The Andersonville National Historic Site, located near Andersonville, Georgia, preserves the former Camp Sumter (also known as Andersonville Prison), a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War. Most of the site lies in southwestern Macon County, adjacent to the east side of the town of Andersonville. As well as the former prison, the site also contains the Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum.
The site is an iconic reminder of the horrors of Civil War prisons. It was commanded by Major Henry Wirz, who was tried and executed after the war for murder. It was overcrowded to four times its capacity, with inadequate water supply, reduction in food rations, and unsanitary conditions. Of the approximately 45,000 Union prisoners held at Camp Sumter during the war, nearly 13,000 men died. The chief causes of death were scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery. After the war, Henry Wirz, commandant of the inner stockade at Camp Sumter, was tried by a military tribunal on charges of conspiracy and murder.
Wirz was found guilty and was sentenced to death, and on November 10, 1865, he was hanged. Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the Civil War.
In 1890, the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Georgia, bought the site of Andersonville Prison through membership and subscriptions. In 1910 the site was donated to the federal government by the Woman's Relief Corps (auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_National_Historic_Site
This volume, a report of the commission on the costruction of the Massachusetts Monument at the Andersonville National Site, contains addresses given at the dedication of the monument in December, 1901.
