History of Andersonville Prison

In February 1864, five hundred Union prisoners of war arrived at the Confederate stockade at Anderson Station, Georgia. Andersonville, as it was later known, would become legendary for its brutality and mistreatment, with the highest mortality rate-over 30 percent-of any Civil War prison.

Ovid L. Futch taught at Morehouse College in Atlanta and finished his career as chair of the Department of History at the University of South Florida. He passed away prematurely in 1967, a year before this groundbreaking work on Andersonville was published. It has never gone out of print, Michael P. Gray, assistant professor of history at East Stroudsburg University, is the author of The Business of Captivity in the Chemung Valley: Elmira and Its Civil War Prison, a Seaborg Award honorable mention recipient.