Andersonville National Historic Site & Prisoner of War Museum [VIST]

The Andersonville National Historic Site comprises three main parts: the Camp Sumter Confederate Prison, the National Prisoner of War Museum, and the Andersonville National Cemetery.

THE NATIONAL PRISONER OF WAR MUSEUM

Your first stop is the Prisoner of War Museum, which houses the complex visitors center. Opened in 1998, the museum is a memorial to all American POWs. It utilizes videos, pictures, and displays ranging from the Civil War to Desert Storm to depict POW life throughout all periods of war, presented in no particular order.

*The Andersonville National Historic Site Visitors Center and POW Museum.*

JAMES NICHOLAS “NICK” ROWE

In 1963, First Lieutenant James Nicholas “Nick” Rowe was sent to the Republic of Vietnam and assigned as the Executive Officer of Detachment A-23, 5th Special Forces Group, serving as an adviser. In October 1963, with only three months in country, Rowe was captured by the Viet Cong along with two other Green Berets. Rowe was held in the U Minh Forest, better known as the “Forest of Darkness,” and spent 62 months in captivity, most of the time in a 3x4x6-foot bamboo cage. As an intelligence officer, Rowe had access to top-secret information. Still, he was able to deceive his captors, telling them he was a draftee and an engineer sent to Vietnam to build schools and other facilities. His captors tested his engineering prowess, but he was able to pass the test due to his classroom training in basic engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

*An American pilot shot down over Vietnam paraded through the streets of Hanoi.*

In December of 1968, the VC obtained a list of high-value American prisoners, and Rowe’s name was on it. The VC ordered that Rowe be taken out and executed. While being marched out to the jungle, Rowe overpowered his guard and escaped, and managed to signal a passing Huey helicopter and was rescued on December 31, just in time for New Year’s Eve. Rowe is one of only 34 prisoners to escape captivity during the Vietnam War.

The “Sack of Cement Cross” is the original POW monument from Camp O’Donnell, Philippines. The camp was initially a pre-World War II Philippine Army camp that the Japanese captured in April 1942, after the fall of Bataan. It held over 50,000 U.S. and Filipino POWs. A Japanese sergeant gave the POWs a sack of cement and told the men to “Make a shrine for men who die.” The POWs built the cross with the inscription: In Memory of the American Dead – O’Donnell War Personnel Enclosure – 1942. The Bottom reads: “OMNIA PRO PATRIA,” which means “Everything for Country.”

Sadly, in 1989, Rowe, who was conducting counterinsurgency training for the Armed Forces of the Philippines, was assassinated by the New People’s Party in Quezon City, Philippines.

As you exit the POW museum and head to Camp Sumter, you are met by the memorial wall and bronze statue of an emaciated POW pleading for help.

*During WWII, American POWs had their flight gear taken from them, so they recreated their flight jackets using string from Red Cross packages.*

CAMP SUMTER MILITARY PRISON

The Andersonville prison, as it’s commonly known, is officially named Camp Sumter after the name of the county in which it’s located. It was constructed in February 1864 and was in use until April 1865. It was initially designed to hold approximately 6,000 prisoners and cover 16.5 acres, with 16-foot-high stockade walls made from rough-hewn logs.

In June 1864, the facility was expanded to 26.5 acres to accommodate more inmates, but it was still not large enough. Inside the compound, located approximately 19 feet from the stockade wall, was a simple post-and-rail fence that marked the “deadline.” Any prisoner crossing this line or even touching it was subject to being shot on sight by the sentries posted on the pigeon roost platforms on the stockade wall, which were placed about 90 feet apart.

*A Camp Sumter POW attempts to tunnel out. Few made it out, and those who did were usually captured quickly due to poor health.*

By June 1864, the prison housed 26,000; by August, it had more than 33,000, nearly three times its designed capacity. During its 14-month operation, the prison housed approximately 45,000 Union prisoners, and by the time of its closing, almost 13,000 Union soldiers had died of health issues.

Prisoners were not given uniforms and had to make do with what they had on. When other prisoners died, their clothing was quickly taken by the living. There were no barracks or shelters, just whatever the prisoner could cobble together. Food portions, when available, were meager, and prisoners began to die from heat, cold, scurvy, dysentery, and other diseases. As the bodies piled up, averaging a hundred a day, some prisoners lay on the pile pretending to be dead to escape. The stench from the camp was so profound that townspeople in Americus, Georgia, some 10 miles away, complained.

DEATH AWAITS

The conditions at the prison were so horrid that new arrivals could not believe their eyes.

Sgt. Major Robert Kellogg, 16th Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, described his entry into the stockade in May 1864:

“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 90 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.”

The New Jersey Monument stands between rows of Civil War prisoner graves. On March 17, 1898, the New Jersey Legislature appropriated $2,000 for a monument at Andersonville to commemorate the state’s dead.

RAIDERS & REGULATORS

There was a group of prisoners calling themselves the Raiders who attacked fellow inmates, stealing money, clothing, and food. With the blessing of the Camp Commandant, another group of prisoners was formed to stop the thefts, calling themselves the Regulators. Almost every Raider was caught and tried by the Regulators’ “Judge” Peter McCullough and a jury of their peers.

*The graves of six “Raiders” who were executed for crimes against fellow prisoners were segregated from the rest of the interments.*

Sentencing and punishment were handed out quickly, with punishment ranging from running the gauntlet to the stocks, the ball and chain, and in the case of six raiders, execution. In the National Cemetery, six graves are segregated from the rest where these Raiders are interned.

MONUMENTS & MEMORIALS

Starting in 1899, monuments and memorials have been erected at the prison site and cemetery, funded by the states, to honor the men who suffered and died there. Most of these were built between 1899 and 1916. In the 1930s, the Women’s Relief Corps erected numerous monuments, and many of these large monuments were placed in the National Cemetery during the 1970s and 1980s.

*Authorized in 1903 and dedicated on 17 October 1907, the Wisconsin monument is located at the northwest corner of the stockade.*

CAMP SUMTER COMMANDANT HENRY WIRZ

In April 1864, Captain Henry Wirz arrived at Camp Sumter as the post commandant of the stockade. Wirz was born in Switzerland, and, in 1849, made his way to America after being released from prison on charges of fraud. He eventually married and settled in Louisiana, where he joined the 4th Battalion of the Louisiana Infantry in 1861.

Wounded in the battle of Seven Pines, Wirz was promoted to captain and, due to his injuries, became the Adjutant to General John Winder, who was in charge of Confederate prison camps.

*The Camp was enlarged further south, and here’s a portion of the reconstructed Southern Stockade wall.*

In April 1864, Wirz was put in command at Camp Sumter. He saw that the conditions at the camp were inadequate and requested more support from senior staff, but it was denied. In July 1864, he sent five prisoners to the Union with a petition written by the inmates asking the government to negotiate their release, to no avail.

When the war ended, Captain Wirz was arrested by a contingent of the 4th U.S. Cavalry on May 7, 1865, in Andersonville. He was taken to Macon, Georgia, and then to Washington, D.C., and charged with conspiring with high Confederate officials to “impair and injure the health and destroy the lives … of Federal prisoners” and “murder in violation of the laws of war.” Although many of the charges were unfounded, public anger over the conditions at Andersonville demanded a response.

Wirz was tried and found guilty by a military tribunal, and hanged on November 10, 1865, at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. When the trap door released, Wirz’s neck did not break, and the crowd watched as he did the rope dance and slowly strangled. Wirz was buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C. and was one of three people executed for war crimes during the Civil War.

THE ANDERSONVILLE NATIONAL CEMETERY

The National Cemetery located on the grounds was originally the final resting place for Union prisoners who died while being held in Camp Sumter Confederate prison. Internments consisting of trench burials began there in February 1864. In the 14 months of the prison operation, nearly 13,000 union soldiers were interned there. The dead were buried side by side, identified by name if possible, and assigned a number placed on wooden markers, which were replaced by the U.S. Army in 1865.

The War Department governed Civil War battlefields and sites. In 1933, all these sites were transferred to the National Park Service for administration, except for Andersonville. Southern congressmen believed that the park would be used to blame the South for the deaths of 13,000 Union soldiers. It wasn’t until 1970 that the site was turned over with the condition that the park would not focus on the South’s role in the deaths at the prison, but “to provide an understanding of the overall prisoner of war story of the Civil War, to interpret the role of prisoner of war camps in history, to commemorate the sacrifice of Americans who lost their lives in such camps, and to preserve the monuments located within the site.”

Today, this active cemetery holds over 20,000 internments and is one of 14 National Cemeteries administered by the National Park Service.

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