Teaching With the Film Andersonville: What It Gets Right and Wrong

Andersonville — officially Camp Sumter — was the largest military prison the Confederacy built during the Civil War. It went up early in 1864, when Confederate officials decided to move the many Union prisoners held around Richmond, Virginia, somewhere more secure and with more food. In the fourteen months it operated, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were held there, and some 13,000 died of disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding or exposure.

The 1996 film Andersonville is still a popular classroom tool. This guide helps teachers separate history from Hollywood, and students think critically about how events are portrayed.

The film in brief

Made by TNT and directed by John Frankenheimer, the film was made to entertain, not necessarily to teach. Nearly three hours long, it follows Massachusetts soldiers captured at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in early June 1864. At Andersonville an old comrade warns them off the creek water and the Raiders, prisoners who steal and kill to live well. They fail to tunnel out, and finally help capture, try and execute the Raiders before the prisoners are released or moved. Its strength is its visual recreation of the stockade and its authentic background detail. It may not suit younger students; the park lends its own shorter films.

Andersonville in popular culture

The Raiders

The conflict between the Raiders and the other prisoners drives the film's plot. The Raiders were real: several hundred prisoners active in the early summer of 1864, many of them prewar criminals or "bounty jumpers" who enlisted and deserted again and again for the signing bonuses.

They stole food, clothing, tools and money, sometimes killed, and preyed above all on new arrivals — "fresh fish." Other prisoners formed the "Regulators" and arrested them. With Wirz's approval, a trial was held inside the prison with newly arrived prisoners as jurors. Most Raiders, convicted of lesser crimes, ran a gauntlet of prisoners armed with clubs. The six ringleaders, convicted of murder, were hanged inside the stockade on July 11, 1864, and at the prisoners' request buried apart from the other dead, where their graves remain.

Film versus fact. The Raiders were a real problem but a brief one, not the center of daily life. The prison stayed open nearly 10 months after the hangings; at its peak, late July through August 1864, with 33,000 men inside, the Raiders were gone and the struggle was to survive. The sailor Munn, prominent in the film, was there less than three weeks, arriving in mid-June, after the film's Cold Harbor men.

Captain Henry Wirz

Captain Wirz and his dogs, with the bloodhound Spot in front. From Thomas O'Dea's drawings of Andersonville Prison; NPS photo.

Swiss-born, Wirz came to the United States in 1849 and joined the 4th Louisiana Infantry; badly wounded in the right arm, he was assigned to General John Winder, superintendent of military prisons.

He took command at Andersonville in April 1864, but only of the inside of the stockade: without control of guards or supplies, he could do little about rations or conditions — though he still withheld already inadequate rations as punishment. He stayed until the war's end and was arrested in Americus, Georgia, at the beginning of May 1865.

The most famous Confederate tried for war crimes, he faced a military tribunal from August 23 to October 18, 1865, and was executed on November 10, 1865.

Film versus fact. Prisoners called Wirz foul-mouthed and hot-tempered, and accused him of withholding food or even killing prisoners; his defenders say the Confederacy simply had nothing to give.

The film barely touches the command above him: General Winder, whose son Sidney chose the site for its railroad and a reported "large supply of beautiful clear water," and whose nephew Richard built it.

The closing credits repeat his supporters' claim that he was the only person tried or executed after the war, a lone scapegoat. In fact there were nearly 1,000 military tribunals between the war's end and early 1866, several ending in executions, until President Andrew Johnson stopped them.

What the film gets right

• Sanitation, shelter, disease, food and above all the need for clean water are fairly accurate.
• Many prisoners did tunnel; most were caught and brought back. Of the 45,000 held, only around 300 escaped.
• The Raiders were real, preyed on fellow soldiers, and were tried and hanged inside the stockade.
• African American prisoners appear, as they should: around 100, most from the 54th Massachusetts and the 8th and 35th U.S. Colored Troops, often put on work details outside the walls, as the film shows.

What it changes or leaves out

• Timing. The film opens in June 1864, when the prison had already been open four months and held around 20,000 men.
• Real names, invented stories. Patrick Shea, a boy from New York, was a real prisoner, but he died in March 1864, among the first to die there — not in time to help the film's heroes. Martin Blackburn was a real prisoner who died at Andersonville; nothing else is known of him.
• The hangings. The film makes them quick. In reality Charles Curtis broke away and was chased back to the gallows by prisoners, and Collins's rotten rope snapped, so he too was brought back.
• Providence Spring. Left out entirely: in a severe storm in August 1864 a spring of clean water appeared inside the stockade.
• The ending. The prisoners were never emptied out at once. From September 1864 those fit to travel were moved away from General William T. Sherman's march through Georgia, gradually, down to a few thousand by winter, when many were sent back; the last left in late April 1865.
• The last shot. Grave 7624 in the cemetery's Section H appears to be Blackburn's; his real grave, 10674, is near the back, and a slipcover moved it to the front row for the camera.

Sources

Rewritten from the National Park Service article "Using the Film Andersonville in the Classroom" (public domain), in hubnx's own words. The source spells the novelist both "MacKinlay" and "McKinley" Kantor, and the illustrator "O'Deae"; the page uses MacKinlay Kantor and Thomas O'Dea. Minor misspellings ("Nuremburg", "arfter", "exection") are corrected.