Andersonville is now a sleepy little town in southern Georgia. But during the Civil War, it was the site of the notorious Camp Sumter Prison. Here, thousands of captured Union soldiers perished, often from the miserable conditions. Today, the National Park Service maintains the National POW Museum where the prison once stood. The first Union prisoners arrived here on February 24, 1864. What awaited them was simply an open field surrounded by stockade walls. At first, overcrowding was not an issue, until the Confederacy began to imprison hundreds of soldiers there daily….
