ANDERSONVILLE, Ga., a village of Sumter County, 62 miles southwest of Macon, noted as the seat, during the Civil War, of a military prison of the Confederate States. This prison was established in November 1863, and consisted of an unsheltered enclosure contain ing at first 22 acres, an area subsequently in creased to 27. It was commanded by Gen. W. S. Winder, but the superintendent was one Henry Wirz, a Swiss. It has been stated that Ander sonville was selected as a suitable site because secure against Federal raiders and generally considered healthful ; but that the laying waste of the fields of the South and the destruction of the means of transportation brought upon the Southern army and people great suffering, in which prisoners of war necessarily shared. It is true that rations were meagre for Con federate soldiers, to whose fare such prisoners were legally entitled. But evidence shows that the conditions which prevailed at Andersonville were due to mismanagement and cruelty ; such evidence including ample Confederate testi mony, as for example that rendered by Dr. G. S. Hopkins and Surgeon H. E. Watkins, constitut
ing a Confederate medical commission (1864), and that by Colonel Chandler of the Confed erate War Department in an inspection report (5 July 1864). Into the enclosure as many as 33,000 prisoners were at times crowded, for the most part completely without shelter, and sup plied with insufficient and unsuitable food. Between February 1864 and April 1865 there were received at the prison 49,485 prisoners, of whom 26 per cent, or over 12,800, died there. In the autumn of 1864 the Confederate govern ment removed many to Florence, S. C., and Millen, Ga., where they fared decidedly better. Wirz was convicted in 1865 by a military court under an indictment charging him with injur ing the health and destroying the lives of prisoners, and was hanged 10 November. The prison burying-ground was made a national cemetery. Consult Stevenson, R. R., The Southern Side; or Andersonville Prison' (1876) ; Chipman, The Horrors of Anderson ville Rebel Prison) (1891) ; Schouler, of the United States) (Vol. VI, 1899).