Andersonville

Published in 1955, Andersonville is a historical fiction novel by MacKinlay Kantor. Told from multiple points of view, the story concerns the Andersonville Fortress that was used as a concentration camp by the South during the American Civil War. A news correspondent during World War II who joined in as a gunner during several battles, Kantor (1904-1977) is the author of over 30 novels; he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Andersonville in 1956. He also established his own publishing house, and several of his novels were adapted into films.

Andersonville is the result of 25 years of research by author MacKinlay Kantor. By investigating diaries, letters, and eye witness accounts written down after the American Civil War, MacKinlay constructs a fictional story of the horrors of the Andersonville Fortress through the multiple viewpoints of the guards, prisoners, and civilians who actually lived through it.

The Civil War has already been raging for two years when, in 1863, the Confederate Army begins construction on a prison camp near Ira Claffey's Georgia plantation. When he asks about it, Ira is told that the camp will hold about 10,000 prisoners, but as the war stretches on, the Union soldiers kept as prisoners in the camp number nearly 50,000. Conditions are bleak: there are no toilets, no shelter, and no water other than a contaminated stream running through the compound. Starvation, disease, and lack of medical care cause the death toll to soar, and more captured Union soldiers arrive every day. The camp is run by Henry Wirz, a cold-blooded, Swiss-born Confederate captain. Wirz is overwhelmed by the job of running the camp; his greatest fear is a prisoner uprising.



As conditions worsen, many prisoners do try various methods of escape. Some try to tunnel under the fence surrounding the compound. Others try to slip away and make a run for it. But for most, the effort fails, and the prisoners are driven to ever more desperate actions. Scurvy causes the prisoners' teeth to fall out. The smallest scratch is soon infected with maggots. Iowa farmer Eben Dolliver is a bird lover, but hunger causes him to kill a swallow and eat it raw. Tom Gusset, an Ohio harness maker and the oldest prisoner at age 55, slowly loses his mind and hallucinates that he is back home. Amid it all, Father Peter Whalen tries to keep the faith while ministering to the prisoners.

One prisoner, Nazareth Stricker, does make a miraculous escape from the camp, but he lost an arm in battle and now finds himself unable to find food or shelter. He sees a hawk shot down and attempts to steal it before the hunter comes, but instead he finds himself face to face with Coral Tebbs, a Confederate veteran who lost a leg in battle. Although Tebbs has every reason to hate Strickler, he instead finds compassion and helps the man. Eventually they become friends.

As Claffey watches the tragedy unfolding at the camp, he is moved by the prisoners' suffering. Even though he is a Confederate who has lost two sons in the war, he cannot stand idly by amid such abuse. Claffey gains details about the camp's conditions from Dr. Harry Elkins, the camp doctor who will likely become his future son-in-law when he marries Claffey's daughter Lucy. Next, Claffey petitions the Confederate command for better treatment for the prisoners, but he is denied. Several other Southern civilians are equally appalled by the camp and do what they can to help in small ways, but they risk being branded as traitors if they are caught.



Meanwhile, the camp is splitting into two factions. On one side are the Raiders, convicts who joined the Union Army rather than go to jail; they are led by William Collins. The other side is made up of idealists and is led by Nathan Dreyfoos, an intellectual. As the Raiders bully the other prisoners, stealing what little food and goods are to be had, the idealists are driven to take a stand. They overpower the Raiders, and after holding trials for each of them, sentence them to hanging.

Conditions do not improve once the Raiders are gone. The camp's food and water stores run out completely, driving some prisoners to eat their own feces out of desperation. Disease and death compliment this hellish landscape. Finally, just a few weeks before the Confederate Army surrenders at Appomattox in 1865, the Union Army liberates the Andersonville camp. They are appalled by what they find.

The war ends, and President Lincoln is assassinated. Claffey walks amid the grounds of the abandoned camp and philosophizes about what went on there. He mourns the thousands who died (more than perished at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg combined) and determines that their story should not be forgotten. Claffey sees the evil in the slavery championed so long by the South, but he also finds fault with the factories of the North, where the lower classes are paid menial wages and kept in economic slavery, in a sense. But by now, his daughter has married Dr. Elkins and is expecting her first child. With hope for the future, he begins the walk back to his ruined plantation.