Andersonville National Historic Site is home to the National Prisoner of War Museum and a National Cemetery that began as the prison cemetery but continues to take veterans from subsequent wars, in addition to the grounds of the infamous Confederate prison.
Andersonville Prison housed approximately 45,000 Union prisoners of war during the Civil War in an open air stockade over the last 14 months of the war. Almost one in three prisoners died. There is a great controversy over whether this was the result of savage treatment or simply the fact that the Confederacy didn’t have the resources to feed and care for its own soldiers let alone enemy prisoners.
In the cemetery, the prisoners’ grave markers are almost touching, reflecting the fact that, with fatalities of 100 per day at times, the Confederates dispensed with niceties such as pine boxes and just buried the prisoners shoulder-to-shoulder in shallow trenches. One can see the difference between the closely spaced Civil War tombs and those of more recent wars.
The National Prisoner of War Museum does not focus on Andersonville, though it does have exhibits from the Civil War. It covers World War II and the Vietnam war extensively.
