Bald Point State Park is located on Alligator Point where the Ochlockonee Bay meets Apalachee Bay. The Hubster and I have never been to Florida, much less the gulf coast, and we were looking for a place to stretch our legs. What a treat this place turned out to be!
The coastal marshes, pine flat woods, and oak thickets support a diverse biological community that makes this park perfect for birding and viewing wildlife. View migrations of birds and butterflies in the fall into winter. This park offers sunbathing, fishing and hiking and facilities include a fishing dock and picnic pavilions.
*Clicking on a photo will give you a closer look!
Pavement and boardwalks make for easy access, including wheelchairs, to white sand beaches and a marsh overlook. Public restrooms are available.
As you can see, on this gorgeous late September day, the Hubster and I nearly had the place to ourselves.
We didn’t see sea turtles, but we were refreshed and rewarded with a peaceful panorama. The sea oats fluttering in the ocean breeze were lovely.
It was fun watching this fisherman casting his net.
We had never seen this sea creature before (unfortunately it had met its demise), and the fisherman explained that it was a horseshoe crab. Did you know that these creatures are related to scorpions and spiders rather than crabs?! They have 10 legs and 9 eyes! They don’t reach adulthood until they are about 10 years old, and they can live to be about 20 years old.
We learned that with the outbreak of World War II, soldiers from Camp Gordon Johnston near Carrabelle practiced beach training here. In 1942, amphibious warfare training centers were hurried into construction. The Amphibious Training Center (ATC) camp covered over 100,000 acres of remote training area and varied beachfronts and sand bluffs. The US Army 4th Infantry Division that trained at Camp Gordon Johnston led the landing at Normandy.
In addition to the training function, German and Italian POWs were moved to this site in March 1944. Camp Gordon Johnston later became the second largest POW base camp in the state with branch camps at Telogia, Dale Mabry Field and Eglin Field. Prisoners housed at this site principally performed work in the military camp.
Did you know that a Gulf Fritillary butterfly has a chemical defense mechanism in which it releases odorous chemicals in response to predator sightings? Common predators learn to avoid this species. I wonder if this is anything like the skunks in my backyard!
I really wanted, but not wanted, to see an alligator on this trip.
Never happened.
We strolled on the boardwalk over the tidal marshes and creeks.
The ground ‘moving’ caught my eye and, upon closer inspection, the receding tide exposed hundreds of fiddler crabs! I think these are Leptuca pugilators, if I can believe Google, and are another creature that I don’t see back home.
Another critter I met was the American green tree frog. I have lots of his frog cousins back home and it was a pleasure to meet this little guy. If you want to know what he sounds like, then click here.
I will share some of the grounds of Andersonville Prison in this post. However, if you haven’t seen my last post, I strongly suggest reading it first, as much of what occurred here is shared there.
The Memorial Courtyard at the rear of the museum displays a meandering stream recalling the water themes common to many POW experiences, and a major brick and bronze sculpture.
It is meant to be a place of contemplation.
*Clicking on a photo will give you a closer look!
Behind the Memorial Courtyard are the grounds of Andersonville Prison.
You can get a brochure from the visitor’s center. I suggest watching the films, and viewing the exhibits in the center before walking the grounds. There are signs everywhere, but you will feel more oriented if you visit the museum first.
Replicas of tents that prisoners used for shelter. Many prisoners had no shelter, or even proper clothing, to shield them from the elements.
Successful escape from Andersonville was virtually impossible, and it was much rarer than what has often been portrayed. Even most of those who managed to successfully escape from Andersonville did so between the Fall of 1864 through the Spring of 1865, when the prison and its security systems were breaking down as the war ended.
Escape from Camp Sumter (Andersonville) had an extremely high rate of failure. For a Union prisoner to make a successful attempt for freedom from the prison compound, he had to make it past stockade walls, guards, artillery surrounding the stockade, local militia, citizen mobs, and patrols with tracking hounds. Patrols for Confederate deserters and escaped slaves often caught escaped prisoners, sending dozens of men back to the stockade.
When the prisoners returned home and wrote their memoirs, Father Whelan and his work was often recalled. Some mentioned that he had brought clothing, food, and money from Savannah. One added, “without a doubt he was the means of saving hundred of lives.” Another described Whelan’s ministering to the sick: “All creeds, color and nationalities were alike to him…He was indeed the Good Samaritan.” A sergeant, John Vaughter, in his memoirs remarked that, “of all the ministers in Georgia accessible to Andersonville, only one could hear this sentence, ‘I was sick and in prison and you visited me,’ and that one is a Catholic.”
After Father Whelan’s departure in late September, he borrowed $16,000 in Confederate money, the equivalent of $400 in gold, and purchased ten thousand pounds of wheat flour. He had it baked into bread and distributed at the prison hospital at Andersonville. It was enough bread to provide for the men for several months.
Clara Barton, the “Angel of the Battlefield”, nurse, humanitarian, founder and first president of the American Red Cross, spent the summer of 1865 helping find, identify, and properly bury 13,000 individuals who died in Andersonville prison camp.
In Commemoration of the Untiring Devotion of Clara Barton
She organized and administered efficient measures for the relief of our soldiers in the field, and aided in the great work of preserving the names of more than twelve thousand of the brave men who died here.
Erected 1915 by Woman’s Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic.
There are other monuments at Andersonville than the few that I have shared in this post.
The prisoners’ water source, the Stockade Branch, a branch of Sweetwater Creek, was contaminated with human waste and oils from the Confederate guards’ camp before it even got to the prisoners.
“A spring of purest crystal shot up into the air in a column and, falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade into the noxious brook. Looking across the dead-line, we beheld with wondering eyes and grateful hearts the fountain spring.” – John L. Maile, 8th Michigan Infantry August 15, 1864.
Anderson was named for John Anderson, a director of the South Western Railroad in 1853 when it was extended from Oglethorpe to Americus. It was known as Anderson Station until the US post office was established in November 1855. The government changed the name of the station from “Anderson” to “Andersonville” in order to avoid confusion with the post office in Anderson, South Carolina.
The town also served as a supply depot during the war period. It included a post office, a depot, a blacksmith shop and stable, a couple of general stores, two saloons, a school, a Methodist church, and about a dozen houses. Ben Dykes, who owned the land on which the prison was built, was both depot agent and postmaster.
“Then came the captives, weary, worn and hungry from prolonged travel cooped up like beasts in freight cars. Down from the depot they marched amid the jeers and taunts of a gaping crowd. The gate opened. The stockade swallowed them.” – Lessel Long, 13th Indiana Infantry, February 21, 1864
“Once inside…men exclaimed: ‘Is this hell?’ Verily, the great mass of gaunt, unnatural-looking beings, soot-begrimed, and clad in filthy tatters, that we saw stalking about inside this pen looked, indeed, as if they might belong to a world of lost spirits.” W.B. Smith, 14th Illinois Infantry October 9, 1864.
“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 nurses trade to the guards.” John L. Ransom, 9th Michigan Cavalry April 15, 1864
From these heights near headquarters, Capt. Henry A. Wirz could observe everything within the prison walls. Envision the white post perimeters 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.
The guards—mostly old men and young boys from the Georgia Reserve Corps—were reluctant witnesses to the misery at Andersonville. More seasoned troops were sent to stop Sherman’s drive toward Atlanta.
Forms of punishment at Andersonville included death, “bucking and gagging,” hanging up by the thumbs, and physical punishment like whipping for offenses such as stealing. The prison’s harsh conditions and severe overcrowding also acted as a de facto punishment, leading to widespread death from disease and malnutrition. Additionally, guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed the “dead line” or spoke to a sentinel.
Andersonville National Historic Site, Georgia-Part 1
The National Prisoner of War Museum is a memorial to all Americans held as prisoners of war. The exhibits and video presentations within are reminders that freedom comes at a great cost. The museum’s architecture is not based on any one place, but evokes prison towers and stockades in general.
While there are many exhibits pertaining to other wars on display, I am focusing on the Civil War and, in particular, Andersonville Prison. There is much more to the museum than shared in this post.
Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest Confederate military prisons that existed during the Civil War. The prison site was built in 1864 to relieve the overcrowding of prison sites that resulted from the breakdown of the prisoner exchange system. Camp Sumter was built to hold 10,000 prisoners but confined over 45,000 during the 14 months that it was in operation. Of these, 13,000 prisoners died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements and were buried in mass graves on land adjacent to the prison site.
The Code of Conduct – When taken captive, a prisoner of war ceases one battle and begins another, making every effort to resist interrogation, attempt escape, and maintain morale.
‘During the Civil War, the U.S. War Department established that every soldier must try “to rejoin his own side as soon as the opportunity presented itself.” Upheld by soldiers and officers alike during the First and Second World Wars, the duty to attempt escape was codified in 1953, when President Eisenhower issued the first Code of Conduct of Members of the U.S. Armed Forces. As women joined the military in increasing numbers during the 1980s, President Reagan modified the Code of Conduct by removing gender-specific language. If taken captive today, all men and women of the U.S. armed forces are bound by the same oath.’
“If, as it has often been remarked that ‘War is the result of a nation’s sins’ – then the sins of this nation must have been very great, and the atonement is truly one of the most painful mortality.” – Unknown POW at Johnson’s Island, Lake Erie
During the Civil War nearly 350,000 soldiers were taken captive and just over 56,000 prisoners died. Of these, 25,796 were Confederates and 30,218 were Union.
In July and August 1865, a expedition of laborers and soldiers, accompanied by a former prisoner named Dorence Atwater and Clara Barton came to Andersonville to identify and mark the graves of the Union dead and transform the place into the Andersonville National Cemetery. As a paroled prisoner, Atwater was assigned to record the names of deceased Union soldiers. Fearing loss of the death record at war’s end, Atwater made his own copy in hopes of notifying the relatives of some 12,000 dead interred here. Thanks to his list and the Confederates records confiscated at the end of the war, only 460 of the Andersonville graves had to be marked “Unknown US soldier.”
Abraham Lincoln dedicating the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
John McElroy’s eyewitness account in his 1879 memoir Andersonville depicts Winder as boasting that he was “killing off more Yankees than twenty regiments in Lee’s Army.” McElroy claims that on July 27, 1864, Winder issued an order that if Union troops (under General Stoneman) were to come within seven miles of Andersonville, the guards were to “open upon the Stockade [i.e. upon the prisoners] with grapeshot, without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense”.
Both the Confederate and Union generals in charge of prisons struggled to feed, clothe, and shelter the prisoners under their care. As the economy of the South fell apart and as Grant refused additional prisoner exchanges, the logistics for caring for Union prisoners reached overwhelming proportions.
Hoffman, working with President Abraham Lincoln and War Secretary Edwin Stanton, developed a procedure whereby Confederate prisoners of war and deserters could swear allegiance to the Union to gain their release.
“Ah, my friends, had you been there and experienced the sufferings…you too would have the whole panorama photographed in your memory to remain there to your dying day. – Pvt. Thomas O’Dea, Andersonville prisoner from 1864-1865
The Raiders’ reign and influence was short lived. The first prisoners began to arrive in late February 1864, and gangs that would become the Raiders start to appear in May 1864. By the end of June they were arrested, and the six leaders were hung on July 11, 1864 – a full month before the prison would be at its worst. At the time the Raiders were arrested, there had been fewer than 3,000 deaths in the prison – meaning that some 10,000 prisoners died after the Raiders’ reign ended.
The Raiders leaders were Charles Curtis, John Sarsfield, Patrick Delaney, Teri Sullivan (aka “WR Rickson”, according to other sources), William Collins, and Alvin T. Munn.
“I would rather be hanged than live the way most prisoners have to live.” – Eyewitness account of Delaney’s last words
General Lew Wallace was the president of the military commission that tried and convicted Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of the Confederate Andersonville Prison, after the Civil War. Wallace presided over the trial in August 1865, which found Wirz guilty of war crimes related to the horrific conditions at the prison. He was subsequently sentenced to death and hanged in November 1865.
LC's Cottage 