The Stewards of History at Andersonville National Historic Site

Park Rangers at Andersonville National Historic Site, Georgia.

The stewards of Andersonville National Historic Site are tasked with maintaining the history of America’s darkest moments. The Andersonville site houses the National Prisoner of War Museum and the Andersonville National Cemetery. These park professionals walk the very ground which supported one of the largest, and the deadliest, prisoner of war camps of the Civil War, Camp Sumter. Run by the Confederacy, Camp Sumter held 45,000 Union soldiers over the course of its 14 months of existence, along with rampant disease and starvation. The death toll of 13,000 prisoners was in no small part due to the already stagnant supplies and food of the Confederate Army, and the overcrowding of the prison, which was a cause of the freeze on prisoner swaps between the two warring sides. 

The National Prisoner of War Museum serves as a memorial for all American POWs and today's veterans join the Union prisoners buried here over a century ago.