The Raiders get an oversized role in the memory of Andersonville, allowing for the "otherizing" of what happened there:
https://www.nps.gov/ande/learn/historyculture/raiders.htm
Hi.
I just joined the site last week, but I can address your comment. I just finished a book on the Raiders, which will be published by Stackpole Books and out next April.
A LOT of what has been written about the Raiders doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Only one of the six who were hanged was both a bounty jumper and a deserter; the rest served an average of 13 1/2 months before they were captured - one of them (Collins) had just a few months left on his 3 year enlistment when he was captured, and another, Muir (aka "Munn") of the Water Witch had actually finished his year of enlistment and was awaiting transport home when his ship was captured. The six were not all "chiefs" - three of them had been at Andersonville less than 2 months (Muir had been there just about 3 weeks when he was arrested), and 4 of the six who were hanged had probably taken part together in the attack on "Dowd" (who, by the way, was not John Urban as is often reported - there really WAS a prisoner named Doud who was attacked by 4 Raiders and brutally beaten, which caused Wirz to order the arrests of the raiders. Doud, by the way, never really recovered and died in 1868).
By looking mostly at diaries and memoirs written within 5 years of the camp closing, you get a pretty different picture of what happened.
The Raiders did not dominate the prison; there were, at most, 200 of them when the arrests happened, and there were 26,000 prisoners on the day they were executed. If you had friends to watch your back, you were probably okay, but if you were alone and 'fresh fish," you were likely to be singled out as a potential victim.
I think the story got famous because it plays into the mythos of good triumphing over evil, and reading about a group of prisoners rising up to take justice into their own hands is a much more interesting story than reading about men slowly dying of diarrhea and dysentery. It also was kind of the most public moment to happen in the prison - you may not have know what was happening 10 acres away, but every man in the place was aware of the arrests and execution.
Okay, I'll stop now. Can you tell I get really into this?
Gary