How many people was andersonville designed to hold

Hugh Judson Kilpatrick graduated from the U. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the When the train transporting the first Union prisoners of war to Andersonville finally exhaled after a week-long trip from Richmond, Virginia, its human cargo breathed a sigh of relief as well.

The Union prisoners who arrived at Camp Sumter on February 24, , had just survived The Confederate States of America was a collection of 11 states that seceded from the United States in following the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Led by Jefferson Davis and existing from to , the Confederacy struggled for legitimacy and was never These units had tenuous ties to the regular Confederate and Union Armies and were Live TV.

This Day In History. History Vault. Andersonville: Deplorable Conditions The first inmates began arriving at the Andersonville prison in February , while it was still under construction. Recommended for you. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Appomattox Court House. Jefferson Davis. Fort Sumter Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina most famous for being the site of the first shots of the Civil War Spying in the Civil War Though neither the Union nor the Confederacy had a formal military intelligence network during the Civil War, each side obtained crucial information from spying or espionage operations.

Andersonville, Years Ago When the train transporting the first Union prisoners of war to Andersonville finally exhaled after a week-long trip from Richmond, Virginia, its human cargo breathed a sigh of relief as well. See More. Some former prisoners remained in Federal service, but most returned to the civilian occupations they had before the War. During July and August , Clara Barton, along with a detachment of laborers and soldiers, and former prisoner Dorence Atwater, came to Andersonville cemetery to identify and mark the graves of the Union dead.

As a prisoner at Andersonville, Atwater had been assigned to record the names of deceased Union soldiers for Confederate prison officials. Fearing loss of the death records at war's end, Atwater made his own copy of the register in hopes of notifying the relatives of the more than 12, dead interred at Andersonville. Civil War Article. Andersonville Prison. Andersonville, Georgia. The deadline that kept prisoners back from the walls of the stockade was marked by a simple fence.

The man in this image was shot reaching under the fence as he tried to obtain fresher water than was available downstream. Andersonville National Historic Site In an emergency, eight small earthen forts around the outside of the prison could hold artillery to put down disturbances within the compound and to defend against Union cavalry attacks. Related Articles. The Swiss-born commander, a physician in Louisiana when the war broke out, tried to impose order and security, but his lack of authority over the guards and supply officers limited his effectiveness.

By August the prison population reached its greatest number, with more than 33, men incarcerated in the camp. By November the prison population was a mere 1, men. As these troops were called away for combat duty elsewhere, Georgia state reserves and militia from Georgia and Florida replaced them.

Cannons, guard towers, dog packs, and a second wall also served to foil escapes. Most of the prisoners who did escape Andersonville fled from work details on duties that took them outside the camp walls. Inmates also attempted to dig at least eighty tunnels, nearly all of which were exposed by informants. Compared with other Confederate prisons, very few of those incarcerated at Andersonville made successful escapes. Those who did escape received help from sympathetic or war-weary white Southerners but found enslaved Blacks to be their greatest allies.

Duncan, were arrested and tried separately for war crimes by federal military courts in Washington, D. Both the defense and the prosecution tried to prove that the defendants were following orders. The prosecutors hoped to prove that Duncan and Wirz were receiving orders from Confederate superiors, including President Jefferson Davis, and the defense attorneys hoped to absolve their clients of responsibility by passing it up the chain of command.

After two and a half months, Duncan received a fifteen-year sentence, and Wirz was sentenced to death. Duncan escaped after serving only one year at Fort Pulaski. On November 10, , Wirz was hanged in the courtyard of the Old Capitol prison, just behind the Capitol in Washington. For decades, historians claimed that Wirz was the only man executed for war crimes committed during the Civil War, and some southerners came to see him as a martyr. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument to him in the town of Andersonville, and each year on the anniversary of his execution, local residents hold a ceremony paying tribute to him.

Wirz was, in fact, one of a few Confederates to be tried and executed for crimes committed during the war. Robert Kennedy, a Confederate officer, was tried and executed by a military tribunal in March for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, and Champ Ferguson, a Confederate guerrilla fighter based in Tennessee, was tried and executed in October for killing Union prisoners of war.

The propagandistic and exaggerated nature of these accounts perpetuated several myths and misconceptions about the prison and its officials. Writer MacKinlay Kantor drew on such memoirs for his best-selling novel Andersonville, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in and was adapted as a television miniseries for Turner Network Television in The play was adapted for television in The prison site was preserved as a national cemetery soon after it closed, largely due to efforts by Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, who worked to have all the graves identified and marked.

Andersonville National Historic Site, which lies mostly in Macon County with a small portion in Sumter County, has long been a major tourist attraction. More recently, southerners who felt that Andersonville had unfairly borne the brunt of horror stories of prison treatment campaigned for the creation of a museum at Andersonville to commemorate all American POWs.

Davis, Robert. Davis, R. Andersonville Prison. In New Georgia Encyclopedia. In February , during the Civil War , a Confederate prison was established in Macon County, in southwest Georgia, to provide relief for the large number of Union….