He will be with us for the next hour to talk about the history of andersonville and why does consider the most notorious site of the civil war. We are opening our phone line so you can join the conversation. If you want to join the conversation, 2027488900. That is for eastern and central time zones. If you live in the pacific or Mountain Time zones, 2027488901. You can also post questions and comments on our facebook page. Facebook. Com cspanhistory. Mr. Leonard, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Page mr. Leonard, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Mr. Leonard it is my pleasure to be here. Lets start with where is andersonville . It is important to start with this idea that military prisoners and prisoners of war are often left out of the mainstream telling of the war. Quite friendly, there are no winners in the story. This is not a battlefield. It is something entirely different. It is a valor and honor. Those concepts take a different form here. And many respects, in a
Adjacent to the cemetery location is eric leonard, the chief of the historical site. He will be with us for the next hour to talk about the history of andersonville and why does consider the most notorious site of the civil war. We are joining our phone line so you can join the conversation. If you want to join the conversation, 2027488900. That is for eastern and central time zones. If in the pacific or Mountain Time zones, 2027488901. You can also post questions and comments on our facebook page. Facebook. Com cspanhistory. Mr. Leonard, thank you for him joining us this afternoon. Mr. Leonard it is my pleasure to be here. Host lets start with where is andersonville . For someone who is not aware of andersonvilles significance, where does it fall . Mr. Leonard it is important to it is important to start with this idea that military prisoners and prisoners of war are often left out of the mainstream telling of the war. Quite friendly, there are no winners in the story. This is not a ba
Different. It is a valor and honor. Those concepts take a different form here. And many respects, in a standard guess, they are prisoners of war, and then you move right back to the battles. Often, and addressing the story, there is an and knowledge of that, and then no detail, and you move on. Andersonville has a name brand recognition. The public often doesnt know any of the details beyond the name and that something unusual took place there. Host lets start with the basics. When was it built . What was its purpose . Mr. Leonard in the fall of 1863 as the Exchange System of the previous two years falls apart, due to the presence of black soldiers in the field, and the question over how to treat like soldiers black soldiers. With afederacy is faced problem. There holding the mostly in the richmond area. Thousands, 10,000 prisoners in richmond it has a drag effect on the community. Resources are going in to maintain the prisoners. If you are in the Confederate Army, or the government,
And that speaks to the two of them in quite frankly not the flattering ways. With the army does the work of using the captured records, the death records that they have with them, with that expedition, hos dorance atwater, he served as a clerk in the prison hospital, and he was one of the halfdozen boys who were keeping the death register, other records of the hospital complex. So, for one of the bravest acts of conscience in the entire civil war. In midaugust 1864, when 100 men are dying a day, he thinks to himself, if my government knew, they would stop this. And he commits an act of bravery. He makes the choice when the chief surgeon is not present to start copying the entire death register. His fellow paroled clerks, they see what he is doing, they know what he is doing, they dont tell. A couple of them copy the idea. The difference is someone like hyde copies the dead from just his home state. Atwater was thinking of that posterity. He was thinking about the thousands of families
The deadline. So andersonville is also a place of great contradiction. In some of the northern prisons, it is a ditch or a line of posts where at night they put candle lanterns on. A line that if you cross you are going to get shot at is the sort of thing which soon shouldnt have any ambiguity. Host the next call is mike from california. You are on with our guest, eric leonard. Caller yes, thank you for the programming. I have kind of a twofold question. Firstly, i want to know what happened to the actual prison site when the war ended . The physical structure. Was it just left or was it torn down and the fields farmed . Wasalso, i know that there a photographer, i think his name mightve been [indiscernible] and i wondered if there were any pictures of the prison after the war ended . I wondered if there was any magazine articles or book that describes that . Mr leonard the ghost and chattels of andersonville is a , a valuable book because it is not a narrative history, it explores var