(July 2001) The original lock, key and hinge from the South Gate of the Andersonville stockade are reminders of the brute force it took to keep thousands of trained soldiers in captivity. Confederate guards kept watch over the compound from the 52 towers surrounding the prison stockade. The dead line, about 19 feet within the walls, was a boundary no man could cross without being shot at by a guard

(July 2001)

(July 2001) (Left) Jacob F. Goodbread, a native of Wurtemburg, Germany, was drafted into Company B, 147th New York Infantry, in August 1863. He was captured at the Wilderness and died in Andersonville in August 1864. (Right) Samuel George Fletcher, a private in Company D, 5th New York Artillery, was captured at Piedmont, Virginia in June 1864. He survived his imprisonment at Andersonville and returned for the dedication of the New York monument there in 1916

(July 2001) Civil War prisons

(July 2001) Enlarge Andersonville prison, officially named Camp Sumter, occupied a bare 26 ½ acres enclosed by a double palisade made of pine logs. A railing inside the stockade constituted a "deadline." Guards had orders to shoot anyone who crossed the deadline. No shelter was furnished; men bought wooden poles for $1.50 and pooled their blankets to make tents. Water came from wells the prisoners dug and from the Stockade Branch of Sweetwater Creek which ran through the center of the camp. Open latrines bordered the lower end and sewage from the guards' camp, outside the stockade, also emptied into it. Spread by flies and maggots, a fatal dysentery, along with scurvy, resulted in a death rate of up to 130 men daily. Lithograph by Pvt. Thomas O'Dea