1. Brandon Richards

2.  Beginning in February 1864, a Union POW camp was opened in Madison County, Georgia
 Its main purpose was to relieve other prisons from the large amount of Union prisoners in Richmond,
Virginia
 It was named Andersonville, after railroad station in Sumter County

3.  The area chosen far from Richmond
was to keep the war at a distance; but,
also, this would allow for fewer men to
guard them and insure lesser chance of
uprising, i.e. raids to free prisoners
 The location settled upon was 65 miles
southwest of Macon, Georgia

4.  The construction of Andersonville began in January, 1864
 20 ft. long pine logs were placed at a depth of 5 feet to create a stockade
 By June, the prison had been enlarged to cover 26 ½ acres, with dimensions of 1,620 ft. long and 779 ft. wide
 Sentry boxes were placed 30 yards apart along the perimeter; 19 feet offset from the stockade was a line of wooded posts
with wood rail on top called the “deadline”; any prisoner who crossed it was shot on sight
 The prison was originally designed to hold 10,000 prisoners; by June, it was swelling with 22,000; and by August,
32,000

5.  An incoming Union
soldier wrote of his
introduction to
Andersonville
 He wrote of the horror
that befell him and
made his blood run
cold
 Soldiers who had been
there were but
“walking skeletons,
covered in filth and
vermin.”
 He asked, “Can this be
Hell?”

6.  The location – while ideally suited to keep away
trouble for the guards – brought with it a lack of
ready access to supplies
 As the number of prisoners grew, space became
less and less
 Many of the prisoners were not only naked, but,
covered in insects and filth, and disease; the
cramped conditions made the spread of sickness
that much more prevalent
 A group called the Andersonville Raiders attacked
fellow inmates in order to get food, jewelry,
money, and clothing
 A group called The Regulators formed in
opposition to the Raiders and readily tried them
by a jury of fellow prisoners ; punishments
included running the gauntlet, ball and chain, and
hangings (in 6 cases)
 A petition was constructed by the prisoners
asking for the Union to reinstate prisoner
exchange; the request was denied, on the outset
 In 1864, the Confederacy offered
(unconditionally) to release prisoners if the
Union sent ships to pick them up
 In the autumn of 1864, following the capture of
Atlanta, prisoners well-enough to move were sent
to Millen and Florence; Millen had improved
conditions over Andersonville
 However, when General William Tecumseh
Sherman began the march to the sea, prisoners
were given back to Andersonville, which had,
somewhat, improved itself

7.  Andersonville had the highest mortality rate of any Civil War prison
 With an amount of 45,000 prisoners being sent through Andersonville, 12,912 died from disease,
malnutrition, and other factors, roughly 32% of all prisoners
 During the Civil War, more than 56,000 soldiers, or 9%, died in POW camps

8.  Following the surrender of the Confederates, on May 7th, 1865, Captain Wirz [shown above being read his death
warrant] and Officer James W. Duncan, were arrested and charged with war crimes for their involvement in
Andersonville
 They were tried separately: James Duncan received a 15-year sentence, but, escaped after serving one year
 Wirz, however, was not so lucky. Due to the recent assassination of Lincoln, sympathy for Confederates was low, and he
was sentenced to death

9. Monument to Andersonville prisoners
 A National Prisoners of War Museum was opened in 1998 to serve as memorial to the all American
POWs
 The Andersonville National Cemetery contains 13,714 graves; 921 of which are of “unknown” persons

10.  A Pulitzer-Prize winning novel titled Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, was published in 1955; the
novel covers fictional and real characters and is largely based in prisoner memoirs
 TNT created a series in 1996 documenting Andersonville via drama; aptly titled Andersonville, it was
directed by John Frankenheimer

11.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_National_Historic_Site
 http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/11andersonville/11facts1.htm
 http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-789
 http://www.history.com/topics/andersonville