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Between Feb 1864 and April 1865, 41,000 Union prisoners of warfare were taken to the stockade at Anderson Place, Georgia, where almost 13,000 of them died. Most contemporary accounts put the blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of the Confederates who implemented the jail or on the conspiracy of higher-ranking representatives.On this carefully explored and powerful revisionist account, William Marvel offers a comprehensive record of Andersonville Jail and conditions within it. Based on reliable primary sources including diaries, Union and Confederate administration documents, and words somewhat than exaggerated postwar recollections and such well-known but spurious 'diaries' as that of John Ransom, Marvel's analysis exonerates camp commandant Henry Wirz while others from charges that they deliberately exterminated prisoners, a offense that Wirz was carried out after the warfare.According to Marvel, virulent disease and severe shortages of fruit and vegetables, medical resources, and other needs combined to create a problems beyond Wirz's control. He also argues that the tragedy was frustrated by the Union decision to suspend prisoner exchanges, which intended that many men who might have returned home were instead remaining to sicken and die in captivity.
