Trip Report - Andersonville National Historic Site, Georgia
August 2, 2003
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Why the prisoner exchange was stopped became a hotly controversial subject following the war, and many blatantly self-serving theories
were forthcoming from the North. James Madison Page, the Union officer who wrote THE TRUE STORY OF ANDERSONVILLE PRISON (1908)
describes some of these theories: "The South refused to exchange a negro for a rebel prisoner." "The rebels would not exchange
on an equitable basis as to relative rank of officers;" "The rebel Government resorted to frivolous pretexts to delay exchange as
death was doing its work of Andersonville, Salisbury and other prisons."
Page dismisses all of these arguments as mere subterfuge. Even today, however, many of these old Yankee lies have been dusted off and
reissued with Ken Burns the most prominent quartermaster.
Archeological Fieldwork Excavations In the spring of 1987, John W. Walker undertook the first phase of pre-reconstruction
work by excavating 66 meters of stockade line at the northeast corner of the
prison (Walker 1990). The primary method of investigation
during all three field seasons consisted of first exposing the stockade wall
trenches and other features by stripping away the plowzone a few inches at
a time with a six foot wide box blade pulled by a tractor. Cross-section
trenches
were then placed at several locations along and across the exposed wall trenches
to reveal details in wall trench construction and pole placement.
The northeast corner of the prison was part of the northern extension built
by the Union prisoners after it was decided to enlarge the original prison.
During the course of his excavations, Walker was able to determine that
this portion of the stockade was constructed by digging a trench roughly
five
feet deep and two feet wide, then setting the posts in the center of the
trench and backfilling around the posts. Longitudinal cross-section trenches
placed along the stockade wall showed the spacing of the posts and diagonal
bands of fill running west to east in the northern wall and north to south
in the eastern wall. These diagonal fill zones indicated that when the
prisoners set the posts, they proceeded from the west, backfilling as they
went along,
working their way to the northeast corner then turned and continued in
the same manner toward the south. Preservation of the stockade posts in this portion of the site was very good,
so Walker was able to determine the placement and sizes of the posts in the
wall trench. Walker's work at the northeast stockade corner indicated that
the construction of the stockade did not correspond, however, with the "tight" squared
pole placement described in the historic accounts. I wonder if the existing
replicatgions of the wall wioll be changed North Gate The soil color banding observed in the West Stockade wall trench in plan view
was duplicated in the cross-section trench profiles. These profiles made it
readily apparent that the banding was the result of the manner in which the
soils had been removed from the wall trench and backfilled around the posts.
The soils in this portion of the site naturally grade from an orange color
at the ground surface to a dark red color at a depth of 1.5 meters. The banding in the wall trenches indicates that, when the wall trench was
excavated, the uppermost orange soils were thrown toward the exterior of the
prison, while the deeper red soils were thrown toward the interior of the prison.
When these soils were backfilled into the wall trench, the posts placed in
the center of the trench prevented the two soil colors from mixing, thereby
creating the banding effect noted near the surface. In general, the archeological remains of the North Gate were found to coincide
with the historical descriptions, but diverged in some specific details. The
North Gate consisted of a boxlike enclosure projecting westward from the main
stockade. The walls of the Gate were constructed in the same manner as the
original stockade with squared posts set in a wall trench roughly five feet
deep. The gateways into and out of the gate were centered on the east and west
walls of the enclosure. The dimensions of the North Gate were actually 27.6
ft by 34.8 ft however, not the 30 by 30 feet that was reported in the historical
accounts. The doorways of the gate were also roughly 2.9 meters wide (9.5 ft)
rather than the reported 12 feet. The western gateway was evidenced by a gap
between wall trenches. The eastern gateway was evidenced by several pine poles
placed horizontally within the stockade wall trench. Artifacts recovered during the North Gate investigations included one iron
axe head and an axe head fragment, a brass and iron buckle, cut nails, a brass
utensil fragment, probably part of a spoon handle, stamped with a crown symbol
and the letters GR (or GB), and an alkaline glazed stoneware sherd. The ax
heads were probably the remains of tools used in the construction of the original
prison stockade by the African American slaves encumbered with the task. The
cut nails were also probably used in the construction of the prison. The profiles in Trench #3 also provided enough evidence to conclude that the
method used to dig and backfill the wall trench of the original north stockade
was the same as that used for the original west stockade. In other words, during
the digging of the wall trench, the uppermost soils were piled toward the exterior
of the prison and the deeper red soils were piled toward the interior of the
prison. When the soils were backfilled around the posts, the posts prevented
the two soils from mixing, thereby creating a banding effect. Numerous animal bones that were recovered during the excavation of the stockade
wall trenches were probably the remains of meals consumed by the African American
slaves who built the original prison. The identifiable animal remains have
been classified as pig and cow bones. Some of these items exhibit butchering
marks. Trench #5 was placed parallel with the west stockade line at the point where
the northern stockade extension intersected with the original northwest corner
of the stockade. The excavation unit was placed here to reveal the method in
which the stockade extension was added to the original corner of the prison. Southeast Corner In 1990, excavations were conducted at the southeast corner of the stockade.
Like before, a box blade and tractor were used to expose the stockade wall
trench. Meaning of Banded Soils In the area of the Southeast Corner,
where the deeper soils are naturally whiter than the light brown soils
near
the ground surface, this resulted in a white band on the interior side
of the stockade posts and a light brown band of soil bordering the exterior
of the posts. In the area of the northwest gate where the natural soil
colors
grade from orange to red, this resulted in an inner red band and an outer
orange band of soil separated by posts. Tunneling was inhibited by the
various colors and the dispersal of the displace soil. Reconstruction of the northeast corner of the prison has been completed and
has duplicated, as much as possible, the construction techniques revealed by
Walker's 1987 investigations and historic documentation. Note that the poles
are rough and unhewn with gaps between the posts. The park has also reconstructed
the southeast corner and the North Gate using squared posts. Future Work to Archeology at Andersonville Today, Andersonville National Historic Site is the only park in the National
Park System to serve as a memorial to all American prisoners of war throughout
the nation's history.
Andersonville Military Cemetary
Andersonville is a name that most Americans immediately rank with
other infamous prison hellholes of history like Devil's Island, the Black Hole of Calcutta, Auschwitz and Dachau. In many ways it is
similar; it was a place of misery, suffering and death, with photographic evidence of its emaciated seemingly an irrefutable
judgement against the men who operated this well-known Confederate prison for Union prisoners of war.
Indeed, Andersonville has for the past one hundred and thirty years been touted as undeniable evidence of the evil nature of the
Confederate Government who is even today accused of carrying out a genocidal policy towards Union prisoners. If one can only believe that
Confederates were people who delighted in the suffering and death of their captives, then perhaps those disturbing photos of burned
and demolished Southern cities won't ache so perceptibly in the far corners of the Northern conscience.
Ken Burns, in his companion book to the PBS television series THE CIVIL WAR, says this of Henry Wirz,
the commander of Andersonville: "On November 10, 1865,
ation had swollen to 20,000 men and by August reached 33,000 prisoners. This was also the summer of Sherman's march to the sea, when Southern farms, barns, and mills were being burned to the ground in the North's scorched-earth policy that was designed to starve the Southern populace into submission. Even medicine was declared contraband, and Union forces destroyed stores of medicines wherever they were found, even those in possession of private physicians. Needless to say, these privations worsened the lot of Union prisoners; the South could not provide the prisoners what I could not provide its own citizens, and because of disease, inadequate diet, and the summer sun, Union deaths at Andersonville began to soar. According to CONFEDERATE VETERAN magazine of Sept-Oct 1991, 12,912 of the 45,613 Union prisoners at Andersonville died during its fourteen months of operation. Most of these deaths occurred during the period of August through December, 1864, when prisoners died at a rate of approximately 100 per day.
Why Was The Prisoner Exchange Stopped?
In the PBS series "The Civil War," Burns had the audacity to
suggest that Grant stopped the prisoner exchange because he was morally offended by the Confederate Government's refusal to exchange
negro prisoners!
In his text, Ken Burns states: "...Grant ordered an end to the prisoner exchange in effect since early in the war, until and unless the
South formally agreed to recognize 'no distinction whatever in the exchange between white and colored prisoners."
So we see that the real reason the prisoner exchange was stopped was because Grant was an egalitarian who was willing to sacrifice
the lives o thousands of Union prisoners as an act of moral principle. Even considering Mr. Grant's demonstrated proclivity for
expending Union lives, one might conclude that Ken Burns, and his Reconstructionist forbears, would be deterred by simple embarrassment
at advancing such an unlikely tenet. After all, black prisoners of war were a minuscule number of the total Union soldiers in
Confederate hands. Melvin Grigsby, a Union POW at Andersonville, wrote: "There was not a negro soldier in Andersonville or in
any other prison for a considerable time.
When they were captured they were either sent back to their
old masters or put work on rebel fortifications, and they were not starved
and did not suffer. [Secretary of War] Stanton and others who insisted on this
point, might as well have insisted that every black in the South,
whose liberty had been granted him by the Emancipation Proclamation and
who was detained by his old master, should be a subject of exchange."
James Madison Page agrees. In July of 1864, Henry Wirz had paroled five prisoners to act as emissaries for the others. These emissaries carried a petition to Washington that was signed by almost every Union soldier in Andersonville, demanding that the U.S. Government abide by the original exchange agreement. Their efforts were not successful, and some of them returned to Andersonville to report to their fellows. Page writes, "When the Andersonville emissaries returned from Washington there was not one word about the exchange of negro soldiers being in the way of our release. It was then not thought of. I know that for the past forty-two years that matter has been published broadcast in the North as the reason why we were not exchanged. Grigsby is right in this. The Washington authorities had concluded to stop the exchange before there were any Negro prisoners."
In spite of all the Northern post-war moralizing, the real reason the Union soldiers were not exchanged is because the Northern government considered them expendable. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, "We will not exchange able-bodied men for skeletons," and "We do not propose to reinforce the rebel army by ex hanging prisoners."
Ulysses S. Grant later confirmed this in his memoirs, explaining that exchange meant reinforcement of the rebel army, and that the exchanged rebel soldier behind brigades and fortifications fighting on the defensive was equivalent to three Union soldiers attacking him.
Page writes, "This was the Stanton policy, and if this atrocious and inhuman doctrine is anyway meritorious, the 'War Secretary' is entitled to the credit."
Who Was Henry Wirz?
Henry Wirz was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1822. He graduated from the University of Zurich, later obtaining an M.D. degree from the medical colleges of Paris and Berlin. After practicing medicine for a time, he immigrated to the United States in 1849, establishing a medical practice in Kentucky. In 1854 he married a widow, Mrs. Wolfe, and became stepfather to her two young daughters. The family moved to Louisiana, and in 1855 his own daughter, Cora, was born. At the beginning of the [War For Southern Independence] Dr. Wirz enjoyed a lucrative medical practice and was fluent in English, German, and Dutch.
When the war opened, Dr. Wirz enlisted in Company A. Fourth-Battalion, Louisiana Volunteers. This regiment fought bravely at the Battle of Seven Pines, where Sergeant Henry Wirz was severely wounded in his right arm by a minie ball. The arm was almost useless to him thereafter. On June 12, after returning to his unit, Wirz was promoted to Captain "for bravery on the field of battle."
However, his wound rendered him unfit for battle, and he was detailed as acting
adjutant-general to General John H. Winder, Provost Marshall in charge of Confederate
prisoner of war camps.
After serving at prisons in Richmond and Tuscaloosa and carrying out special
assignments for the Confederate Government, Capt. Wirz was ordered to take
charge of the interior of Andersonville Prison in April of 1864. He assumed
his duties there the same month, and remained at Andersonville with his wife
and family until April of 1865, when he was included in the surrender of General
Johnston and his forces to General Sherman. Shortly before the end of the war,
Wirz was promoted to the rank of Major.
Wirz retired to civilian life until taken into custody by Union forces of General
Wilson. He was taken to Macvon, Georgia where he was questioned at length about
the prison, then released to return to his family at Andersonville. While waiting
for the train, he was arrested by Wilson's soldiers. A few days later he was
transported to Washington, where he was placed in the Old Capitol Prison on
May 10, 1865 to await trial on charges of war crimes.
We will describe the
trial and execution of Wirz later. Did
Confederate Authorities Deliberately Mistreat Union POWs?
After the war some former Union prisoners of war wrote memoirs and books detailing
the cruelty that Southern forces allegedly displayed to their captives. Lt.
James Page disputes these descriptions. He states in the preface of his book,
THE TRUE STORY OF ANDERSONVILLE PRISON, that he was writing of his own experiences
in Southern prisons "in the interest of truth and fair play," and to reduce
sectional friction "caused by the exaggerated and often unjust reports of Major
Wirz's cruelty and inhumanity to prisoners."
Page speaks of his Confederate captors in most generous terms, from the moment
of his capture by Confederate cavalry, through his first internment in a field
POW camp, to his transfer first to Libby Prison, the Belle Isle, and later to
Andersonville.
James M. Page was in action near Culpeper Court House on September 21, 1863 when
he as ordered with other company members forward, dismounted, only to find themselves
facing a superior Confederate cavalry troop over the crest of a hill.
Page and
others ran from the overwhelming force, and were ordered to "halt!" by the advancing
Confederates. He did not do so, and admits the Southern troops would have been
justified by all the rules of war in shooting him down, but they did not.
Page was soon captured, genially interrogated by General A.P. Hill, and sent
to a makeshift POW camp. His first night in camp another Union POW cut his pockets
open while he slept, stealing his watch, cash, pocketknife, and other possessions.
He knew he had been robbed by the other POW, and reported the theft to the North
Carolina troops in charge, who were indignant at the crime. They soon persuaded
the thief to confess and return the goods, after they had put a rope around his
neck and hoisted him off the ground a couple of times. Page's possessions were
returned, and he was consistently treated with kindness by his Southern captors.
While imprisoned at Belle Isle, Page became sick with fever for eight days, and
his comrades feared he would die. A Confederate guard encouraged him daily, telling
him he was due to be exchanged "tomorrow." Page later realized that the kindly
guard told him the white lie so he wouldn't lose his will to live.
This white lie was used often by the guards, telling the prisoners that exchange
would come "next week" or whenever; and though some postwar Northerners stated
that this giving of false hope was a form of Southern cruelty, Page believes
it was done with benevolence, because the Confederates knew that men without
hope would soon succumb to despair and then death.
While Page was convalescing from his fever, a Confederate soldier passed him
by, noticed his emaciated form, then handed him a big, red apple. "Stick your
teeth into that apple, Yank, and try for a minute to fohget about the Nawth," he
said. Page hugged the apple to his breast, then sat down and cried. His one abiding
regret was that the Southern soldier hurried away without giving Page the chance
to thank him. This was not the only act of kindness Page received from his Confederate
guards. Later at Andersonville, a guard brought him some Irish potatoes to cure
his scurvy.
Page refutes many of the myths that abounded after the war, ones like the story
that "Southern women and children would hold picnics at the edge of the prison
so they could enjoy the suffering of the inmates within," which as Page points
out, would have been difficult to do in light of the fifteen foot walls all around;
or the myth that Confederate guards would be given "thirty days furlough for
shooting a prisoner."
Page says such shootings were rare indeed, and then were done only upon extreme
provocation. Nevertheless, greatly exaggerated stories of bestial cruelty by
the prison guards proliferated after the war.
Page states that the guards, particularly the 25th Alabama, were generally kind
and humane. Page said of them: "And I said then, and I have ever since said,
in speaking of our guards, the Twenty-fifth Alabama Infantry, I never met the
same number of men together who came much nearer to my standard of what I call
gentlemen.
They were respectful, humane and soldierly."
Page also points out that though prison rations were poor and meager, they
were the very same rations that were issued to the guards. Captain Wirz tried
to diminish scurvy in the prison, paroled five men to act as emissaries to
Washington to petition for exchange, pleaded with the Confederate Government
for supplies and even to release the prisoners unconditionally.
Far from the "war crimes" he was hanged for, Henry Wirz did everything humanly
possible to save the lives of the Union prisoners under his charge.
He was not alone in this effort; as early as January, 1864, the Confederate Commissioner
for Exchange, Colonel Robert Ould proposed to his Union counterpart that doctors
and medical supplies of opposing forces be admitted to POW Camps to care for
their own sick countrymen.
This offer, if accepted would have done much to ease the suffering of Union POW's,
but the offer was never even acknowledged by the North. Page writes of this: "...I
have, during the past fifteen or twenty years, read accounts from Southern sources,
that the Confederate Government during the summer of 1864 asked the Washington
authorities to send physicians and hospital supplies for the express use of Union
prisoners held in the South; they pledged that those supplies would be only for
the Union prisoners; and it was said that Washington authorities ignored the
proposition. This seemed incredible, and I hoped that this charge would be satisfactorily
contradicted by Northern writers acquainted with the facts, but I have never
read or heard a word of refutation of it."
Finally Ould offered to deliver up all sick and wounded Union prisoners without
requiring an equivalent number in return. Though this offer was made in August,
the U.S. Government did not send ships for them until December, almost five months
later.
As noted earlier, this was the very period when most of the Union deaths
were occurring, where Federal haste in the matter would have saved thousands
of lives. Ken Burns, in his book, The Civil War (sic), page 335, writes: "One
of the cruelest charges made against Abraham Lincoln was that he was guilty of "shameful
disregard' of the thousands of Union prisoners languishing in Southern prisons." The
charge may be cruel, but is it true?
Between 1987 and 1990, archeologists at the NPS Southeast Archeological Center
conducted three field seasons of work as background to the interpretive programs
at the park. The objectives of this research were to determine the precise
nature and locations of the prison's stockade walls and gates, add to our understanding
of prison conditions, and provide other historical details that had heretofore
escaped documentation. This information was vital to park interpretative programs
in allowing for partial recontruction of the stockade walls and the installation
of associated exhibits that provide a sense of scale and spacial orientation
to the visitor. This work also revealed important historical information about
the different techniques used in constructing the original stockade, the main
gates, and later expansions.
In January 1987, the National Park Service proposed that certain portions
of the inner prison stockade at Andersonville National Historical Site be reconstructed
to "enhance visitor understanding of the prison and prison conditions" of
the infamous Civil War prison camp (National Park Service 1987:1). Three of
those portions of the prison slated for reconstruction, the northeast corner,
the southeast corner, and the North Gate, have been investigated and are the
subjects of this report. 
Guy Prentice directed the second and third phases of
pre-reconstruction work by excavating the North Gate in 1989 (Prentice and
Mathison 1989) and 70 meters of stockade line at the southeast corner of
the prison in 1990 (Prentice and Prentice 1990).
Northeast Corner 
Slave Labor Used
The posts set into the stockade wall trench at the northeast corner of the
prison had not been hewn square, and there were often sizable gaps between
posts. This pattern was also identified when a portion of the northern prison
extension was examined during the North Gate excavations in 1989. The reason
for this apparent contradiction between the historical accounts and the archeological
record is that the historical accounts referred to the construction of the
original stockade built by the African American slave gangs, while the later
northern extension was constructed by the Union prisoners in the same manner
as the later middle and outer stockade walls -- without squaring the poles
and with less emphasis on tight construction due to time limitations and
manpower constraints.
In the spring of 1989, the second phase of pre-reconstructive archeological
investigations were conducted at the prison site. The primary objective of
these investigations focused on identifying the location and nature of the
North Gate along the western stockade wall. Again, the primary method of
investigation consisted of stripping away the plowzone with a tractor and
box blade followed by the cross-sectioning of features. 
The search for the North Gate was initiated near two stone monuments that
had been erected in the 1930s to mark its approximate location. As the western
stockade wall trench was initially exposed with the box blade, a consistent
pattern of trench fill soon became apparent. This pattern consisted of a band
of orange colored soil running along the western half of the trench, and a
band of dark red colored soil along the eastern half of the trench. The two
bands were often separated by a band of gray soil and the remains of wooden
posts running down the center of the trench. 
The North Gate, like the stockade wall was exposed by stripping away the plowzone
with the tractor and box blade. After the North Gate was photographed and mapped
in plan view, a series of cross-section trenches were placed along and across
the wall trenches to reveal details in wall trench construction and pole placement. 
During the 1989 investigations, we also found the location of the original
north wall of the prison, which appears as a whitish (inner central) fill zone.
The original north wall had been torn down by the prisoners following the building
of the northern prison extension in July, 1864. Trench #3 was excavated to
examine the original north wall. The west profile of Trench #3 exhibited the
same wall trench shape and form as the western stockade trench, having a flat
bottom with slightly inwardly sloping sides. No posts were found in the trench
and the sides of the wall trench showed no signs of distortion or collapse.
This suggested that when the prisoners pulled the post from this section of
the original northern stockade wall trench on July 1, 1864, they pulled it
to the east, thereby preserving the original trench shape. This is in contrast
to the opposite or east profile in Trench #3 where the northern side of the
wall trench flairs outward near the ground surface. This flairing at this point
in the trench suggests that when the posts were removed by the prisoners they
were pulled towards the north. This flairing was probably the result of digging
along the north side of the wall to loosen the poles so that they could be
tipped or pulled out. 
Although the
trench fills were later disturbed when the prisoners pulled out the posts
on July 1, 1864, portions of the original fill zones were preserved at the
bottom of each profile. 
The point of intersection between the northern extension and the original
stockade was evidenced in the west profile of Trench #5 by a vertical zone
of red soil
roughly 30 cm wide. South of the point of intersection, the remains of several
posts showed that they had been hewn square before being placed in the trench.
North of the point of intersection, the remains of several posts indicated
that those posts that had been used in the construction of the extension
had not been hewn square, as was noted by Walker during his 1987 investigations
of the northeast corner. 
As the stockade wall trench was exposed first with the box blade
and then by hand excavation, a consistent pattern of trench fill appeared.
This pattern consisted of a band of soil colors with a yellowish brown
sand strip running along one side of the stockade wall trench, and a
band of whitish
sand along the other side of the trench. The two bands were often separated
by a band of grayish brown soil resulting from the decomposed posts located
in the center of the trench. A similar banded pattern of stockade wall
trench fills had been noted during the 1989 North Gate investigations.
The banded pattern of wall trench fills found at both the Southeast Corner
and the North Gate reflects the consistent manner in which the stockade wall
was constructed by the slave gangs. 
While digging the wall trench, the uppermost
soils were consistently thrown to the outside of what would be the prison
enclosure, while the deeper subsoils were thrown to the inside. The posts
were then set in the middle of the trench and the fill on both sides of
the trench was then packed around them. 
Escape Tunnel
During the 1990 excavations, a failed prisoner's escape tunnel was discovered
along the southern stockade wall. These excavations currently provide the
only archeological data collected to date regarding prisoner escape tunnel
construction at Andersonville. Within our excavation units, the widest section
of the escape tunnel was about 90 cm. Based on profile map reconstructions,
the height of the tunnel was approximately 40 to 50 cm; just big enough for
a man to crawl through.This corner of the prison was apparently chosen as
a tunnel location because of the soft, easily dug, sandy soils. Unfortunately
for the attempted escapees,
the soft soils also caused the downfall of the escape attempt. Digging just
deep enough to pass beneath the bottoms of the stockade posts, the sandy soil
and several stockade posts collapsed into the tunnel before the tunnel could
be extended more than one meter past the stockade line.
Locating the "Deadline" Posts
During the southeast corner investigations, an attempt was made to locate some
of the deadline posts by excavating six one-by-one meter units within the
stockade enclosure. Two post locations were found and were given the designations
of Post Mold #1 and Feature #4. Both post locations were cross-sectioned
and flotation samples were collected for analysis. During the excavation
of Post Mold #1 several artifacts were recovered, including a metal button,
some bone fragments, some unidentifiable metal fragments, and a silver filigreed
writing instrument. Artifacts recovered from Feature 4 included a metal button,
a cut nail, cloth fragments, carbonized floral remains, and two pieces of
bone. One of the bone fragments exhibited evidence of butchering. The carbonized
floral materials consisted of pine straw, pine bark, beans (Phaseolus sp.),
and unidentified plant remains. These items were probably contemporaneous
with the prison's occupation. 
Reconstructions
Investigations of the southwest corner of the prison have
also been proposed,
and may be conducted in the near future. This portion of the site was used
to tend to the sick prisoners held within the prison. Excavations here would
provide us with interesting insights into medical practices at the prison.
The 495-acre park consists of the historic prison site
and the National Cemetery. Congress stated in the authorizing legislation that
this park's purpose is "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".
In 1998 the National Prisoner of War Museum opened at Andersonville, dedicated
to the men and women of this country who have suffered captivity. Their story
is one of sacrifice and courage.
