Thursday, April 3, 2014

C is for CAMP SUMTER

by Kathy Cannon Wiechman

(Kathy’s A to Z blog posts are tidbits of fact gleaned from her research for her historical fiction novel LIKE A RIVER.)

Camp Sumter is the real name of the prison camp that history remembers as Andersonville Prison.

As the American Civil War neared the end of its third year, the Confederacy’s prisons were filled beyond capacity with captured Union soldiers. A new prison was planned near Andersonville, Georgia. Built stockade-style with upright posts of yellow pine, Camp Sumter’s first prisoners arrived in February, 1864, before it was fully completed.

Intended to hold 10,000 prisoners, its numbers reached a peak of about 33,000 in August, 1864. More than 45,000 men passed through those gates to hell.

Prisoners often slept in makeshift shelters that offered little protection from the elements. They were underfed, and medical care was poor.

By the time the last prisoners were released from Camp Sumter in March, 1865, its cemetery and burial trenches held at least 13,000 bodies. Many men who had survived horrific battles took their last breaths inside the prison’s unforgiving walls. Sometimes deprivation and disease were a more formidable foe than shot and shell.

8 comments:

  1. Interesting - I thought the name really was just Andersonville prison. If there is such a thing as ghosts, I can imagine there are lots of angry ones in this area today. Such a horrifying place.

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    1. Thanks, Julie. Andersonville ghosts! Sounds like a whole new book.

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  2. Yeah, if they weren't cared for, I can see how disease would spread and kill more.

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    1. I know, Alex. And with nineteenth century medical practices, many of these men were doomed the minute they arrived.

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  3. Interesting post. As you walked the grounds, I guess you imagined the bodies of the men buried beneath the ground… lost in one way or the other.

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    1. Yes, Carol, I did. It's a pretty sobering place. And even more so when you research the real stories.

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  4. It seems like every time you hear about a prison it was built to accommodate X number of prisoners but ended up holding 3X or more. I wonder if ever in the history of the world a prison has been built that hasn't ended up overpopulated.

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    1. Excellent point, Rhonda. Do you think we are short-sighted or optimists, who believe there will be fewer offenders?

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