Andersonville / Father Peter Whelan

Andersonville was incorporated in 1853 as the village center of a small farming community and came to national attention when Camp Sumter Prison opened there in 1864, especially after its commandant, Capt. Henry Wirz, was tried for alleged crimes against humanity in 1865. Today the community calls itself a Civil War Village and honors both the memory of Union soldiers who suffered there and Confederate soldiers who did their duty while experiencing illness and death in numbers comparable to their prisoners. Father Peter Whelan, an Irish priest serving the Diocese of Savannah at the outbreak of the War Between the States, volunteered as chaplain to CSA troops at Ft. Pulaski and became a prisoner of war when the fort fell to Union forces. After more than a year at Governor's Island and Ft. Delaware, he returned to Savannah and answered the plea to minister to prisoners held at Camp Sumter. He came to Andersonville on 16 June 1864 and remained for four months, daily tending to the needs of prisoners in the stockade. After the war, he publicly defended Capt. Wirz as an innocent scapegoat. His life was shortened by a lung disease contracted there, and he died on 6 February 1871. Confederate and Union soldiers alike remembered him as a Good Samaritan.

Andersonville, Georgia · United States