaths by war's end in May 1865. The prison guards, composed mostly of older men and boys, watched from sentry boxes (called "pigeon roosts" by the prisoners) perched atop the stockade and shot any prisoner who crossed a wooden railing, called the "deadline." The prison pen initially covered 16 1/2 acres, but was enlarged in June 1864 to 26 1/2 acres. A small, slow moving stream running through the middle of the stockade enclosure supplied water to most of the prison. Eight small earthen forts located around the exterior of the prison were equipped with artillery to put down disturbances and to defend against union cavalry attacks.

Handicapped by deteriorating economic conditions, the Confederates lacked the necessary materials and amounts of food for 10,000 prisoners, not to mention the 26,000 that were confined there by June 1864. Available shelter was deduced to crude shelters huts of made scrap wood, tent fragments, or simple holes dug in the ground. Many had no shelter of any kind against the elements of rain, heat, and cold. No clothing was provided, and many prisoners were left with rags or nothing at all. The daily ration for the prisoners was the same as for the guards: one and one-fourth pound of corn meal and either one pound of beef or 1/3 pound of bacon. This sparse diet was only occasionally supplemented with beans, peas, rice, or molasses.

With these unspeakably miserable conditons, almost 30 percent of the prisoners confined to Andersonville died at the camp during its 14-month existence. Diseases such as dysentery, gangrene, diarrhea, and scurvy took many. The Confederates lacked adequate facilities, personnel, and medical supplies to combat the diseases.