Johnson's Island is 15 miles from where I'm sitting. I place flowers in the cemetary every Memorial Day.

Look, just being in the Army during the conflict was "Hazardous to your Health" even with an infrastructure that was doing it's level best to keep the soldier healthy and fed...when no one particularly gave a Tinker's Dam, such as with POW camps, things could deteriorate rather badly.

Having said that, Andersonville was far worse than it should have been or needed to be...if there's a statue of Heinrich Hartmann Wirz in Andersonville, then it's a monument to incompetence and stupidity.

As for the rest, I'm not going to re-fight the Civil War with you, but neither am I going to agree that the "poor South" was jes sittin' aroun', mindin' it's own bidness....when Lincoln sent in an Army to beat'um up! The South had an agenda that was dark and essentially evil, and ultimately defined the methods by which that agenda was finally "modified" and has done nothing much but b!tch about it ever since! I'm sure that all that "Banger" in the Hood wants is to be "left alone" too!