Originally aired on May 10, 1996 - In part 89 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson tells us that the Confederate prison in south central Georgia was officially called Camp Sumter, however it was better known as Andersonville, the name of a nearby town. Dr. Robertson paints a horrific portrait of the compound that held a total of forty-five thousand Union soldiers, twelve thousand nine hundred of whom died there.
#89 – Camp Sumter - Andersonville
The recent and well-publicized television-movie on Andersonville prison sparked a number of requests to sift the substance from the sensationalism. That is difficult to do in the case of the Civil War compounds, for too much of the source material (the same material on which the movie was based) are so-called “memoirs” by veterans who concocted tales of suffering in order to gain postwar pensions. A few facts and a couple of unanswerable questions encircle the tragedy of Andersonville.
By 1864, prison camps for captured Union soldiers at Richmond, Danville, and other points in the upper South were not only filling to capacity but also likely to be targets of the Union armies in the next campaigns. Confederate authorities decided to transfer most of the captured while enlisted men to a compound farther south. There, it was believed, security would be tighter and food supplies more abundant.
The site selected was an open, treeless plain in south central Georgia. Its official name was Camp Sumter, but it was better known for the little nearby community of Andersonville. The 26-acre plot was never sufficient for the number of captives sent there.
In addition, the locale was so isolated that getting materials for buildings was laborious. Soldiers who later died there were buried without coffins because not enough lumber was available to meet the needs of the living. The only structures were a few shanties that served as headquarters, cook house, hospital, and morgue.
Union prisoners began arriving in February, 1864, while the camp was still being laid out. It is important to remember that the overwhelming majority of inmates were not “fresh fish”, as new prisoners were dubbed. Rather, they were men who had endured long incarceration before being sent to Andersonville. How many of those soldiers were seriously ill before they reached the Georgia compound? How many had been captured because they were in fact either sick or wounded? The answers to such questions would go far in filtering the nightmare-picture usually painted of Andersonville.
Federal captives were sent there in such waves as literally to swamp the compound’s primitive facilities. From 7,500 men in March, the prison population jumped to 15,000 in May, 29,000 in July. By August, 33,000 emaciated Federals were jammed into a shelter-less expanse that offered each man roughly the space needed to lie down. Had Andersonville been a city, it would have been the fifth largest community in the Confederacy.
The crowded conditions triggered massive pollution. Latrines were pitifully few. Bisecting the prison was a small stream known as Sweet Water Branch. It was simultaneously a garbage dump for the hospital and cook house, a latrine for thousands of prisoners, and the only source of drinking water for the entire compound. Mosquitoes, fleas, lice, flies, and maggots were everywhere. Rations became so scarce that daily bread existed in name only.
Andersonville had a life-span of little more than a year. A total of 45,000 Billy Yanks were held there; 12,900 of them died there.
Lost in dramatizations of Andersonville is the fact that a full 50% of the prisoners were reported ill in each of the compound’s first six months of existence. Final statistics on the prison leave little doubt that every captive required some kind of medical treatment at some point. Thus, Andersonville was in reality more a badly organized, thoroughly inadequate military hospital than a prison. Medical facilities, physicians, drugs, and proper diet were needed above everything else. That was true for the embattled Southern people as well as for their Union captives. The lack of these essentials explains most of the high mortality rate at Andersonville.
And what of its commandant, the infamous Henry Wirz? That is the story for next time.
