When Union prisoners entered Andersonville prison in early May 1864, they found themselves surrounded by a terrifying enclosure. Pine logs 24 feet long were embedded eight feet into the earth, leaving 16 feet rising above ground, forming a massive barrier around roughly 15 to 18 acres. Sentries stood on platforms about 12 or 13 feet high, positioned roughly 200 feet apart, with a clear view of the interior. Many took every opportunity to fire at the prisoners below.
A “dead line” marked by stakes stood about three feet high and 16 feet from the enclosure. Crossing it meant almost certain death by gunfire. As the heavy gates swung open, the scene inside defied description. Thousands of men, nearly unclothed, barefoot and filthy, occupied the space.
Many had constructed makeshift shelters from blankets, shirts, or whatever scraps they could find, while others had no shelter at all. The Confederate authorities made no effort to provide housing. During June and July 1864, rain fell for 21 consecutive days, sometimes in torrents. Hundreds of men stood packed tightly together for warmth and support, and after heavy storms, weakened prisoners were found buried under mounds of sand, many dead by morning.
A sluggish creek divided the prison and served as the sole water source. It was bordered by swampy, marshy ground that bred disease. Men waded into the area carrying canteens, risking a bullet to the head from hostile guards just to scoop up clear water above the mud. Rations were far below what was needed, often a small piece of cornbread made from coarsely ground corn, including the cob, with occasional beans and small portions of pork that dwindled quickly.
Many prisoners slept 12 to 15 hours a day to escape their misery. Vermin attacked at night and hid during the day, forcing men to spend hours searching the seams of their clothing. Some burrowed into the banks for protection, but during heavy rains, the loosened earth often collapsed and buried them. Several pairs of feet were seen protruding from the ground after storms.
Escape attempts through tunnels rarely succeeded. Plans were often betrayed, and the Confederates would uncover and fill the tunnels. In June, digging wells became common, and many prisoners found better water about 18 feet down. The sandy soil required careful digging to prevent cave-ins, and men used pant legs tied at the bottom to haul out the earth.
Deprivation and lack of vegetables led to widespread scurvy. Gums swelled and turned black, making it impossible to chew solid food. Limbs contracted toward the body, and legs discolored from heels to hips. One prisoner described scraping away rotting tissue from his gums with his fingernails, the odor foul beyond description.
Inside the prison, there was no law. An organized group of robbers known as raiders roamed in squads, stealing clothing and blankets. They attacked men with clubs and committed several brutal murders. Eventually, the Confederates entered the prison and urged the Union prisoners to organize.
The raiders were pursued, beaten, and captured. A formal court was established with lawyers from among the prisoners serving as judges and counsel. After a fair trial, six raiders were convicted and executed, ending the practice of raiding. By July, the prisoner involved in this account had grown so weak that friends carried him to the gate hoping for hospital admission.
Many others were left on the ground near the gates, waiting for examination by doctors who never came. When he was finally removed from a wagon and placed on the ground, a steward assigned him to a tent in the ward, the first shelter he had slept in since May 1st. The medicine provided for scurvy was little more than slop made by mixing cornmeal with swamp water and allowing it to sour. Boards were eventually brought into the hospital to build bunks, and for the first time, beds were raised off the ground.
His condition noticeably improved, and he could walk with his limbs less bent, standing at about a 90-degree angle and bearing weight on his toes. Then came devastating news: his tent would be repurposed for gangrene patients. He was separated from his seven tentmates and never learned what became of them. He was moved to another tent occupied by a suffering man who died that night.
The tent’s sandy floor was infested with fleas and vermin, and he described enduring some of the greatest misery he had ever known. Unable to bear it, he moved to the street by morning. When the steward insisted he return, he scooped up a handful of the tent floor and showed him the fleas leaping from the sand, declaring he would not go back unless bound. After discussion, the steward offered him a nurse’s tent with bunks if he would care for eight gangrene patients.
He accepted, and within weeks, the hard work and decent sleeping conditions led to rapid improvement. While still in the hospital in early December 1864, the Confederates began building sheds with help from Union workers. Because he had been a woodworker before the army, the prisoner was chosen and paroled with a promise not to escape. The increased freedom was a joy beyond description.
During a Sunday outing, he and a few others met a Black man from the Flint River, six miles from Andersonville. They devised an escape plan to follow the river to the Union blockade in Apalachee Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. After leaving camp, they missed their guide and proceeded on foot down the river, knowing bloodhounds would pursue them by morning. They found a boat and paddles, navigating downstream through rapids, shallow waters, and turbulent currents.
A locomotive whistle woke them, revealing a nearby railroad depot crowded with Confederate soldiers, forcing them to flee the river. In the woods, they encountered a group of Black men and women who shared pork stew and corn pones and warned them of a Confederate camp of 5,000 troops near a large spring. They attempted to bypass the camp but encountered a guard and returned to the river. After persuading hesitant comrades to swim across, they marched downstream and slept until noon in dense woods.
They later encountered a boat carrying three Confederate soldiers and spoke with two enslaved men who returned it. One seemed friendly, but the other raised doubts. The prisoner said, “Sam, we need your boat,” but the men were terrified their master would kill them if they lost it. The prisoner backed away, and the friendlier man guided them partway before leaving at dusk.
They found the boat abandoned and made paddles from boards. Heavy fog made travel perilous by morning. On the open, settled countryside, they landed in a grove of young trees and built an unwise fire, sleeping until they were spotted by three boys on horseback who fled upon seeing them. In Mitchell County, Georgia, with Baker County’s bloodhound packs across the river, their situation seemed dire.
Pursuit soon came. Four white men and three Black men on horseback, led by an armed white man of about 50 or 60, demanded to know what they were doing. Calmly leaning on his elbow, the prisoner said they were resting. The man declared he had to arrest them as a Confederate soldier on furlough.
They acknowledged this and went with him. At his home, his son-in-law, a Confederate major, welcomed them and promised to transport them to Newton the next day. In Newton, a provost marshal treated them kindly, providing tobacco, food, and peanuts, and locked them in a courthouse room for the night. Using a pocketknife, they removed the door’s catch, and the jailer found them on the courthouse steps enjoying his tobacco.
After resting on Sunday, they walked to Albany on Monday and took a train back to Andersonville. When the prisoner stepped off first, he faced Captain Henry Wirz, who recognized the five escapees and erupted in a furious tirade of curses and insults. He ordered them to the small enclosure for severe punishment, but oddly, they faced no penalty and were returned to the main stockade days later. Spring arrived with rumors of prisoner exchanges growing frequent.
Large groups were sent to Vicksburg, and those left behind watched the gates close with despair. Finally, their day came to leave the stockade, the last of the thousands who suffered there. As the prisoner passed through the gates, he saw fewer than 100 men following, and the stockade was empty forever. The men were taken to Jacksonville, Florida, then aboard the USS Constitution to Camp Parole in Annapolis, Maryland.
There they received rations, clothing, and back pay before being sent to their regimental headquarters for discharge. The prisoner was mustered out at Fort Wayne, Michigan, on June 22nd and returned to Ohio. He worked as a railroad brakeman, married in 1868, and raised two sons and a daughter.
Despite his ordeal at Andersonville, he lived until August 1927, dying at 86 in Lakewood, Ohio.