Andersonville, November 13, 1865

Andersonville, November 13, 1865

A GENTLEMAN who came down from Macon this morning tells me that a private telegram to Major-General Wilson announces the hanging of Wirz on Friday last. The man seems to have no friends even in the little village where he lived so long. In that he has passed beyond the praise and blame of men is new hope for the Republic and new source for confidence in the sovereign people. Let me without harsh words and with plain phrases paint you the Andersonville of to-day, -- draw it for you as it stood on the day when he died who made its name a worldwide synonyme of cruel barbarity.

I sat in the cars talking with an ex-Rebel major, formerly on the staff of Howell Cobb when he had command of the Georgia Reserves. Suddenly he broke into something I was saying with, "There's where Captain Wirz lived," pointing to the right of the track as we came southward. I looked and saw a large unpainted wooden house, two stories high in the ridge, and scarcely one in the eaves, -- a plain Southern dwelling of the average country sort, with negro-quarters in the rear and a turnip-patch on the left. A sallow-faced white woman looked from the window, and a large-eyed negro child stood on the doorsteps.

"We are near Andersonville, then?" said I. "Yes, Anderson is only a mile and a half distant," he responded. I learned afterwards that the place is generally called Anderson hereabouts, the affix ville being of recent origin. Years ago it was simply Station Number Eight, and received its
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present name, I am told, in honor of General Robert Anderson of Sumter fame.

Five minutes more and there flashed upon us through the trees the white line of the cemetery fence, and in another instant we caught a glimpse of the long rows of white headboards standing brightly in the noonday sunshine and within the retired circlet of lofty trees. It was but a glance, and then the high bank of the railroad-cut shut out the view. In a moment more, however, we rolled out to the level, and a score of persons rose to look through the windows and see the famous stockade of dreadful memory.

Before the war Anderson numbered the following houses: first, a small white church without steeple; second, Dyke's house, with its adjoining saw-mill and grist-mill; third, a small white depot building; fourth, a small, square, unpainted building of one room, in which the post-office was kept; and fifth, a two-room log-cabin. This is all there was of the village, though there were half a dozen houses not over a mile away, of which the Widow Turner's was in sight. These six buildings yet remain, but the old post-office and the Turner house are unoccupied.

The village now contains about fifty buildings, great and small; the great ones being two or three houses built for the chief officers of the post and prison, and the buildings put up for the commissary and quartermaster departments, and the small ones being those erected for the soldiers and minor officers of the guard. All were cheaply built, none are painted, and the general appearance of the place is squalid and forbidding. The various buildings are scattered about on a tract of over a hundred acres, which has a general slope from the northwest toward the southeast. The whole village lies west of the railroad.

The great stockade was the central feature of the famous Andersonville prison, technically known to the Rebels as "Camp Sumter." Connected with this were the cook-house,
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the bake-house, the numerous forts, the officers' stockade, the hospital stockade, the dispensary, the vegetable garden, the Confederate hospital, the general cemetery, the pest-house, and the small-pox cemetery. The great cemetery is nearly north of the large stockade; and the hospital stockade, with its accessories of dispensary and vegetable garden, is nearly south thereof. The whole prison lies east of the railroad.

One hundred and twenty rods nearly due east of the little depot building is the southwest corner of the main stockade. It originally contained fifteen acres, about five acres of which were swamp. Eleven acres were afterward added to the northern end, so that it now exists as a parallelogram, rather less than twice as long north and south as it is wide east and west. Some seven or eight acres are south of the little stream which crosses it. The swamp is mostly in that part north of the brook. The extreme southern end is eighteen or twenty feet above the level of the water, and the slope down to it is quite gradual. The bank north of the stream is very steep, and the farther end of the stockade is at least forty-five or fifty feet above the water level.

The stockade has a double wall, the outer one being about one hundred and sixty feet from the inner one, and each being built of logs ten or twelve inches in diameter, set five feet in the earth, and standing twenty feet above the surface. The logs are mostly pine. Those of the outer wall retain the bark. Those of the inner wall are all peeled, and those of the original stockade are also hewn. As if this double wall were not sufficient to guard against escape, a deep ditch was dug along the southern and eastern sides, outside the outer wall of course; and for a part of the distance on the northern and eastern sides there is even a third wall of logs.

The sentry-boxes, built just below the top of the inner wall, are mere frames, covered with a board roof, and reached by rude ladders. The boxes were forty-four in number, -- thirteen on each side, seven on each end, and one at each
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corner. These all remain as though they were but yesterday occupied, except one on the western side near the northern end. Much use has broken some of the ladders, but the greater part still stand beneath the sentry-boxes.