I can't say enough good things about William Marvel's 1994 monograph on the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. The book is well researched and written in an engaging narrative style.
Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially called, was established after Belle Isle and other P.O.W. camps near Richmond or other areas became overcrowded and threatened by Union attacks. The idea was to locate the prison in a remote rural area in the Deep South far from the front.
When the first prisoners were transferred from Belle Isle to Andersonville, they actually thought that the conditions in Georgia were much better than where they had come from. Camp Sumter consisted of a wooden stockade with guard towers, called "Pigeon Roosts" at intervals, surrounding an open field with a creek running through it. Although the original plan was to build barracks, this never came to fruition and no shelter was provided. Prisoners lived in make shift tents and lean-tos called "Shebangs."
The real problem came when thousands and thousands of Union P.O.W.s were poured into the enclosure. The stockade which was comfortable for 7 or 8 thousand, became a huge sewer when 30,000 men were packed inside the enclosure. One of the biggest problems was lack of fresh water and lack of sanitation. The creek which ran through the stockade first ran through a guards camp where it was used as a latrine. Then the prisoners "sinks" or latrines were located along the lower end of the creek in the stockade causing the creek to back up and become one giant cess pool. Supplying for thousands of prisoners also became a huge problem for the Confederate Army which could barely feed itself by that time in the war. Thousands died of disease and malnutrition.
Union soldier William Smith, a survivor of Andersonville.
Photos like this enflamed the North and led to the trial and execution of Captian Wirz.
Neither side was really prepared to deal with the thousands of prisoners which they were suddenly stuck with. During the first half of the war, prisoners were generally quickly exchanged. The prisoner exchange broke down over the treatment of black Union soldiers by the Confederates. Confederates refused to treat black soldiers as P.O.W.s and originally threatened to hang any blacks who took arms and to treat the white officers as the leaders of slave revolts. In the actual event, many black P.O.W.s were treated by their captors as slave labor. Interestingly, there were several hundred blacks at Andersonville, most having been captured at the Battle of Olustee, Florida. The Confederates refused to treat officers commanding black troops as real officers, and a Major of a black regiment was sent to Andersonville along with his troops. (Officers and enlisted men were segregated in separate prisons). The black troops were essentially used by the Confederates as slave labor on various projects around the camp. Interestingly, Marvel says that the death toll among the blacks was less than among the whites because the blacks had less exposure to disease because of being allowed out of the stockade for work.
Captain Henry Wirz
Marvel is an apologist for the prison commander, Captain Henry Wirz. According to Marvel, Wirz could not be responsible for everything he was accused of. The peculiar command structure at Andersonville handicapped Wirz. Wirz only had command over the Stockade itself and the prisoners. He did not even have direct command over the guards, who were commanded by another officer. Supplies for the prison were the job of the Post Commissary or Quartermaster and was largely beyond Wirz' control. Marvel paints Wirz as a man of limited abilities faced with an impossible situation. Marvel also denounces the unfair trial based largely upon hearsay and perjured testimony at which Wirz was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to hang.
Author William Marvel
13,000 Union soldiers perished at Andersonville. The suffering endured by these American soldiers is truly beyond our understanding. However, Marvel's book is outstanding. Highly recommended.
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