Andersonville National Historic Site

Bronze panel on the rear of the New York Monument.

I made my first visit to Andersonville National Historic Site a couple weeks ago, only 40 some years after my first attempt to read MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. My wife and I were attending the 26^th annual meeting of the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends. In all, 53 people attended the gathering, headquartered in Americus, Georgia. We spent one full day touring the prison site, the National Prisoner of War Museum, and the National Cemetery. 

Alan Huffman wrote an excellent
book chronicling, in part, the Civil
War saga of Anne's great grandfather.

Interpreting the site for us was historian Kevin Frye, who has devoted countless hours to helping people research the prisoners, and guards, assigned to Camp Sumter. A considerable number of passengers on the Sultana had been held at Andersonville. Anne's ancestor, who survived the disaster, was held at Cahaba prison in Alabama, though apparently some records do list him as spending time at Andersonville (we think erroneously). 

Like so many battlefields, the pastoral scene at Andersonville today, a rural expanse of green, with birds chirping in the pleasant spring weather, presents the visitor with little sense of the abject misery and horrors of the Civil War-era stockade.

One of Thomas O'Dea's drawings of the prison in 1864.
See a full set of his prison drawings here. 

Issuing rations, Andersonville Prison, Georgia, August 17, 1864.
Photo by A. J. Riddle (click to enlarge)

Below are a few images I took on April 27 (the anniversary of the Sultana explosion). To see a few dozen more photos, visit my Flickr set here. 

Kevin Frye telling the story of the prison 

Partial reconstruction of the stockade

The "Sinks" — downstream end of Stockade Branch

For reasons lost to history, the stone of Sgt. L. S. Tuttle
of Maine has a stone dove affixed to it, the only grave
in the National Cemetery with a special adornment.