What Was Andersonville Prison?

What Was Andersonville Prison?

Andersonville Prison was opened near Americus, Georgia on February 24, 1864. It was intended to be a model prison, spacious and with adequate water and abundant timber for firewood. However, the prison was built on the assumption that it would hold no more than 10,000 Union prisoners of war, and then only while they were awaiting exchange. Both of these assumptions provided impossible when the Federal Government ceased the prisoner exchange that had been agreed to by both sides early in the war.

After the U.S. Government ceased the exchange, Andersonville quickly filled with Union POWs. By June of 1864 the prison population had swollen to 20,000 men and by August reached 33,000 prisoners. This was also the summer of Sherman's march to the sea, when Southern farms, barns, and mills were being burned to the ground in the North's scorched-earth policy that was designed to starve the Southern populace into submission. Even medicine was declared contraband, and Union forces destroyed stores of medicines wherever they were found, even those in possession of private physicians. Needless to say, these privations worsened the lot of Union prisoners; the South could not provide the prisoners what it could not provide its own citizens, and because of disease, inadequate diet, and the summer sun, Union deaths at Andersonville began to soar. According to CONFEDERATE VETERAN magazine of Sept-Oct 1991, 12,912 of the 45,613 Union prisoners at Andersonville died during its fourteen months of operation. Most of these deaths occurred during the period of August through December 1864, when prisoners died at a rate of approximately 100 per day.