Since we had to get Serena sorted out yesterday we didn’t get to go to Andersonville so we went today instead. Andersonville National historic site is a memorial to all American prisoners of war, and is built on the site of Camp Sumter, one of the largest Confederate military prisons of the Civil War. I was expecting some of the buildings from that time to be still standing, how stupid am I, there were no buildings, they lived in makeshift tents.
There is a POW museum that we checked out first with information about prisoners of war from the civil war through the gulf war; it is really well done and very detailed. We watched a movie while we were there about POW’s that included interviews of people who were POW’s in WWII through to the Gulf War. It was very effective and so difficult to watch; it actually made me cry. The POW’s were telling what had happened to them while they were captives; for me it’s really hard to believe one person can treat another in the ways described; I’m not sure how the captors live with themselves after having treated another human in these ways.
After we left the museum we took a tour around the grounds where Camp Sumter stood. There are a number of memorials around the site but also markers every few feet or so showing the outline of the prison. It was used for 14 months beginning in early1864, and during that time more than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here, around 13,000 of which died here. Looking at the size of the prison and the number of prisoners it’s hard to imagine how anyone survived, especially when the only water they had was from a stream that ran through the camp. I can’t even begin to imagine the conditions the prisoners had to survive.
Also in the park is Andersonville National Cemetery where today over 18,000 veterans are buried, of this number, 13,800 are the graves of Union soldiers who died during the Civil War. Almost all the graves are marked with the same white stone with a name if it is known, the state the soldier was from, and a number. It’s a pretty sad sight to see row after row of headstones.
On the way home we saw a farmer harvesting his cotton with a giant machine. It looked a lot easier than having to pick each piece of cotton by hand.

Mike: Andersonville is a moving experience!