Stockade Branch

This stream, a branch of Sweetwater Creek, supplied water to the prison, but the neatly dredged channel seen today is misleading. When the prison was built, the stockade posts slowed the current and turned the stream banks into acres of stagnant swamp. The prisoners' latrines stood downstream, and overcrowding soon fouled the water, while the sluggish current failed to wash sewage out of the prison. Bacteria in the stream quickly became lethal. Charles C. Fosdick of the 5th Iowa Infantry recalled on February 26, 1864, that it was the prisoners' only water supply and that men seeking water often sank to their hips in the mire and had to be dragged out by their comrades. Confederate officials saw this source of fresh water as making Andersonville an ideal prison site, but just upstream the bakehouse and guards' camp polluted the creek before it even entered the stockade.

Andersonville, Georgia · United States