Prison Life in Andersonville

A firsthand account of the deplorable conditions within the most infamous prisoner-of-war camp of the Confederacy. Though functioning only during the last year of the Civil War, nearly 13,000 of 45,000 incarcerated Union soldiers died under inhumane conditions.

By : John Levi Maile (1844 - 1934)

00 - Commendation, Dedication, and Person Forward 01 - Ch.1 - The Writer's Credentials 02 - Ch.2 - An Inside View of a Confederate Prison 03 - Ch.3 - The Prison Commissariat 04 - Ch.4 - A Dearth of Water 05 - Ch.5 - A Cry to Heaven 06 - Ch.6 - Unsealing of the Spring 07 - Ch.7 - Was It a Miracle? 08 - Ch.8 - Deliverance 09 - Ch.9 - An Incident by the Way 10 - Ch.10 - A Sequel 11 - Appendix A - Contributory Testimony 12 - Appendix B - Responsibility for Prison Treatment 13 - Appendix C - Woman's Relief Corps Memorial 14 - Appendix D - A Memorial Day Meditation 15 - Appendix E - Shall the Government Confer Permanent Honors on Confederate Heroes?

The establishment and perpetuity of our Union have been secured by the sacrifices of war. The Declaration of Independence preceded seven weary years of conflict, whose culminating sufferings were experienced in the British prison ships and in the winter camp at Valley Forge. In this contest the patriotic soldiers of the north and of the south made common cause, and what they did and what they suffered indicates a measure of the enduring worth of our national life. The story of revolutionary days finds an enlarged counterpart in the sufferings of the civil war.

A phase of the great struggle is recalled in the following narrative of events, which belongs to a rapidly receding past. Soon no survivor will be left to tell the tale; hence the desirability of putting it into permanent form before it fades altogether from recollection. To some the story of the breaking out of Providence Spring may seem to have been given undue prominence in this record; but it is around that event that these reminiscences gather, and the circumstances attending were so indelibly stamped upon the memory of the writer that they call for expression. Probably he was the youngest of the group of Andersonville prisoners who participated in the concert of prayer that preceded the unsealing of the fountain, and on that account he may be the only survivor.

In the course of the narrative unpleasant things have been referred to in the interests of truth, but nothing has been set down in malice. The Great Healer has closed up many wounds of hearts as well as of bodies, and the grass has grown green over the graves of buried controversies. The boys in gray and the boys in blue now fraternize around common campfires and under a common flag. But while the writer has none save the kindliest feelings toward his brothers of the lost cause, he cannot help rejoicing that alike in the clash of arms, and in the more peaceful conflict of ideas which has followed, the principles for which he and others bled and suffered have gained the victory and are among the things which never perish from the earth.