Andersonville's Hospital

by Denise Weimer

Most readers of this blog will likely have heard of Georgia’s notorious Civil War prisoner of war camp, Andersonville, built in early 1864 to relieve the prisons around Richmond. The hewn-log stockade was expanded to enclose 261.5 acres. By June, around 26,000 men were encamped in tents and shanties in a space meant to house ten thousand. Conditions were so bad that one prisoner from Connecticut wrote: “Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness, ‘Can this be hell? God protect us!’”

For today’s post, I’d like to focus on a lesser-known aspect of Andersonville which research for the hero’s backstory of my May 2024 novel, When Hope Sank, brought to light—the hospital. John Ransom of the 9th Michigan Cavalry wrote of the Andersonville medical facilities, “The hospital is a tough place to be in… In some cases before a man is fairly dead, he is stripped of everything, coat, pants, shirt, finger rings (if he has any). The nurses trade to the guards.”

The hospital as it functioned that summer of the worst overcrowding was the third medical facility at the prison camp and was described as a cluster of open, barrack-like sheds and tents surrounded by a stockade uphill and east from the main fort. Select trees had been left over the five acres, and it had tents for 800, though these were overflowing.

Confederate surgeon Dr. John M. Howell arrived in July 1864 to serve as acting assistant surgeon. Dr. Isiah White then headed a fifteen-person staff. Each surgeon was paired with an assistant, usually a paroled Union prisoner, and they examined roughly two hundred prisoners a day. Some physicians accused Dr. White of withholding medical supplies, and others could not tell who was really in charge of the hospital, Dr. White or Andersonville’s infamous commandant, Captain Henry Wirz, who was later tried for war crimes.

Dr. Howell’s letter to his wife upon his arrival read, “Sick and emaciated, naked, ragged and dirty – some on straw with a blanket under them – some without either – some that will die tomorrow, some today – some dying with another whose face is turned toward him breathing his last.” At that time, prisoners were dying at a rate of a hundred per day. During the month of August, nearly 3,000 men died in Andersonville at the same time the medical team decreased by three, leaving twelve physicians.

The most common ailments included diarrhea (deaths, 5,492) and scurvy (deaths, 3,661). The filth in the prison was so bad that any scratch or insect bite could be followed by rapid gangrene, leading to many amputations.

The evacuation orders that came September 7 relieved the prison at last of three-fourths of its population, and thereby minimized the number of patients as well. In October, there were still 1,280 sick reported out of 2,500 relatively healthy (though still starving) men. In December, during the coldest winter in 25 years in South Georgia, prisoners again arrived daily from other locations. But in late February, 1865, an agreement was reached that the prisoners at Andersonville would be shipped to Vicksburg for exchange.

Tragically, a number of these POWs ended up on the Sultana, the steamboat fated to explode and become our nation’s largest maritime disaster.

When Hope Sank: The Civil War took Lily Livingston’s parents, twin brother, and home. She hides her Union loyalties to protect her younger brother while working in her uncle’s riverside inn—and dismisses the threats of a saboteur as bragging. Until the Sultana steamboat explodes in the Mississippi. The fiery explosion threatens to render Andersonville Prison survivor Cade Palmer unable to practice medicine again. But the tender care of the girl who rescues him sparks both faith and romance. When coded messages pass through the inn, Cade and Lily must work together to prevent another tragedy.

https://www.amazon.com/When-Hope-Sank-April-Remember/dp/1636098290/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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