D is for DEAD LINE (not to be confused with Deadline)

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.)

To prevent prisoners from attempting to escape from Andersonville Prison, a “dead line” was erected. Stakes were driven parallel to the stockade wall and about fifteen feet inside it. Eventually, these stakes were connected with scantling run across the tops of them. This formed a flimsy fence, which couldn’t physically hold a man in. But the men were informed that crossing the dead line would mean being shot.

This discouraged prisoners from getting close enough to rush the walls or tunnel under it. (Although many tunnels were dug in the Georgia clay anyway, escapes were few.)

Guards in “pigeon roosts” atop the wall were prepared to enforce the dead line. And a number of documented cases tell of prisoners whose lives ended because they crossed or ventured too close to the line. Others, who could no longer bear the hardships of the prison, crossed it to end their suffering.

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.