Death by hanging for Henry Wirz, the Monster of Andersonville, A Scapegoat?

Captain Henry Wirz

“Vat you tink dem Yankees do, if dey get me prisoner, up Nort-eh?… Dey will kill me sure! But I shall take care dey vill no catch me – but if dey do I am certain dey will kill me so quick – so quick, I tell you – dat I shall know nothing about it!” – Sgt. Henry Wirz, Richmond, VA, 1861

During the Civil War, over 400,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were held prisoner at more than 150 different prison sites. Approximately 56,000 of these died in captivity. Although Andersonville is the most famous Civil War prison, it is only one of many Civil War military prisons that are preserved by the National Park Service. Today Andersonville National Historic Site tells the story of all American prisoners of war.

Many Civil War prisons, such as those in Elmira, NY and Salisbury, NC were constructed out of existing warehouses and military training depots. After the war, these sites reverted back to their pre-war uses and were not preserved. However, many prisoners were also held in permanent structures such as coastal fortifications and today it is possible to visit these sites of captivity.

While the trial of Henry Wirz was by far the most famous of the military tribunals at the end of the Civil War, it was not the only one. In fact, there were nearly 1,000 military tribunals in which Confederates, both regulars and guerrillas, were charged with various violations of the laws of war – mostly related to the treatment of prisoners of war. Some of these trials even led to acquittals. For example, the camp commander at Salisbury Prison, Major John Gee, was arrested in the fall of 1865 and charged with similar crimes as Wirz. Unlike Wirz, Gee was unanimously acquitted in the spring of 1866. After the war, General Grant actually prevented the tribunal of another of Salisbury’s commanders, Bradley T. Johnson, who faced charges of negligence at the prison and for burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1864. Even among those convicted, Wirz did not stand alone for the atrocities of Andersonville. James Duncan, who worked in the quartermaster’s office at Andersonville, was arrested and convicted of manslaughter by a military tribunal for his role in intentionally withholding rations from prisoners. He was sentenced to hard labor at Fort Pulaski, where he escaped a year later.

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Today few Civil War figures are as controversial as Henry Wirz. To some people, he is a martyr or a scapegoat for a failed Confederacy. To others he is the vilest criminal of the war. Few scholars have attempted to tell Wirz’s story, leaving it open for supporters and detractors alike to create a mythology to fit their respective agendas. Today, people often approach Wirz with a confirmation bias. They see in his story only that which fits what they already believe. In truth, Wirz was an incredibly complicated figure whose path to Andersonville and the gallows began years before the prison ever opened.

Henry Wirz was born in 1822 in Switzerland. In 1849 he immigrated to the United States and attempted to go into business as a physician in New York City. Failing at this, he moved to Connecticut and then to Northhampton, Massachusetts where he worked as a translator in several small factories. There he took a job working at a water-cure establishment before moving to Kentucky to work as a homeopathic physician. He operated water-cure establishments in Cadiz and Louisville until 1857, when he moved to Louisiana to “take charge of” Cabin Teele, a 2,200 acre plantation owned by Levin R. Marshall. At Cabin Teele, Wirz continued to practice homeopathic medicine while overseeing the hundreds of slaves in bondage there. This was Wirz’s first experience with controlling large numbers of people, a skill that would serve him later.

At the outset of the Civil War, Wirz enlisted in the 4^th Battalion of Louisiana Infantry, organized in his home of Madison, Louisiana. In the aftermath of Bull Run in July 1861, the unit was sent Richmond, where Wirz was assigned to guard duty at Howard’s Factory Prison. He immediately began to organize prisoners, and developed a reputation for efficiency and callousness. He was, as one prisoner wrote in 1862, “the essence of authority at the prison… [he] thought himself omnipresent and omniscient.” By the fall of 1861, Wirz attracted the attention of General John Winder, who at that time was in charge of the Richmond prison system. Winder placed Wirz on detached duty as a part of his prison management team. In November 1861 the Richmond newspapers reported that Sergeant Henry Wirz was one of seven men on the city’s Prison Board, charged with ensuring the security of all military prisons in Richmond. Serving with Wirz on this board was Captain George C. Gibbs. Three years later the two men worked together at Andersonville, and Gibbs later testified against his colleague.

Wirz’s time on the Richmond Prison Board was relatively short-lived. In late November, 1861 he was sent to the prison at Tuscaloosa, Alabama to serve as the assistant to Captain Elias Griswold. At Tuscaloosa, like at most prisons that Wirz worked, prisoners remembered him with mixed feelings. Some recalled that he was instrumental in securing shelter in an unused hotel. At the same time one wrote that, “We have a Sgt Wertz over us as big a tyrant as ever was.” Inconsistency proved to be a theme of Wirz’s prison management, as one Richmond prisoner described, “He was a good fellow at times, and a very bad one at others. He would show his angular smile of half-stubborn good humor today, and curse us in his fragmentary English tomorrow.” Regardless of how prisoners felt about him, the citizens of Tuscaloosa felt Wirz was a competent leader deserving of promotion. When Captain Griswold was transferred, they petitioned General Winder to place Wirz in command of the prison in Tuscaloosa.

In the late spring of 1862, the prisoners from Tuscaloosa were transferred elsewhere for exchange, and Wirz was sent back to Richmond. On June 1, 1862 he was reassigned to serve as the Provost Marshall of Manchester, a community in Richmond that was later consolidated into the city. After only a few days Wirz requested another duty assignment and was placed on General Winder’s staff and promoted to Captain, effective June 12, 1862. Within a few months, he was in command of Belle Isle & Libby Prison in Richmond, an assignment which brought him greater responsibilities and a higher profile within the Confederate military prison system. In September he was ordered to go south and document how many prisoners for the purpose of exchange. Reporting directly to Robert Ould, Confederate agent of exchange, Wirz traveled as far as Houston, Texas between September 1862 and the spring of 1863. Upon his return he held a variety of positions, including Chief of Secret Police in Richmond, none of which he liked. He volunteered to deliver recently acquired weapons and ammunition from Charleston to the trans-Mississippi department. In mid-March 1863, Wirz applied for a medical furlough in order to seek treatment for an arm injury that he sustained at some point in the summer or fall of 1862. Wirz claimed that he was injured at the Battle of Seven Pines while serving as an aid to General Joe Johnston. However, his service records are unclear as to the details of this injury, and he was not yet commissioned as an officer when this battle took place. All that is certain is that he sustained a deep tissue injury to his right arm, and that this injury prompted him to request a furlough for medical treatment. What was supposed to have been a four month furlough to Europe for medical care was eventually extended by several months.

By February 1864, Wirz returned and reported to General Winder. Winder, having worked with Wirz before, assigned this experienced officer to the new prison at Camp Sumter Military Prison at Andersonville. Colonel Alexander Persons of the 55^th Georgia Infantry commanded the post when Captain Wirz arrived in early March. Wirz bore a letter from General Winder instructing Persons to give command of the prison’s interior to Wirz, whom he called “an old prison officer, a very reliable man and capable of governing prisons.” Complicating the situation, the Confederate government sent Major Elias Griswold, whom Wirz had worked for in Tuscaloosa, to Andersonville with similar orders to take charge of the stockade around the same time. This mix up was resolved later in the month, and Wirz formally took command of the prison stockade on March 27, 1864.

Wirz immediately began to reorganize the prison to make it more secure and to improve efficiency. He ordered the construction of a deadline to keep prisoners away from the stockade walls. Drawing on his experience documenting prisoners in 1862, he ordered a daily headcount to be taken. Throughout his time at Andersonville he was frustrated by unclear lines of responsibility. He was charged with daily operations inside the prison – this included taking roll, security, and the issuing of rations and supplies. However, a separate officer was in command of the overall Confederate post of Camp Sumter. Each guard regiment had their own command staff of officers that outranked Wirz. The quartermaster’s office operated independent of these two commands, as did the hospital. Wirz could request guards or rations, but had no direct authority to acquire these necessities, although he could order them withheld. Wirz’s letters to his superiors in Richmond belie his desperation to solve this command debacle. In an effort to alleviate these bureaucratic struggles, General John Winder reported to Andersonville in the summer of 1864. However, he lacked a clear command directive, and the presence of a brigadier general further complicated the chain of command at the prison.

As in Richmond and Tuscaloosa, Wirz displayed inconsistent behavior towards the captives in his care. At times, he proved helpful and sympathetic. On other days he flew into what one prisoner described as a “spasmodic rage.” Unable to carry out his orders to maintain the stability and security of the stockade by military means, Wirz used his reputation and behavior to maintain order. Threats were an important tool in his arsenal of control, and he used them liberally. Prisoners who feared him were less likely to challenge the delicate security of the site. He maintained control by employing techniques such as withholding food from individuals and squads. Supplies sent from the north were distributed to guards and a small number of paroled prisoners. Rumors that he murdered prisoners were commonplace. Threats to kill prisoners were even more common; threats that sometimes were fulfilled. In one instance Wirz ordered a guard to shoot a prisoner, which the sentinel did. Wirz later testified that he meant the order as a threat and that he did not think that the guard would actually do it. His experience on a plantation before the war influenced how he punished prisoners – plantation hounds and iron shackles were used to capture and punish escaped prisoners. Verbal threats created an aura of fear. He routinely made statements in front of his staff and prisoners that were intended to cement his tough reputation. For example, one Confederate soldier testified that Wirz ordered a prisoner into the stocks during a rainstorm. The soldier, observing the prisoner was drowning, placed an umbrella over the prisoner and approach Wirz, who replied, “Let the damned Yankee drown.” Wirz was unable to control the bureaucracy that plagued the Confederate military prison system, so he controlled the prisoners in the only way he could – through intimidation and punishment.

It was these actions towards the prisoners that ultimately doomed Wirz. As early as 1861, he predicted that he would be hanged for his treatment of prisoners in Richmond, long before he ever imagined the existence of Andersonville. He was arrested at the prison site on May 7, 1865. In a statement to General John Wilson the day of his arrest, Wirz denied responsibility for the atrocity of Andersonville, referring to himself as “…the tool in the hands of [his] superiors.”

He was taken to Washington, DC and held in the Old Capitol Prison. He was charged with conspiracy to kill or injure prisoners in violation of the laws of war, which stipulated the prisoners could not be denied access to available food, water, clothing or medical supplies. He was also charged with multiple counts of murder. A few of these murder charges accused Wirz of personally killing prisoners, but most stemmed from orders that he gave to others. His trial received national attention, as the country demanded justice for the deaths of 13,000 American soldiers. Far more soldiers died in captivity at Andersonville than at any battlefield, a fact that was not lost on former prisoners or the northern public. Wirz’s attorneys argued that he did all he could, given the difficult circumstances. The shortage of supplies and medical care were well beyond Wirz’s authority, and dozens of letters document Wirz’s efforts to solve the logistical problems. However, nearly 150 former prisoners, guards, Confederate officials, civilians, and medical staff, testified that Wirz had indeed violated the laws of war by not only withholding available food and supplies, but also by issuing orders that directly resulted in the death of prisoners of war

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Captain Henry Wirz was still at his post when U.S. Cavalry Captain Henry E. Noyes arrived at Andersonville in early May 1865 with orders for his arrest. Noyes took Wirz to Washington in late May. General Lew Wallace presided over a military commission which tried Wirz for: (1) conspiring with Jefferson Davis, Howell Cobb, John H., Richard B., and W.S. Winder, Isaiah H. White, R. Randolph Stevenson, and others to “Impair and injure the health and to destroy the lives.., of large numbers of federal prisoners.., at Andersonville” and (2) “murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war.” Lasting two and a half months, during the course of the trial nearly 150 former prisoners, civilians, and confederate officers, officials, and guards testified about conditions at the prison.

One of the great paradoxes of the Wirz Trial is that both prosecution and the defense sought to prove that Captain Wirz was following orders; the prosecutors hoped to convict higher ranking Confederate officials and Wirz hoped to absolve himself by passing responsibility up the chain of command. As in nearly every military tribunal, the “following orders” defense did not work. Wirz could blame the poor logistics and overcrowding on his superiors, but he could not escape his own orders and actions. He was convicted of conspiracy and murder. The sentence was carried out on November 10, 1865, in the courtyard of old Capitol Prison.

The dramatic trial began an ongoing dialogue over whom to hold responsible for the conditions at Andersonville and the high number of deaths. Captain Henry Wirz’s conviction and subsequent execution is still debated to the present day.

One of the great paradoxes of the Wirz Trial is that both prosecution and the defense sought to prove that Wirz was following orders; the prosecutors hoped to convict higher ranking Confederate officials and Wirz hoped to absolve himself by passing responsibility up the chain of command. As in nearly every military tribunal, the “following orders” defense did not work. Wirz could blame the poor logistics and overcrowding on his superiors. But he could not escape his own orders and actions, and was convicted of conspiracy and murder. He was hanged on November 10, 1865 and was eventually buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, DC.

The Trial

During the American Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865, over 600,000 men became prisoners of war. The vast majority of these captured soldiers were quickly exchanged back to their own armies. However, this exchange system broke down in mid-1863 as the Union Army began to recruit African American soldiers, many of whom had been former slaves, and the Confederate army refused to consider exchanging them. This, coupled with the fact that the Union army had more men and did not need a prisoner exchange to fill out their ranks, resulted in both sides taking hard positions in the prisoner exchange discussions, and the exchanges stopped. As a result, large prison camps were needed
in both the north and the south, to hold the thousands of prisoners who were being captured on the battlefield, but could no longer be exchanged.
The largest of these prison camps was Andersonville. Located in rural southwest Georgia, the Confederate prison at Andersonville was isolated from any major population centers and was far from the battlefields of the war. A nearby rail depot was used to transport both prisoners and supplies to the prison camp. The prison was an open air stockade that eventually consisted of around 26 acres. Originally intended to hold 8,000-10,000 Union prisoners, the prison population swelled to over 30,000 in the summer of 1864 as fighting in Georgia and Virginia resulted in large numbers of captives.
In this overcrowded prison, disease became widespread. Scurvy, dysentery, diarrhea, gangrene, small pox, malnutrition, and exposure to the elements killed nearly 13,000 Union soldiers at Andersonville during the 14 months that Andersonville was in operation, making it the deadliest place in the Civil War. After the war, the northern public was outraged at what occurred at Andersonville and demanded justice. They saw no reason that prisoners, who were supposed to be cared for, should die in such large numbers. The commander of the prison, Captain Henry Wirz, was arrested in July 1865 and was charged with violating the laws of war. In the fall of 1865 a military tribunal met in Washington, DC to hear his case.
Historically, in the trial of Henry of Wirz, the prosecution sought to prove a conspiracy between Wirz and the leadership of the Confederacy. Much of the trial centered on trying to establish a connection between Captain Wirz and key Confederate leaders, including President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee. Their hope was to prove that Davis & Lee had conspired with Wirz to kill Union soldiers at Andersonville, and could thus
use that to charge both leaders. For the purposes of this mock trial, this conspiracy has been ommitted, and the focus is on establishing Wirz’s responsibility for Andersonville in light of the Lieber Code, which was adopted in 1863 to protect the rights of soldiers and civilians in the Civil War.

The Prosecutor’s Case:

1. Henry Wirz failed to provide adequate medical care to the prisoners.
2. Henry Wirz intentionally withheld food, clothing, and shelter from the prisoners.
3. Henry Wirz personally mistreated prisoners by cursing at, beating, torturing, or killing prisoners, or by ordering others to do so.
4. What happened at Andersonville is an atrocity; a failure of human rights to be protected, and as commander of Andersonville, Henry Wirz should bear that responsibility.

the Defense

1. Capt. Henry Wirz did not have command of the hospital or the medical care at Andersonville. Surgeons and other officers that outranked Wirz were responsible for those functions.
2. Capt. Henry Wirz was not responsible for who was sent to Andersonville; therefore he cannot be held responsible for the overcrowding.
3. Although there were shortages of food and clothing, Capt. Henry Wirz did the best he could to ensure that these supplies were given to the prisoners in a fair way. He was not responsible for the shortages. These resulted from the deteriorating economy of the Confederacy at the end of the war.
4. Capt. Henry Wirz did not beat, kill, or torture prisoners, or order others under his command to do so.
5. Capt. Henry Wirz was a member of the Confederate Army, and therefore cannot be held on trial by the United States Army, which he was not a member of.
   

All together, more than 135 witnesses were called to testify in the Wirz Trial. These included former prisoners, Union and confederate officers guards and civilians.

One letter from a doctor read:

SIR: As officer of the day, for the past twenty-four hours, I have inspected the hospital and found it in as good condition as the nature of the circumstances will allow. A majority of the bunks are still unsupplied with bedding, while in a portion of the division the tents are entirely destitute of either bunks, bedding or straw, the patients being compelled to lie upon the bare ground. I would earnestly call attention to the article of diet. The corn bread received from the bakery being made up without sifting, is wholly unfit for the use of the sick; and often upon examination, the inner portion is found to be perfectly raw. The meat received by the patients does not amount to over two ounces a day, and for the past three or four days no flour has been issued. The corn bread cannot be eaten by many, for to do so would be to increase the diseases of the bowels, from which a large majority are suffering, and it is therefore thrown away. All their rations received by way of sustenance is two ounces of boiled beef and half pint of rice soup per day. Under these circumstances, all the skill that can be brought to bear upon their cases by the medical officer will avail nothing. Another point to which I feel it my duty to call your attention is the deficiency of medicines. We have but little more than indigenous barks and roots with which to treat the numerous forms of disease to which our attention is daily called. For the treatment of wounds, ulcers, &c., we have literally nothing except water.

Our wards-some of them-were filled with gangrene, and we are compelled to fold our arms and look quietly upon its ravages, not even having stimulants to support the system under its depressing influences, this article being so limited in supply that it can only be issued for cases under the knife. I would respectfully call your earnest attention to the above facts, in the hope that something may be done to alleviate the sufferings of the sick.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J. CREWS PELOT,
Assistant Surgeon C. S. and Officer of the Day.

Henry Wirz was ultimately found guilty by the military tribunal of violating the laws of war, including the intentional mistreatment of prisoners and the murder of prisoners. He was sentenced to death and was hung on November 10, 1865. His supporters have long claimed that he was offered a pardon in exchange for testifying against Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, although there is no evidence to support this.

In the years after the war, Wirz’s memory became a rallying cry for southerners who felt that he had been unfairly targeted by a vengeful United States government. In 1909, an organization called the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument to Wirz in the town of Andersonville, proclaiming Wirz the martyr of the Confederacy. More than a century after his death, the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization awarded Wirz a “Medal of Honor” in recognition of his service to the Confederacy. Few figures of the Civil War spark as much controversy and debate as does Henry Wirz.

The legacy of the Wirz Trial is that it became the basis for military tribunals in the United States. It is often referred to as the world’s first war crimes trial. At the end of World War II, the United States military used tribunals modeled on that of Henry Wirz to prosecute Nazis for their crimes against the Jewish population in Europe. Even the Nazis’ defenses sound eerily similar to those of Wirz: “I was just following orders; I’m not in the American military therefore I cannot be tried by the US Armed Forces; I am under the protection of a surrender and parole at the end of the war” are all defenses used in both 1865 and 1945. In both cases, the United States argued that the laws of war dictated that in the cases of atrocities such as Andersonville, military justice was appropriate. Even in the 21st century, military tribunals continue to be the means by which the American military prosecutes enemy combatants and terrorists for violating the laws of war

For nearly one hundred fifty years Henry Wirz has remained a polarizing figure. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson ordered a halt to further military tribunals, saving most of Wirz’s named co-conspirators from suffering a similar fate. In the bitter years of Reconstruction, many Southerners turned to Wirz, the most prominent Confederate to be punished for war crimes, as a symbolic martyr of their Lost Cause. Several former Confederates associated with the prison, including Surgeon Randolph Stevenson and Lt. Samuel Davis published books in defense of Wirz.

Prisoners continued to publish memoirs vilifying the side of the man that they saw from inside the stockade – a cruel tyrant that threatened them and their comrades. In the heat of these acrimonious debates, conflicting mythologies emerged. Stories were fabricated – stories that Wirz had personally killed hundreds of men, or that the supposed star witness perjured himself, thus proving Wirz’s innocence. Every story imaginable to absolve Wirz was concocted – placing blame on Generals Grant or Sherman, or even on the prisoners. A monument was erected in memory of Henry Wirzin the town of Andersonville that further reinforced these increasingly popular notions. In response, prisoners and their descendants further exaggerated the cruelties of Wirz. In the absence of scholarship on the man or the trial, these myths have permeated the popular understanding of Andersonville.

Whether or not Wirz violated the existing laws of war is not subject to debate. The existing legal frameworks of the day stipulated that prisoners must be given access to the same supplies available to the armies in the field. Wirz’s own staff members, including his colleague from Richmond who also worked at Andersonville, George Gibbs, testified that Wirz failed to meet that legal obligation. His threats to kill or injure prisoners as a means of control by intimidation backfired on him and reinforced the belief that he was withholding things not to exact a degree of control, but to purposefully torment and kill his captives. The real debates and legacies of Henry Wirz are much bigger than his own actions in the prisons of Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia. Did the difficult circumstances of managing an overcrowded prison in a crumbling Confederacy justify Wirz’s decisions and behavior? Should Wirz have been tried by a military tribunal or civil court? Was he legally protected from prosecution? What responsibilities do officers bear for their commands? These are difficult issues that have resurfaced again and again in our history. The legality and process of military justice continue to divide us well into the 21^st century.