Andersonville Prison Camp (Camp Sumter) | memorial, prisoner-of-war camp, American Civil War 1861-1865

 memorial, prisoner-of-war camp, American Civil War 1861-1865

760 POW Road
Andersonville, GA 31711
(229) 924-0343
www.nps.gov/ande/

Andersonville National Historic Site.

This POW camp was opened in February 1864 and by the end of the war more than 13,000 Union soldiers of the approximately 45,000 POWs had died here, mostly from disease and starvation.

Cpt. Henry Wirz, the camp commandant, was one of only two Confederates from the Civil War convicted as a war criminal. The judge presiding over his trial was Gen. Lew Wallace, who later wrote "Ben Hur"
Wirz was publicly hanged on 10 November 1865, on land adjacent to the U.S. Capitol where the U.S. Supreme Court now stands.

In 1891 the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) bought this land so as to preserve it as a war memorial, and in 1910 it was transferred to the U.S. Government.