Andersonville

ANDERSONVILLE

by MacKinley Kantor

 

Award: Pulitzer Winner 1956

 

Nomination: National Book Finalist 1956

 

Date Read: January 22, 2021

 

Andersonville took my breath away. Don’t get me wrong. It was gruesome, bleak and, at times, tedious. But the overall magnitude and scope Kantor presents here is awe-inspiring. That’s saying a lot since I am not a war book kind of girl, especially the Civil War.

 

This tome begins with the Claffey plantation and ends there as well. The first 100 pages or so paint a somewhat idyllic picture of wartime life in the South. The plantation is struggling with wartime deprivations, but not direly so. All the slaves are treated well. The Claffey family is slowly coming apart as they lose one son after another to the war. Yet, Veronica, Ira’s wife, and Lucy, their daughter, remain.

 

As they are made aware of their last son dying in the war, Veronica slowly goes mad and ultimately takes her own life. Her grief proves too impossible a burden to bear. I’ll give her credit that she didn’t go crazy after the first two losses, but after the third she just couldn’t manage. 

 

This coincides with a surgeon staying with them that was a friend of their deceased son. He proves to be a welcome presence in the house and a tasty morsel for Lucy. The family scenes as this novel unfolds are beautiful and a necessary respite from what’s to come. Without them, I think this novel would have become nearly impossible. 

 

Then the stockyard of Andersonville is created. Intended only to house maybe 10,000 prisoners, the meager acres swell to holding over 30,000. This isn’t a prison in the sense most of us think of. This thing is merely land with absolutely no infrastructure aside from a fence to keep the prisoners in. They are not afforded shelter, toilets, utensils – nothing. The prisoners are forced to create “shebangs” out of any materials they brought, can steal or pool together with other inmates.

 

This absolutely crazy approach to incarceration breads exactly what you would expect – excessive mortality, ghastly physical ailments, starvation, violence and every other horrible circumstance one can imagine. Over the next 700 pages, the misery does not abate.

 

While some characters attempt to rescue whatever humanity they can from this scene, their efforts to exact any true change are futile. In one attempt, Ira and his neighbors attempt to bring in food from their crops only to be turned away. The mortality in the stockade is a feature, not a flaw. 30,000 carcasses are left to die in the most ghastly and tortuous ways one can imagine.

 

Yet, through the stench and shit and misery that these men are subjected to, rays of beautiful humanity shine through. Men tend to their sick comrades and see them through to the end. Starving, they share their last morsels of food with one another. For those who have given up or succumbed to the misery of the place, they offer encouragement and hope. In the midst of absolute despair, some rise to the occasion and exhibit the best of what humanity has to offer and others sink to the lowest.

 

Still, I am glad this war was fought and won. In some regards, we are still fighting it today. I will never cease to be amazed, and not in a good way, at how horrible humans can be to one another.