Twelve Months in Andersonville (Abridged, Annotated)

By Lessel Long

Book Overview

A year in hell. A voice that refused to be silenced.

Captured as a Union soldier and thrown into the infamous Andersonville prison, Lessel Long endured twelve unthinkable months of starvation, disease, brutality, and the daily sight of men wasting away around him. Yet even as his body failed, his resolve hardened. He clung to life with a single purpose: to survive long enough to bear witness.

In Twelve Months in Andersonville, Long reconstructs his ordeal in uncompromising, often graphic detail, exposing the filth, cruelty, and calculated neglect that turned the Confederate stockade into a killing ground. Drawing on official records as well as his own memories, he names the friends who never came home, records the small acts of courage that kept prisoners sane, and shows how close he came to joining the dead before his eventual release.

Colonel Thomas Chandler, Confederate Inspector of Military Prisons, visited Andersonville in 1864 and made a report, which was brought into court at the trial of Henry Wirz. In this report Colonel Chandler denounced the condition of Andersonville prison as "a disgrace to the Confederacy as a Nation."

This is not a romantic tale of war, but a survivor's testimony-a firsthand account that forces readers to confront what thousands of Union prisoners suffered and why their story had to be told. For anyone interested in the Civil War, military history, or true narratives of endurance against impossible odds, Twelve Months in Andersonville remains one of the most powerful and essential prisoner-of-war memoirs ever written.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1519049994
• ISBN13: 9781519049995
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"