Warner Robins, GA Day 4

Monday, 7/06/2015
Warner Robins, GA

A rare thing happened today.  I got up before Bill!  Since I was up I decided to make biscuits and gravy.  Bill got up just as I was finishing getting them ready.  So we had a nice breakfast before we took off to go to Andersonville prison.  The skies were overcast and it looked like rain but it never fell; at least not where we were.

Off we went.  It was a nice drive through very green areas.  It looked like there were a lot of pecan trees.  Of course it rains here every day so it should be green.

The site of Andersonville Prison, a Civil War prison, is now a National Historic Site.  The visitor's Center is also the site of the National Prisoner of War Museum.  It is dedicated to all American POW's regardless of the war they served in.  It is very well done except for a few areas that are too dark, which makes it hard to read the exhibits.  We spent about an hour in the museum before touring the prison grounds.

I did not take any pictures inside the museum, it just didn't seem right.

The tour of Andersonville prison is a driving tour and you can check out a CD to listen to as you drive around.  You are welcome to get out of your car and explore the various stops.

Andersonville was a Confederate prison hastily built in 1864 to help relieve crowding in Richmond prisons.  It was formally known as Camp Sumter but called Andersonville.  It was never finished, mainly just the walls and gates.  In February the first prisoners started arriving.  It was built to hold 10,000 men and was 16 1/2 acres.  By June there were so many prisoners there that it was expanded to 26 1/2 acres but it still remained crowded with over 32,000 prisoners.  Andersonville was actually only in use for 14 months but nearly 13,000 soldiers died there, mostly from disease and starvation.

The pictures above are recreations of the walls and gates.  There were no rooms or buildings for the prisoners to stay in.  They had to scrounge to find anything to make a shelter.  They called these shelters "shebangs".

After touring the prison grounds you can tour Andersonville National Cemetery.   This is where the prisoners who died were buried.  It is also an active National Cemetery.  During the war a prisoner named Dorence Atwater was detailed to work in the hospital where he recorded the names and grave locations of the deceased.  He secretly made a copy of this list and smuggled it out when he was released.  After the war he returned with Clara Barton and the US Army Quartermaster on an expedition to mark the grave of the dead.  With his list they were able to identify over 95 percent of the graves.

Graves of the first men to die 

Because of understaffing by the Confederates and no prisoners who were officers, some of the men formed gangs and stole, abused and killed their fellow prisoners.  They were called Raiders.  Eventually the other prisoners were able to overcome these Raiders.  The 6 key Raiders were tried and found guilty and hanged.  They are buried separately from the other prisoners.

The commander of Andersonville, Captain Henry Wirz, was the only person held responsible for the violations and issues there and was hanged after the war.  Was he the only one responsible?  Probably not.  His prison was understaffed, under-supplied, and over crowded as were most POW camps in both the North and South.  His is just the most famous.


So that is all for now.  Here are all the pictures I took today.