Confederate authorities, fearing a raid on Andersonville by Sherman’s marching army, chose Thomasville as a safe temporary prison camp. Five thousand Federal prisoners were brought there on the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad Line via Blackshear in the second week of December 1864. Colonel Henry Forno commanded the 2nd and 4th Georgia Reserves and the camp. The camp was a five-acre square bounded by a ditch six to eight feet deep and ten to twelve feet wide. Several hundred prisoners died of smallpox, typhoid fever, diarrhea, and a few from trees felled for firewood and shelter. Some sick prisoners were cared for at the Methodist Church and at Fletcher Institute, and the dead were buried in the Methodist Cemetery. Local citizens helped the sick and provided prisoners with food. With Sherman settled at Savannah, the emergency camp at Thomasville closed, and the prisoners were marched sixty miles to Albany and entrained for Andersonville, where they arrived on December 24, 1864.