, who is married, in fact, to one of my employees, dr. Glen robins, he says and i agree completely, generally, you can either talk about andersonville or the other military prisons of war. It becomes emotionally difficult to try to do both. And i will explore that. And i am going to weave in between the two a little bit. A note on semantics before i start any further. I hesitate to use the acronym p. O. W. In a civil war context. Because its a 20th century term. Like to talk a lot. Prisoner of war slows me down a little bit. Civil war prisons and prisoners of war fall outside of the traditional heroic narrative of the war. And looking into this story, in a sense, that requires one to dive deeply into the wreckage of the war, the consequences of the war. And, again, you lose objectivity very quickly the longer you stay down in the wreckage of the war. Andersonville is the most famous of the military prisons. Its a long way from the rest of the civil war world, both literally and figurat
And i like to talk a lot. Prisoner of war slows me down a little bit. Civil war prisons and prisoners of war fall outside of the traditional heroic narrative of the war. And looking into this story, in a sense, that requires one to dive deeply into the wreckage of the war, the consequences of the war. And, again, you lose objectivity very quickly the longer you stay down in the wreckage of the war. Andersonville is the most famous of the military prisons. Its a long way from the rest of the civil war world, both literally and figuratively. The prison site was chosen on purpose 150 years ago to be as remote and as insulated a place in the confederacy, far from perceived locations of battle. And 150 years later, this prisoner of war story remains distant from the rest of the narrative. We have the tendency to talk about prisoner of war camps, and andersonville, off to the side of the main narrative of the war. Its, you know, as we talk about battles and campaigns, oh, by the way, theres
You can read faster than i can talk so i wont read the slides. I want you to see beautiful places i love. They are history and parks and recreation and National Resources and frankly the lungs of the city are largely these forts and the parks. So there we start. As frank said the city was unprotected down below. This is Fort Washington. If you havent been there, you should go. Its quite different from the forts that were built during the civil war. After bull run, lincoln knew the city was vulnerable. Thats when he ordered director Major General john g. Barnard to design forts around the city to protect it. Here they are. These are the ones available there. It was quite an amazing feat to build all those. It was just tremendous. Here they are there. Ive circled them here on this old map, the ones that are under government ownership today. The park service owns all the ones in washington, d. C. And one in maryland and one in virginia. The ones in virginia are owned by local governments.
Theyve left a large train of munitions in the Eastern Central portion of atlanta that obviously cant get out. And so they set it on fire. This is 18 boxcars full of explosives. And you can imagine the sound that was heard 15, 20 miles away. This is the scene incidentally thats depicted in gone with the wind when red is in the wagon trying to get scarlet and the baby out, and theres all the sets burning in the background. I told my kids some of those sets were from the wizard of oz, which was true. They dont care anything about gone with the wind, but they were upset that the sets from the wizard of oz burned in this movie. Its worth pointing out here that the destruction of atlanta cannot be attributed solely to uncle billy sherman, that hoods army in fact began the process with the evacuation and the destruction of the firing of this train. And sherman took it a good bit further just before the march to the sea. On september second, the mayor of atlanta surrendered the city. Sherman a
Than 200,000 complete suits of uniforms to its soldiers in the field just in that time period. I do have to note a few qualifications. It was not always the most perfect system. The Southern Railroad network as it deteriorated often meant that Raw Materials and finished products would be delayed in either reaching the factories or reaching the destination points. It also meant that some alternate materials had to be used instead of the preferred all woollen outer garments, the confederates had to reply very extensively all on what was commonly called jean cloth, a mixture of wool and cotton, what was often called negro cloth. In the antebellum cloth this cloth was used to produce clothing for slaves in the south. In the production of shoes, teen agricultural south had a shortage of leather and could not make two standard infantry footwear that jefferson brogan or jefferson booty. That had been developed in the United States army in the 1850s. The southern style shoe had to produced a l