(7-01) Northeast view of the stockade from marker near the commandant's headquarters. Marker for southwest corner of stockade at right center of photo. Site Marker (The Commandant's Perspective): From these heights near headquarters, Capt. Henry A. Wirz could observe everything within the prison walls. Envision the white post perimeter as the stockade; 30,000 human beings within that area; the din of all those voices, the groans from the hospital, the shouts of the guards, the smell of unwashed clothes and bodies. Today's landscape of quiet grass softens for us the images of Andersonville. Wirz, the prison commandant, did not have that luxury
  
The prison commandant, Capt. Henry A. Wirz, was responsible for maintaining order and discipline, imposing punishment and providing rations. In search of a scapegoat after the war, the federal government tried Wirz for "murder, in violation of the laws of war," and sentenced him to death
  
Some ten miles south of Andersonville, residents of Americus complained of the smell. By the summer of 1864, the stockade became so overcrowded that all those individual prisoners may have appeared as a single, shuffling organism

Panorama from the Commadant's Perspective

(7-01) Third hospital site, south of the stockade. The view is looking east. A Confederate earthwork near the southeast corner of the stockade is in the background. Site Marker (The Prison Hospital): This empty field was the site of Andersonville's third and last hospital. There were two previous hospitals within nine months. It did not take prisoners long to realize that few patients returned. Knowing that medicines were in short supply, even the sickest men resisted going to the hospital. They preferred to die among friends and regimental comrades
 
The third hospital was a cluster of open, barracks-like sheds with a surrounding stockade. Historical maps pinpoint the hospital site
  
"The hospital is a tough place to be in .... In some cases before a man is fairly dead, he is stripped of everything, coat, pants, shirt, finger rings (if he has any). These the nurses trade to the guards." John L. Ransom, 9th Michigan Cavalry, April 15, 1864
  
Prison conditions were so unsanitary that the slightest scratch could provide an entry for deadly microbes. Doctors experimented with local herbs and fold remedies in a desperate attempt to combat rampant infections

(7-01) The "Sinks"
 
Enlargement of the site marker which contains a wartime photo taken by Confederate, A. J. Riddle in August 1864. Providence Spring House and North Gate are in the background. Deadline post at right edge of photo