Ah Southern Georgia - where the 30 foot tall billboards proclaim that only Jesus can save you. Interestingly these are interspersed with billboards advertising Stippers, Fireworks (the Bang Band Lady) and the World's Largest liquor store.
Today we visited the Andersonville National Historical Park. The Andersonville National Historic Site comprises three distinct components: the site of Camp Sumter military prison, the Andersonville National Cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum, which opened in 1998 to honor all U.S. prisoners of war in all wars. A local resident, Kevin Frye has collected a lot of information about Andersonville if you want to explore further.
Today we visited the Andersonville National Historical Park. The Andersonville National Historic Site comprises three distinct components: the site of Camp Sumter military prison, the Andersonville National Cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum, which opened in 1998 to honor all U.S. prisoners of war in all wars. A local resident, Kevin Frye has collected a lot of information about Andersonville if you want to explore further.
Andersonville Prison Museum: National Prisoner of War Museum
The National Park visitor's center at Andersonville is the home to the National POW Museum.
This difficult subject is handled with great insight and care. The Civil War prison camps are, of course, one subject but the Museum also includes other conflicts and wars up to the present day. There were also two films one about Prisoners of War and another about Andersonville itself.
This difficult subject is handled with great insight and care. The Civil War prison camps are, of course, one subject but the Museum also includes other conflicts and wars up to the present day. There were also two films one about Prisoners of War and another about Andersonville itself.
Andersonville Prison Site
The Park Service provides CD's for visitors to do driving tours of the prison site and the National Cemetery. On the prison site there are two places where they have reconstructed portions of the stockade fence and its gates and towers. The earthwork forts and defenses around the prison have eroded with time but you can still see their outlines. We also got out and walked a bit to see the meager stream that served as the camps water supply and view the stockade up close.
Andersonville National Cemetery
In the Andersonville National Cemetery the dead were buried shoulder to shoulder so the gravestones at very close together. At the time there were only wooden stakes with the number of the inmate. After the war a prisoner who had been assigned to record the names of the dead returned with a written list he had secretly kept so that the names of the dead could be inscribed on stone headstones. He is also buried here.
Thomas O'Dea's Drawings of the Andersonville Prison
Thomas O'Day was a Union soldier from Maine and a prisoner who survived Andersonville. Twent years after his incarceration, he created a series of drawing of the conditions at the Andersonville Prison ( a.k.a Camp Sumter Military Prison) as it appeared on August 1, 1864. For an excellent account of the details of his effort, see the article from the Times Union, upstate New York newspaper.
Historical Photographs
Photographer AJ Riddle visited Andersonville in August 1864 and took the only known photographs of the prison during its operation. Here is a quite from Glenn Wright on his Flickr photo site about photo #4 below:
"This photograph was taken in August 1864 by A. J. Riddle at the prison. A.J Riddle was a Confederate photographer from Macon Georgia. He was able to take about 9 or ten photographs. Union officials were perplexed why Riddle was allowed to take these photographs which show such human degradation. The theory is that Riddle used the idea of taking portraits of the Post Commander Brig. General Winder and the commandant Wirz as his sales pitch."
"I chose this photo because it shows the deplorable conditions at the prison. The men were basically living on the ground with hardly any cover from the elements. As we know the Georgia summers can be brutal. According to the park records, when this photo was taken more then 100 men were dying each day. In August 1864 more then 3000 died that month from scurvy, dysentery and malnutrition. You can see from the photo the horrible crowded conditions. The photographs shows some men gathered together in the center near what appears to be a wagon. A plaque at the site explained this seen as “The World of Lost Spirits - Directly ahead stretched "Market Street." the only defined path through the jumble of shelters. Food wagons stopped there, prisoners had bartering sites, and prison merchants set up stalls in a pathetic parody of a commercial street."
"This photograph was taken in August 1864 by A. J. Riddle at the prison. A.J Riddle was a Confederate photographer from Macon Georgia. He was able to take about 9 or ten photographs. Union officials were perplexed why Riddle was allowed to take these photographs which show such human degradation. The theory is that Riddle used the idea of taking portraits of the Post Commander Brig. General Winder and the commandant Wirz as his sales pitch."
"I chose this photo because it shows the deplorable conditions at the prison. The men were basically living on the ground with hardly any cover from the elements. As we know the Georgia summers can be brutal. According to the park records, when this photo was taken more then 100 men were dying each day. In August 1864 more then 3000 died that month from scurvy, dysentery and malnutrition. You can see from the photo the horrible crowded conditions. The photographs shows some men gathered together in the center near what appears to be a wagon. A plaque at the site explained this seen as “The World of Lost Spirits - Directly ahead stretched "Market Street." the only defined path through the jumble of shelters. Food wagons stopped there, prisoners had bartering sites, and prison merchants set up stalls in a pathetic parody of a commercial street."