Andersonville: 26 Acres of Hell | History Traveler Episode 87

[Music] in 1863 the united states was in the middle of the civil war one of the most violent conflicts that that this country has ever seen and up in the richmond area which was the capital of the confederacy they're having some issues there were food shortages and kind of straining those shortages was the fact that there was an ever growing number of union pows that were being collected there so an effort was made to move these union prisoners of war to another location and one of the spots that they were moved at this place right here this is the notorious location of the andersonville prisoner of war camp [Music] [Music] so this is the location of the andersonville prisoner of war camp here in andersonville georgia now as you can see the original structures have long since disappeared so you have to use your imagination a little bit and they've done a a pretty good thing here in in helping us to to do that all around the perimeter of the camp you'll see these white stakes so like this one right here is on the far outside says stockade this is where the original outer wall would have been now it was originally 16 acres and then was expanded out to 26 acres and then you'll also see a second line of stakes here that are kind of on the inner perimeter and this is called the deadline so right now i'm standing on the inside of where andersonville the andersonville camp would have been and if you would have crossed this line right here and approached the outer wall well then confederate guards and these things called pigeon roosts uh would have shot you all right so we're going to kind of take a look around and see what they have left here at andersonville here's something kind of interesting at different points here within the perimeter of andersonville you'll see these just holes in the ground uh and it could be one of two things there were attempts by prisoners to escape so they would use spoons or plates or you know whatever they could and there were so many people packed in here that they could kind of hide their efforts and it could also be attempts to dig wells to get to fresh water but anyway i thought that was kind of interesting the union prisoners that came here to andersonville uh would have been brought here by rail and they would have been dropped off i think a few miles from here if i'm not mistaken and they would have been marched up this hill that i'm coming up right now and where they would have entered into this awful place was right here through the north gate of andersonville now all of this that we're seeing right now has been reconstructed but originally the stockade walls here at andersonville would have been built from pine logs that were cut by slaves and then erected all the way around this perimeter so right here is where all of the union pows would have entered through [Music] now as the union pows would have walked through the north gate they would have come into the inner walls of andersonville prison and just looked out over a sea of the emaciated bodies of once strong men who smelled like filth were covered in lice and we're dying by the thousands in here [Music] so all total there were 45 000 men that came through andersonville and of those over 13 000 never left [Music] my gosh what an awful place this must have been [Music] i'm up here on a high point right now where we can get a pretty commanding look at the prisoner of war camp here now originally i mentioned this whole complex was about 16 acres and the boundary would have been right down through here and then whenever they realized that they were quickly filling up well they expanded up the hill just opposite that creek there at the bottom another 10 acres just by comparison i mentioned that this camp held 45 000 prisoners fenway park holds i think around 37 000 so imagine everybody in fenway park being crammed into this area and still having to take on about another eight thousand people now as one might expect one of the biggest issues here at andersonville was access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitation so the confederate plan at this place was to put the camp right over the top of a flowing stream and you can see that stream right here behind me now the idea was that the confederate i'm sorry the union prisoners could drink from the upstream side and then you can see behind me they would bathe a little bit further down and then at the far downstream side well that's where they would have their latrine the problem was is that whenever they put up the stockade walls it ended up backing up this creek and turning this whole bottom area of the camp into a swamp so not only did you have you know stagnant drinking water and like the inner mixing of bathing water and drinking water and latrine water but it also created this haven for mosquitoes which i mean we're here in august right now which really is an awful time to visit georgia because it's morning and it's already hot and humid but the mosquitoes are terrible here right now in addition to all of that if you go even further upstream from this creek well that's where the confederate guard camp was so they were using that for drinking they were using that for bathing they were using that for latrine and it was flowing right down here into the union pow drinking water awful awful situation [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] i've moved over to the eastern side of the camp now and this is on the the downstream side and you can see there's the marker for the outer wall that's the one that would have backed the stream up and turned this whole bottom area into just this stagnant swamp and then having 30 to 45 000 people crammed in here all using this area i can't even imagine the smell that this must have emitted just swamp water and disease feces filth urine gosh a lot of people here died of like typhoid cholera can't even imagine [Music] i'm over here on the east side of the camp now overlooking the stream and they have a little board here with a picture showing what the inside of the camp looked like this was taken in august of 1864. and man oh man [Music] unbelievable [Music] what we're looking at here is a part of the reconstructed wall on the northeast side and it looks like they've also reconstructed now this little tool here that i'm guessing was for punishment for uh some activity inside the camp or trying to escape or something like that and then right here these things were called pigeon roosts so this is where the camp guards would be stationed and they would have these positioned about every 30 yards all along the perimeter and my gosh that had to be boring as heck to set up there and also pretty numbing to the senses to be sitting up there and looking at what was happening inside that camp awful now i'm here again on the the northeast corner of the andersonville prison just outside the walls and all around the perimeter of the prison they have these old earthworks that were built so you can see kind of a trench right there and then these were defenses where as you can see they had cannon set up to defend against any attack from the outside but also if need be any threat from the inside now we've already talked about the unsanitary conditions here and the lack of accessible drinking water well in mid-august of 1864 there was a heavy rainstorm and right here at this very spot there was a spring that gushed out of the hillside and they ended up calling this spot providence spring so so the word providence literally means the protective care of god if we go in here and look and i think 1901 some of the ex-prisoners that were here at andersonville erected this little pavilion because this was a a transformative moment in their life and look what it says here in the midst of all that they had gone through or in spite of all that they had gone through they have lincoln's words with charity to all and malice toward none if anybody had reason for hate or for malice it was these people and yet they chose forgiveness instead [Music] pretty powerful all right well that was andersonville uh man quite the place i think for me the the most impactful spot was that providence spring just the realization that [Music] these men in in the worst situation and in the most hopeless place that you could possibly imagine still knew that god was taking care of him and he was providing for them i would think that anybody that was at this place walked out a transformed man and didn't live a another day of their life without thinking about this place and thinking about how in spite of how awful it was god was merciful and saw him through it man oh man well that was andersonville for now we're getting ready to head over to the national cemetery for andersonville but that will be in the next video [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 623,939

Rating: 4.9049869 out of 5

Keywords: history, history underground, history traveler, travel, georgia, civil war, civil war history, union, confederacy, confederate, andersonville, andersonville prisoner of war camp, prisoner of war, andersonville civil war prison, andersonville prison, andersonville national historic site

Id: C6B3LbMM8no

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020