Layout
Andersonville
Hastily constructed using local slave labor in the Georgia woods near the railroad stop of Andersonville, the prison is built on 16.5 acres (it will eventually be expanded to a 26.5 acre camp) enclosed by a 15-foot high wooden stockade in the rough shape of a rectangle ... with two entrances on its western side. Within, 19-feet from the fence, another enclosure is established with a smaller wooden fence ... a deadline for a no-mans land in which any prisoner stepping over or even touching the line is free game to be shot by the guards roaming the prison's perimeter.
Shot
Death Camp
Planned to contain a number of wooden barracks to house the captives, the extremely high cost of lumber south of the Mason-Dixon Line causes the keepers to decide their charges can get by "roughing it" ... Union soldiers live under the open skies, the "lucky" ones partially protected from the elements by makeshift shanties called "shebangs" constructed from wood scraps and blankets covering holes in the ground.
Shebangs
Nightmare
Water is provided by a creek that flows through the camp ... but it isn't long before the wet is totally polluted by the excrement of the thousands of prisoners (part of the creek is also used as a sink, and men use the rancid waters to wash in) ... and when part of the creek's banks collapse, within the camp of huge swamp of awfulness is created (the chief killers become scurvy and dysentery).
Stockade Creek
Rations costly like the lumber, the prisoners and their guards often go with little or no food ... and when there is sustenance, it is of poor quality and then poorly prepared, with the main eats supplied being badly milled corn flour. Slowly but surely, every prisoner in the camp is starving to death.
A Survivor
The Living Dead
No Words Suffice
Added to the killer guards, lack of sanitation, lack of food, and lack of shelter, the prisoners must also contend with a group of human desperadoes, prisoners themselves, that are called The Raiders ... thieves and killers armed with clubs that will do anything to survive, stealing food, jewels, money, and clothing (the group will finally be broken up by another band of prisoners called The Regulators ... and after a trial that includes a prisoner judge and jury, six Raiders will be hung for crimes against their fellow inmates).
The Judge
Built to contain 10,000 to 15,000 prisoners, the prison soon is crammed with four times its capacity to hold, and of the 45,000 Union soldiers that are confined there before the camp's liberation in 1865, nearly 13,000 will perish (for the most part buried on the grounds, the site now includes a National Cemetery ... of the 13,714 headstones there, 921 are marked "unknown").
Andersonville National Cemetery
For his part in letting such abysmal conditions exist, after the war the commandant of the camp, Swiss-born Confederate, 41-year-old Major Henry Wirz (real name Heinrich Hartmann Wirz) is placed on trial by a military tribunal under the direction of Major General Lew Wallace (the future governor of New Mexico and author of a little novel called Ben Hur). Found guilty of murder by shooting, stomping and kicking a victim to death, beating a prisoner with a revolver, confining inmates too long in stocks and chains, and ordering guards to fire on prisoners or have them attacked by dogs, the former doctor from Zurich is found guilty and sentenced to be hung by the neck ... a sentence which is carried out at 10:32 in the morning of November 10, 1865, on the grounds of Washington D.C.'s Old Capitol Prison (now the site of the United States Supreme Court) ... and fittingly for a story as ugly as Andersonville was, Wirz's end is not pretty ... taking the big drop, Wirz's neck does not break, and in front of 250 witnesses, he writhes at the end of his rope and takes minutes to slowly suffocate.
Wirz
Seconds After The Drop
2/27/1864 ... why today mattered ... remembering Andersonville and all its victims.
Depiction Of The Prison By Former Prisoner John L. Ransom
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