Letters From Andersonville: A Song History

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"Letters From Andersonville" is one of fifteen pieces in Music From The Heart, a book by Tom McConnell published by Airway Publishing and sold on DulcimerDownloads as a PDF download that comes with an MP3 recording of each song.[1] The listing calls the collection original music by McConnell, whom it describes as a college professor, and it gives this piece, like the rest of the book, in DAD tuning.[1] According to his DulcimerDownloads artist page, McConnell makes music as a hobby on mountain dulcimer, guitar, ukulele and a little bass, and he calls his style "acoustic folk," though it also draws on blues, bluegrass, Americana and jazz.[2]

A still-life photograph of cups, cans, buckets and other objects arranged in a display

Brady & Co., Relics of Andersonville Prison, albumen silver print from glass negative, June 1866. Objects from the prison the title names; nothing links the photograph to the tune itself.

The title names Andersonville, the usual name for Camp Sumter, a Confederate military prison whose official name came from the county where it stood.[3] Building began early in 1864, the first Union prisoners came in late February of that year, and by June 1864 a stockade meant for 10,000 men held more than 26,000.[3] Over the fourteen months the prison operated, 45,000 Union soldiers were held there and nearly 13,000 of them died, from causes the Park Service lists as disease, malnutrition, poor sanitation, overcrowding and exposure; it closed in May 1865.[3] The prison grounds became Andersonville National Historic Site, in southwest Georgia, which the National Park Service calls the only park in its system that serves as a memorial to all American prisoners of war.[3][4][5]

Prison regulations circulated on January 1, 1865, which Sgt. Lyle Adair recorded in his diary, gave prisoners the right to write twice a week, with each letter limited to one page and to private matters.[6] The book's listing does not say whether the piece draws on any particular letters.[1]

Our book that contains the song "Letters From Andersonville"

Sources

  1. Tom McConnell: "Music From The Heart".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "Tom McConnell".
  3. National Park Service: "History of the Andersonville Prison".
  4. National Park Service: "Andersonville National Historic Site: History & Culture".
  5. National Park Service: "Andersonville National Historic Site: Directions".
  6. National Park Service: "Rules and Regulations of the Prison, 1865".
  7. Image: Brady & Co., Relics of Andersonville Prison, albumen silver print from glass negative, June 1866. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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