Andersonville Prison

Officially named Fort Sumter, what we now know as Andersonville Prison took its first Union prisoners on February 27, 1864. The Confederate prison camp in Georgia remained open for the last year of the Civil War. None of the Civil War prisons were good, especially in the South where supplies were so scarce, but Andersonville may have been the worst of the worst.

Andersonville survivor

It bulged with men at more than four times capacity with meager rations the men had to cook for themselves, even though they weren't given cooking utensils or firewood. For example, the cornmeal had shucks ground up in it that caused irritation and didn't digest. The water supply was inadequate and became quickly contaminated. Unsanitary conditions permeated the camp. At times the flies sat so thick they made the area look black. Of the 45,000 Northern prisoners held there, nearly 13,000 died; and the major causes of death were diarrhea, scurvy, and dysentery.

Union soldiers who marched into Andersonville at the end of the war couldn't believe what they found. The descriptions are hard to read and some of the pictures are hard to see. The commander, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried and executed for war crimes after the war. Many of the prisoners who survived Andersonville were never the same.

In Uprooted by War,* the third book in my Appalachian Roots series, the main character from the North Carolina mountains is captured at Gettysburg, sent to Salisbury Prison for a while, and then ends up at Andersonville. I did a lot of research on the prisons and struggled to make the novel realistic without being overly depressing or gloomy and maintaining a strong thread of hope. I think when they see this post, my readers will realize I didn't make it nearly as horrible as I could have, but the things that happen in the book at Andersonville are historically accurate. 

*All my profits go to a scholarship fund for missionary children.

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