Andersonville National Historic Site The Andersonville National Historic Site , located near Andersonville , Georgia , preserves the former Camp Sumter ( also known as Andersonville Prison ) , a Confederate prisoner - of - war camp during the American Civil War . Most of the site lies in southwestern Macon County , adjacent to the east side of the town of Andersonville . As well as the former prison , the site also contains the Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum . The site is an iconic reminder of the horrors of Civil War prisons . It was commanded by Major Henry Wirz , who was tried and executed after the war for murder . It was overcrowded to four times its capacity , with inadequate water supply , overcrowding , reduction in food rations , and unsanitary conditions . Of the approximately 45 , 000 Union prisoners held at Camp Sumter during the war , nearly 13 , 000 men died . The chief causes of death were scurvy , diarrhea , and dysentery . Friends provided care , food , and moral support for others in their social network , which helped a prisoner survive . Conditions . < div class = " thumb tright " > < div style = " position : relative ; width : 400px ; " > The prison , which opened in February 1864 , originally covered about of land enclosed by a high stockade . In June 1864 it was enlarged to . The stockade was in the shape of a rectangle by . There were two entrances on the west side of the stockade , known as " north entrance " and " south entrance " . A prisoner described his entry into the prison camp : As we entered the place , a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror , and made our hearts fail within us . Before us were forms that had once been active and erect ; — " stalwart men " , now nothing but mere walking skeletons , covered with filth and vermin . Many of our men , in the heat and intensity of their feeling , exclaimed with earnestness . " Can this be hell ? " " God protect us ! " and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place . In the center of the whole was a swamp , occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits , and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink , and excrement covered the ground , the scent arising from which was suffocating . The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague - spot , and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings , was more than we cared to think of just then . Further descriptions of the camp can be found in the diary of Ransom Chadwick , a member of the 85th New York Infantry Regiment . Chadwick and his regimental mates were taken to the Andersonville Prison , arriving on April 30 , 1864 . Father Peter Whelan arrived on 16 June 1864 to muster the resources of the church and help provide relief to the prisoners . At Andersonville , a light fence known as " the dead line " was erected approximately inside the stockade wall . It demarcated a no - man ' s land that kept prisoners away from the stockade wall , which was made of rough - hewn logs about high . Anyone crossing or even touching this " dead line " was shot without warning by sentries in the pigeon roosts . At this time in the war , Andersonville Prison was frequently undersupplied with food . This applied both to prisoners and the Confederate personnel within the fort . However , it is clear that the prisoners received much less than the guards who were not emaciated like the prisoners were and did not die from scurvy ( vitamin C deficiency ) , probably the main cause of mortality ( along with diarrhea caused by living in filth and drinking water from a creek filled at all times with fecal material from thousands of sick and dying men ) . Even when sufficient quantities were available , the supplies were of poor quality and poorly prepared . Although the prison was surrounded by forest , very little wood was allowed to the prisoners . This and the lack of utensils made it almost impossible for the prisoners to cook the main food they received , poorly milled corn flour . During the summer of 1864 Union prisoners suffered greatly from hunger , exposure and disease . Within seven months , about a third of them died from what was diagnosed as dysentery and scurvy and were buried in mass graves , the standard practice by Confederate prison authorities at Andersonville . In 1864 the Confederate Surgeon General asked Joseph Jones , an expert on infectious disease , to investigate the high mortality rate at the camp . He concluded that it was due to " scorbutic dysentery " ( bloody diarrhea caused by vitamin C deficiency ) . Drisdelle claims that hookworm disease , a condition not recognized or known during the Civil War was the major cause of much of the mortality . However , the signs and symptoms reported by the prisoners are identical with those of scurvy and rampant diarrhea , not of hookworm infestation . The water supply from Stockade Creek became polluted when too many Union prisoners were housed by the Confederate authorities within the prison walls . Part of the creek was used as a sink and the men were forced to wash themselves in the creek . The guards , disease , starvation and exposure were not all that prisoners had to deal with . A group of prisoners , calling themselves the Andersonville Raiders , attacked their fellow inmates to steal food , jewelry , money and clothing . They were armed mostly with clubs and killed to get what they wanted . Another group rose up , organized by Peter " Big Pete " Aubrey , to stop the larceny , calling themselves " Regulators " . They caught nearly all of the Raiders , who were then tried by the Regulators ' judge , Peter McCullough , and jury , selected from a group of new prisoners . This jury , upon finding the Raiders guilty , set punishment that included running the gauntlet , being sent to the stocks , ball and chain and , in six cases , hanging . The conditions were so poor that in July 1864 Captain Wirz paroled five Union soldiers to deliver a petition signed by the majority of Andersonville ' s prisoners asking that the Union reinstate prisoner exchanges . The request in the petition was denied and the Union soldiers , who had sworn to do so , returned to report this to their comrades . In the latter part of the summer of 1864 the Confederacy offered to unconditionally release prisoners if the Union would send ships ( Andersonville is inland , with access possible only via rail and road ) to retrieve them . In the autumn of 1864 , after the capture of Atlanta , all the prisoners who were well enough to be moved were sent to Millen , Georgia , and Florence , South Carolina . At Millen , better arrangements prevailed , and after General William Tecumseh Sherman began his march to the sea , the prisoners were returned to Andersonville , where conditions were somewhat improved . During the war , 45 , 000 prisoners were received at Andersonville prison , and of these nearly 13 , 000 died . The nature of the deaths and the reasons for them are a continuing source of controversy among historians . Some contend that they were a result of deliberate Confederate war crimes toward Union prisoners and others that they were the result of disease promoted by severe overcrowding , the shortage of food in the Confederate States , the incompetence of the prison officials , and the refusal of Union authorities to reinstate the prisoner exchange , thus overfilling the stockade . A young Union prisoner , Dorence Atwater , had been chosen to record the names and numbers of the dead at Andersonville for the use of the Confederacy and the federal government after the war ended . He believed the federal government would never see the list , and was right in this assumption , as it turned out . He sat next to Henry Wirz , who was in charge of the prison pen , and secretly kept his own list among other papers . When Atwater was released , he put the list in his bag and took it through the lines without being caught . It was published by the " New York Tribune " when Horace Greeley , the owner , learned that the federal government had refused and given Atwater much grief . It was Atwater ' s opinion that Andersonville was indeed trying to make soldiers unfit to fight . Andersonville ' s decrepit conditions were chronicled in the diary of P . O . W . Newell Burch . Burch of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry , was captured on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg and imprisoned at Belle Isle and then Andersonville . He is credited with being the longest held Union prisoner of war during the Civil War , a total of 661 days in Confederate hands . His diary is in the collection of the Dunn County Historical Society in Menomonie , Wisconsin , and a mimeographed copy is in the Wisconsin Historical Society archives . Aftermath . Andersonville Prison was liberated in May 1865 . After the war , Henry Wirz , commandant of the inner stockade at Camp Sumter , was tried by a military tribunal on charges of conspiracy and murder . The trial was presided over by Union General Lew Wallace and featured chief Judge Advocate General ( JAG ) prosecutor Norton Parker Chipman . A number of former prisoners testified on conditions at Andersonville , many accusing Wirz of specific acts of cruelty , for some of which Wirz was not even present in the camp . The court also considered official correspondence from captured Confederate records . Perhaps the most damaging was a letter to the Confederate surgeon general by Dr . James Jones , who in 1864 was sent by Richmond to investigate conditions at Camp Sumter . Jones had been appalled by what he found and his graphically detailed report to his superiors all but closed the case for the prosecution . Wirz presented evidence that he pleaded to Confederate authorities to try to get more food and tried to improve the conditions for the prisoners inside . Wirz was found guilty and was sentenced to death , and on November 10 , 1865 , he was hanged . Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the Civil War ( but see reference to Champ Ferguson ) . The revelation of the prisoners ' sufferings was one of the factors that shaped public opinion in the North regarding the South after the close of the Civil War . In 1890 , the Grand Army of the Republic , Department of Georgia , bought the site of Andersonville Prison through membership and subscriptions . In 1910 the site was donated to the federal government by the Woman ' s Relief Corps ( auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic ) . National Prisoner of War Museum . The National Prisoner of War Museum opened in 1998 as a memorial to all American prisoners of war . Exhibits use art , photographs , displays and video presentations to focus on the capture , living conditions , hardships and experiences of American prisoners of war in all periods . The museum also serves as the park ' s visitor center . Andersonville National Cemetery . The cemetery is the final resting place for the Union prisoners who died while being held at Camp Sumter / Andersonville as POWs . The prisoners ' burial ground at Camp Sumter has been made a national cemetery . It contains 13 , 714 graves , of which 921 are marked " unknown " . As a National Cemetery , it is also used as a burial place for more recent veterans and their dependents . Visitors can walk the site of Camp Sumter , which has been outlined with double rows of white posts . Two sections of the stockade wall have been reconstructed , the north gate and the northeast corner .