Andersonville Diary (Expanded, Annotated)

Captured at just twenty years old, Union soldier John L. Ransom was marched into the deadliest prison camp of the American Civil War—and refused to stop writing.

At Georgia’s infamous Andersonville Prison, more than 45,000 Union prisoners were crammed behind towering stockade walls, starving, sick, and exposed to blistering heat and bitter cold. Surrounded by filth, disease, and the constant stench of death, Ransom secretly recorded it all: the lice, the starvation rations, the deadly “deadline” fence, and the brutality of Captain Henry Wirz and his guards.

Against all odds, Ransom kept his wits, his humor, and his will to escape.

This extraordinary diary takes you day by day inside the most notorious Confederate prison camp. You’ll see how prisoners bartered for food, organized raids and rescues, nursed the dying, and plotted bold prison breaks under the noses of their captors. Ransom survives transfer, illness, a Rebel hospital, and desperate attempts to slip through enemy lines—always protecting the little scraps of paper that would become this book.

Readers who love:

• Civil War history and battlefield narratives
• True stories of prisoners of war and survival against impossible odds
• Gritty accounts of life inside 19th‑century prisons and POW camps
• First‑person escape stories and daring breakouts

…will find Andersonville Diary one of the most gripping eyewitness accounts ever written.

More than a classic Civil War memoir, this is a raw, unforgettable chronicle of courage, camaraderie, and the relentless fight to stay alive behind the walls of Andersonville.