Henry Wirz - Monster or Scapegoat?

Born in Switzerland in 1823, Henry Wirz had already had a colorful life before he emigrated to America in 1848 - he had been imprisoned under obscure circumstances, apparently after participating in a failed German revolution. In America he found work as a doctor before enlisted as a private in a Confederate volunteer unit in 1861.

The next year Wirz was injured and lost use of his right arm at the Battle of Seven Pines, and he was subsequently employed by President Davis 1862-1864 as a minister in Europe. Upon his return to the Confederacy Wirz was given command of Camp Sumter in Georgia, near a railroad depot from which the Camp takes its more infamous name - Andersonville.

One of the largest and most notorious prison camps in the American Civil War, Andersonville was a home to no less than 45,000 Northern POW's, 13,000 of whom died from sickness and disease, neglect and brutality.

Though similar camps with conditions just as hideous existed in the North, they were unsurprisingly forgotten in the wake of the Northern victory in 1865. The conditions in Andersonville became infamous, as did its commander. Charged with war crimes, Henry Wirz was executed in November of 1865, within view of the White House. His hanging was a particularly miserable one - his neck failed to break from the fall, leaving him to suffocate before the watching crowd of soldiers and civilians.

Along with Champ Fergusson, an infamous (and far more indisputably guilty) Confederate guerilla, Wirz was one of only two men executed for war crimes in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Wirz has managed to become, posthumously, one of the more controversial figures of the Civil War. From the year of his execution up to the present, he is a mass-murderering tyrant to some, a scapegoat and a martyr to others.

By the last full year of the Civil War, the Confederacy was bitterly struggling to feed its soldiers - it simply did not have the means to adequately take care of the thousands of prisoners it had acquired. The cessation of prisoner exchanges left the Rebel government 'stuck' with these Yankee captives; in all fairness, it had little other option except to leave them languishing in the prison camps.

Reports on Wirz's behavior at Andersonville were various. Whether he was a decent man who did what he could with what little he was given, and was sacrificed as a convenient scapegoat, or whether he really was an abusive villain that earned his fate, remains a controversial question from the most controversial period in the nation's history.

 

Out of interest how may executions  do members think would have occured if the south had won the war?

Lincoln was very lenient.

 

 

 

Then why are you posting about it?

Originally posted by Azita "President" Davies

 

I presume you are attempting to refer to Jefferson Davis.

 

Originally posted by Azita GENERAL ORDERS, No. 111. December 24, 1862.                                                                                             1. That all commissioned officers in the command of said Benjamin F. Butler be declared not entitled to be considered as soldiers engaged in honourable warfare but as robbers and criminals deserving death, and that they and each of them be whenever captured reserved for execution.

 

The case of 'Beast Butler' was an extreme exception to the rule; you would do well to consider its context.