Given the mass escape of Union prisoners which had just occurred from Libby Prison in Richmond and the concerns that the Davis government had about incursions into the heartland of the Confederacy as Union General William Tecumseh Sherman had just completed, the Davis government decided for security reasons to move Union prisoners into the rural, isolated areas of the Confederacy.
On Saturday, February 27, 1864 Federal prisoners began arriving near Americus, Georgia in the southwestern part of that state to a new prison camp officially named Camp Sumter but known later to history as Andersonville.
Soon overcrowding, as well as inadequate administration, shelter, food, and accommodations would take nearly 13,000 lives, making Andersonville the most notorious of the prison camps utilized by either side in the American Civil War.