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PAGE 6B PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. JULY 12. 2007
New book on Andersonville
by author with Pickens ties
By Jeff Warren
Ghosts and Shadows of
Andersonville, a history by
Pickens County native, Robert
S. Davis, is a minutely detailed
account of Confederate Camp
Sumter.
That was the official name of
the Confederate war prison
operated near Andersonville,
Georgia beginning in February
1864 after Ulysses Grant
assumed overall command of
Union forces in the Civil War,
and federal war policy suspend
ed the exchange of POW's,
ongoing until that time.
Though the prison remained
in operation until the war's end
in April 1865, the Confederacy
evacuated most Andersonville
prisoners to another prison at
Millen, Georgia in September
1864. Few were ever returned.
But during its months-long,
overcrowded entry into infamy
from February to September of
1864, Andersonville amassed a
33 percent attrition rate.
Roughly one of every three pris
oners held there died there.
During that time the shelter
less prison pen once held as
many as 33,000 men at one
time. A single stream crossed
through the stockade and served
as both drinking water source
and sanitary sewer.
The prison stench escaped its
walls and overflowed the sur
rounding country. The ground
inside the stockade, it was said,
appeared to be in motion, alive
with multitudes of vermin
insects.
Camp Sumter became the
largest prison of any kind "up to
its time and for generations to
come," Davis penned in the
book's introduction.
"Statistically, it would have
been the fifth-largest city in the
Confederacy," he wrote. "Of the
roughly 800,000 Americans
held in prison camps in all of the
nation's wars, some 40,000 were
inmates at this camp.
"Men crowded into this
open-air stockade of less than
thirty acres, starved, sickened
and died. Of those who entered
its gates, almost 13,000 remain
forever in its cemetery.
Thousands more of the prison's
victims failed to recover fully
from the physical and mental
effects of the experience,
"Andersonville also became
the first great example of
bureaucratic collapse due to an
administration that was unable
to manage the modern forces
that, uncontrolled, create such
horrors. For the first time, mis
management of transportation
and resources proved fatal for
thousands of men."
While Davis faithfully docu-
Robert Davis, a history
and genealogy professor at
Wallace State College in
Hanceville, Alabama,
authored a book on the
Civil War prison at
Andersonville.
ments the overall disaster of
Andersonville, the strength of
his book lies in quirky details he
uncovers. For example, he
records some women were cap
tives at the stockade—not with
in the prison pen itself but just
outside its walls.
One was Irish-born Margaret
Larney Leonard. Wife to Isaac
Newton Leonard of Company
H, 2nd Massachusetts Heavy
Artillery, Ms. Leonard followed
her husband to war, doing her
"raiders" who by violence, both
real and threatened, appropriat
ed the wealth of others.
A subordinate Confederate
officer to the camp comman
dant, Captain Henry Wirz,
worked in near daily contact
with prisoners and initiated jus
tice against the raiders. He chid
ed inmates for letting a relative
handful of prisoners cow 26,000
(the inmate count while the
raiders operated).
Wirz cut off the prisoners’
part as a civilian cook for Union
troops. Captured together when
Confederates retook Plymouth,
North Carolina in April 1864,
the Leonards were sent south to
Camp Sumter.
For a time, Margaret served
as a house servant to the family
of Confederate Captain Henry
Wirz, an administrator at the
prison. But when Margaret
proved obnoxious, Wirz sent her
packing, back north to Castle
Thunder, a Confederate prison
at Richmond, Virginia for civil
ian POW's. Ultimately
Margaret's unpleasantness
secured her release back across
Union lines.
Another woman at
Andersonville, Francis Jane
Scadin Hunt, suffered capture
with her civilian husband,
Herbert Hunt, a sea captain.
Captain Hunt's involvement
with a questionable shipping
entrepreneur, John Morris, pro
longed Hunt's captivity.
Through the compassion of a
Confederate medical officer at
the prison, the Hunt's found a
lodging place outside the stock
ade. Herbert Hunt worked in the
prison hospital. During their
Camp Sumter sojourn, the cou
ple was blessed with a son, born
July 9, 1864.
Perhaps even more surprising
than women or children at
Andersonville were the activi
ties of a criminal prisoner gang
that terrorized other prisoners
inside the stockade.
Trading of many kinds
occurred within the prison,
much of it pointed toward secur
ing enough food to survive.
Some prisoners actually accu
mulated valuables. Such men
became targets for a gang of
souusr
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American Association for State
and Local history, he said,
“because my book argues that
local history is national history.’’
The Journal of American
History just published a favor
able book review, he said, and
the same production company
that shot the recent History
Channel documentary about
Sherman’s March is now dis
cussing a documentary based on
Davis’ Andersonville research.
Ghosts and Shadows of
Andersonville, Essays on the
Secret Social Histories of
America's Deadliest Prison,
published by Mercer University
Press, is available through the
Pickens County Library.
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A new book on Andersonville, filled with interesting
detail, was penned by Robert S. Davis, an historian with
roots in Pickens County.
daily food ration until the major
ity rose up to subdue the male
factors. After two days without
food, prisoners led Wirz and
Confederate guards to the
raiders, and 84 were arrested.
Trial by fellow prisoners fol
lowed with most raiders sen
tenced to beatings by running
the gauntlet. The six worst
offenders received death by
hanging, delivered by their fel
low prisoners and witnessed by
the whole stockade. As a foot
note, most of the gang of raiders
were of Irish descent and from
New York City.
Davis tells another interest
ing tale about the postwar trial
of Captain Wirz. Scapegoated
by the national government,
Wirz was held responsible for
Andersonville's horrors, though
he was never the prison's com
mandant. That man was
Confederate Brigadier General
John H. Winder, who died
before the war ended.
Tried by military tribunal
with his execution the scripted
ending from the start, Wirz was
made to pay for a nation's
inflamed outrage.
Lawyer Orrin Smith Baker
presented Wirz' defense after the
captain's original lawyer team
resigned from the case. Under
the partisan procedures of such
military tribunals, had Baker not
come forward to defend Wirz,
the government prosecutor
could have assumed the dual
task of both prosecuting and
defending Wirz.
Davis credits Baker with
stepping from obscurity, making
an impassioned inspired defense
of Wirz (he compares Baker's
work to John Adams and
Clarence Darrow), and then
returning to obscurity and dying
there.
Details of the Wirz trial as
recorded by Davis surpass the
fictionalized Andersonville
Trial, an award-winning drama
based on the Wirz case.
Better understanding the
nature of trials by military tribu
nal makes the Davis retelling
pertinent for our present time
and current war. It is just one
example of how history bears
strongly on the present, making
Davis' book both a thorough his
tory and a timely read.
With family ties in Pickens
County, Davis lived here 14
years after college. A founding
member of the Pickens County
Historical Society, he penned
numerous articles about local
history he is now compiling into
a book.
Davis lives in Alabama
where he teaches history and
genealogy at Wallace State
College.
By telephone, Thursday, June
21, Davis told the Progress his
Andersonville book has drawn
scholarly attention. It recently
won an award of merit from the
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