Andersonville Prison photographs and documents [decimalized]

Collection of 41 items primarily concerning Andersonville Prison, although other Southern prisons, such as Castle Thunder and Libby Prison (both located in Richmond, Va.), are also briefly documented here. Andersonville Prison, located in Andersonville, Ga., housed Union enlisted troops incarcerated by Confederate forces, and operated from 25 February 1864 to late April 1865. Officially designated as Camp Sumter, it held more than 33,000 prisoners, while its cemetery provided graves for 12,000, although actual death toll may have been much higher. Notorious for its unsavory living conditions, the average amount of space per man ranged from approximately 40.5 square feet to just over 33 square feet, with no sanitation and no shelter. Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville, was tried, convicted, and executed upon the close of the prison in 1865.

Confederate Military Photographer Andrew Jackson Riddle, of Macon, Ga., arrived at Andersonville on 16 August 1864 to photograph General John Winder and Captain Henry Wirz. While at prison headquarters, he attempted to document the prison conditions, and these images attest to the harshness and brutality of life at Andersonville. He was aided by Warren L. Goss, a Union prisoner from Massachusetts, whose typewritten notes and manuscript maps survive in the latter portion of this collection. The images contained here include both Riddle's work, as well as images attributed to the studios of Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady. The Riddle photographs also appear in several versions here, and some bear artistic embellishment with either ink or paint. These alterations may date from the period when the photographs were owned by the Century Co., and were perhaps used as a source for illustrations. Many of these photographs bear ownership stamps of that company, as well as cropping marks and other notations.

Most of these images have been published in historical treatments of the Civil War, and several key texts of interest are: Ovid L. Futch, History of Andersonville Prison (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 1968); William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); and James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Other items collected here include an auction catalog dating from 1915, when the collection changed hands, an undated inventory of the collection by a previous owner, and an anti-Confederate pen and ink sketch by an unknown artist.