Andersonville

I'm home in Monterey now after a couple of cattle car plane flights. But, my last couple days in Georgia I visited some interesting historical sites. This is a panorama of what was the Andersonville prison camp during the Civil War. On this 26 acre site, as many as 32,000 men were imprisoned in the summer of 1864. Early in the war, the Union and Confederacy usually exchanged prisoners of war; the normal deal was that the exchanged prisoners would not take up arms against the enemy again, and in that somewhat chivalrous age, this pledge was usually honored. However, later in the war, when the Union began to win the war of attrition, this system broke down and both sides begain housing POWs in camps, usually hastily constructed and poorly staffed and equipped. In the South, the problem was particularly bad; by 1864 many ordinary citizens were inadequately fed and housed, so you can imagine what happened to the POWs. The Confederacy simply didn't have the resources to support tens of thousands of prisoners. In Andersonville, 29 percent of the Union soldiers who went into the camp didn't come out. This was the worst camp in terms of the death rate, but it wasn't a flagrant outlier; several other camps, both Union and Confederate, had death rates of 15 to 24 percent. This picture is taken from the earthworks of the fort that guarded the stockade. Some of the fort's cannons were trained on the camp to quell any disorders; others were aimed outside, against possible Federal raiding parties that harassed the camp as Sherman drove deep into Georgia in late 1864.

The National Historic Site at Andersonville is quite interesting. In addition to the camp grounds, there is an excellent museum devoted to prisoners of war. Also on the grounds is a national cemetery, where the men who died at Andersonvile are buried, as well as veterans of more recent wars. Do you see something unusual in this picture? Notice how close together the headstones are placed. At the worst time, in the summer of 1864, up to 100 POWs died each day, mostly of disease and malnutrition. All the confederates could do was bury them in trenches, side by side. Records were kept of the dead and about 97 percent of them were identified. The trenches were in areas like this, where the headstones are bumper to bumper.