author

John L. Ransom

1843–1919

A Union cavalryman who survived Andersonville turned his wartime notes into one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of Civil War prison life. His diary remains valued for its plainspoken detail, endurance, and historical importance.

1 Audiobook

Andersonville diary : escape, and list of the dead, with name, co., regiment, date of death and no. of grave in cemetery

Andersonville diary : escape, and list of the dead, with name, co., regiment, date of death and no. of grave in cemetery

by John L. Ransom

About the author

Born in 1843, he served in the Union Army during the Civil War with the 9th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry. In 1863 he was captured in Tennessee and sent to Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp in Georgia, where he kept notes on the daily realities of hunger, disease, and survival.

Those experiences became Andersonville Diary: Escape, and List of the Dead, published in 1881. The book is remembered as a direct, deeply personal record of prison life and of the men who died there, giving later readers a rare close-up view of one of the war's harshest places.

He died in 1919 at age 76. A confirmed portrait was not readily available from the sources I found, so no profile image is included.