Andersonville Prison: The First Deadline, the Raiders and Atwater's Ledger

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Camp Sumter in Georgia, remembered as Andersonville, held roughly 45,000 Union prisoners in the last 14 months of the Civil War, and nearly 13,000 died there. The stockade of 16-foot pine logs grew from 16.5 to 26.5 acres, with no barracks or tents, and at its peak held more than 32,000 men in about five by six feet of space each. About 19 feet inside the wall ran a light fence called the deadline, and guards in perches the prisoners called pigeon roosts shot anyone who crossed or leaned over it. A single creek, Stockade Branch, served as both drinking water and latrine, spreading dysentery and typhoid, while hookworm, cob-ground cornmeal and scurvy wore the men down.

The population exploded after the Dix-Hill exchange cartel collapsed, when the Confederacy refused to treat captured Black soldiers as prisoners of war and Lincoln and Grant halted exchanges. Inside, a gang called the Raiders robbed and killed fellow prisoners until the Regulators captured them, a jury of newly arrived men tried them, and six were hanged on gallows built with lumber from commandant Henry Wirz. Inspector Daniel Chandler condemned the camp and was accused by General John H. Winder of misplaced sympathy. After the war, Wirz was tried before a tribunal under Lew Wallace, prosecuted by Norton Parker Chipman, and hanged in November 1865.

• Prisoners played dead in the dead house to escape until Wirz had surgeons check every body.
• Official records show only 32 of about 45,000 prisoners reached Union lines by escaping.
• Five paroled prisoners carried a petition to Washington, were refused and kept their oath by returning to the camp.
• Clerk Dorence Atwater secretly copied nearly 13,000 names and grave numbers and smuggled the list out.
• The Women's Relief Corps, led by Elizabeth A. Turner, replanted the site with Bermuda grass, orchards and roses from almost every state.