Henry Wirz

Henry Wirz (November 1822 – November 10, 1865) was the only Confederate soldier executed in the aftermath of the American Civil War for war crimesWith, arguably, the exception of Champ Ferguson..

Wirz was born in Zurich, Switzerland, immigrating to the United States in the late 1840s. He worked throughout New England as a self-taught water-cure specialist. Moving for a short period to Kentucky, he finally settled in Louisiana.

Civil War

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Wirz enlisted in the Confederate States Army as a private in the 4th Louisiana Infantry. He served on detached duty as a prison guard in Alabama before being transferred to help guard Federal prisoners incarcerated at Richmond, Virginia.

In February 1864, the Confederate government established a large military prison, Camp Sumter, near the small railroad depot of Andersonville, Georgia, to house Union prisoners of war. Though wooden barracks were originally planned, the Confederates incarcerated the prisoners in a vast, rectangular, open-air stockade originally encompassing sixteen and a half acres. Wirz officially commanded the stockade's interior. The prison was characterized by a lack of trained and adequately equipped prison guards; a gross lack of food, tools and medical supplies; severe overcrowding; poor sanitary conditions; and a lack of potable water. At its most overcrowded, in August 1864, the camp held approximately thirty-two thousand Union prisoners and the monthly mortality rate from disease and malnutrition reached three thousand. Wirz did not try to alleviate the situation unlike many men in similar situations both North and South; on the contrary, abuses by guards ordered by Wirz, purposeful denying of parts of the already slim food supply abounded. Around forty-five thousand prisoners were incarcerated during the camp's fourteen-month existence, of whom thirteen thousand – twenty-eight percent – died.

Trial and execution

After the end of hostilities, Wirz was arrested by a contingent of federal cavalry and taken by rail to Washington, D.C., where the federal government intended to place him on trial for conspiring to impair the lives of Union prisoners of war.

In July 1865, the trial convened in the Capitol building and lasted two months, dominating the front pages of newspapers across the United States. The court heard the testimony of former inmates, ex-Confederate officers and even nearby residents of Andersonville. Finally, in early November, the commission announced that it had found Wirz guilty of conspiracy as charged and of eleven of thirteen counts of murder. He was sentenced to death.

In a letter to President Andrew Johnson, Wirz asked for mercy, but the letter went unanswered. Mounting the scaffold on the morning of November 10, 1865, Wirz asserted that he was being hanged for following orders. He was executed on the same site where the Lincoln conspirators met their own fate just several months before, within clear sight of the newly-built dome of the U.S. Capitol. Wirz was eventually buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C. He was survived by his wife and one daughter.

Legacy

Wirz's trial was legally significant for two reasons. Firstly, Wirz was one of only two men tried and executed for war crimes during the Civil War. More significantly, however, Wirz's trial was the first war crimes trial in modern history and served as a direct historical precedent for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after World War II.

Popular culture

Wirz's trial was depicted in the 1970 televison film The Andersonville Trial, directed by George C. Scott, featuring Richard Basehart as Wirz and William Shatner as chief government prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel N.P. Chipman. The film's central message--whether Wirz should have been condemned for following orders--paralleled the then-current controversy over the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. (It should be noted that Wirz never recieved orders to abuse Union POWs but his clear and premeditated abuses happened nonetheless.)

Footnotes

References

Frank Harper, Andersonville: The Trial of Captain Henry Wirz, MA Thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 1986.
Ovid Futch, History of Andersonville Prison, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968.

External links

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