Confederate prison operated from February, 1864 until April, 1865. It was a prison without barracks, merely a stockade consisting of twenty-seven acres surrounded by twenty foot walls. Located in Andersonville, Georgia.
Conditions were reported to be so horrible that the mere mention of Andersonville became a rallying cry for the North late in the war. There was a lack of sanitary water and the number of enlisted men held prisoner there was generally around 300% capacity. Of 48,495 Union soldiers processed through Andersonville, 13,700 died as a result of conditions and treatment received there.
Following the war, Captain Henry Wirz, a Swiss mercenary who had been hired as superintendent of Andersonville was tried by a military court and hung for "cruelty and mismanagement." The prison cemetary was made a national cemetery and the grounds are now a national park in honor of those who suffered and died there.