Is anyone talking about the upcoming War Between the States Sesquicentennial? The 150th Anniversary of the War for Southern Independence will be commemorated by such groups as the Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans. See more information at: http://www.150wbts.org/
Do young people know the truth about Henry Wirz?
The 35th annual Captain Henry Wirz Memorial Service (a tradition started by the Alexander H. Stephens Camp 78 Sons of Confederate Veterans and Americus Chapter United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1976) will take place on Sunday afternoon, November 7th at 3 PM in the town of Andersonville, Georgia.
The guest speaker for the event will be Dr. Richard Rhone from Tuscaloosa, Alabama who is the Lieutenant Commander General of the Military Order of Stars and Bars. John Carroll will lead those assembled in the singing of “Dixie” and Andersonville Mayor Marvin Buagh will bring welcome.
For more information about the event contact James Gaston by email at: gaston7460@bellsouth.net Captain Henry Wirz was born, Hartman Heinrich Wirz in November 1823, in Zurich, Switzerland where his father, Abraham Wirz was highly respected.
At the outbreak of the War Between the States, Wirz enlisted in the Fourth Louisiana infantry on June 16, 1861. He was promoted to sergeant a year later and was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. He never recovered from the injury to his left wrist and it caused him great pain for the rest of his life.
Wirz was promoted to Captain on June 12, 1862 and was first detailed to General John Winder where he was given command of a Confederate military prison in Richmond, Virginia.
After serving a year as special emissary to President Jefferson Davis in Paris and Berlin, on March 27, 1864, he was installed as commandant of Andersonville Prison at Fort Sumter in Georgia. Wirz did the best he could do with many Union prisoners and very little food and medicine. It is written that the guards got the same food and medicine as the prisoners.
The Confederacy sent a distress message to Union President Abraham Lincoln and Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The South pleaded for an exchange of Confederate and Union prisoners. Lincoln and Grant, however, refused believing the Union prisoners might go home but the Confederate prisoners might go back to fight another day.
Captain Henry Wirz was unfairly charged of war crimes and even though witnesses for the defense could testify, his fate was already decided. Among those who knew of Wirz’s innocence was a Union soldier who was a prisoner at Andersonville.
Wirz was executed in Washington, D.C. on November 10, 1865.
The Confederate Reenactors and Honor Guard of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 78 (Muckalee Guards) will perform the closing ceremony at the monument to Wirz in Andersonville placed there by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (Georgia Division).
Yep. And there was actually a higher death rate among the guards too...
The South pleaded for an exchange of Confederate and Union prisoners.
They even released several prisoners and sent them to Lincoln to plead for medicine/prisoner exchanges. Lincoln didn't listen...
his fate was already decided.
Sure was. There were several charges brought against him. Most were by nameless prisoners. Many of the 'crimes' he supposedly committed were reported to have happened on days when he was gone on sick leave or even before he ever came to the camp...In most cases, there were no witnesses to the crime. In one where there was a witness, the witness later admitted to lying about it. And the persons supposedly harmed by Wirz must not have had any friends because nobody seemed to know their names.....pretty fishy
Wirz may or may not have deserved his fate, but it is an undeniable fact that his superiors deserved to be on the gallows with him. And, in fairness, so did many Union officers who mistreated rebel prisoners in their care.
I have found the comments here absolutely fascinating. The major point has been completely missed.
The WBTS was one of the greatest civil wars of all time. Civil wars are especially effective, for fairly obvious reasons, at generating atrocities, followed by revenge atrocities and by massive retaliation at the end by the winners against the losers. This pattern is nearly universal in civil wars that last more than a short time.
It is estimated the Civil Wars in the UK caused a drop in population varying from 10% in England to 15% in Scotland to over 25% in Ireland.
The long series of religious wars in France had similar effects.
Somewhere between 20M and 50M people died in the Taiping Rebellion about the same time as our war.
The Spanish Civil War in the 30s had somewhere around 250,000 civilians dying in the war, often massacred, and another 100,000 to 150,000 executed by the victors.
The Russian and Chinese civil wars had proportional or greater death tolls.
And some American southerners have the nerve to complain about the horrendous oppression involved when one southerner was executed after losing the war?
It is arguable that Wirz was executed unfairly, although the story is by no means perfectly clear. As NS and others have pointed out, there should have been at least several dozen responsible officers hanged after the war for how they treated prisoners, in both North and South.
At Andersonville, A number of the 54th Mass. regiment, and some others, were already of our number, and they were universally treated better than we white soldiers. They were taken outside every day to perform some labor,and allowed double rations, and also the privilege of buying things outside and bringing them into the prison at evening and selling them to such as had any money, for a good round price in "greenbacks".
Black freedmen at Andersonville fared better than whites according to the men with which they were imprisoned. The 7th Tennessee Cavalry, USA, which was captured at Union City, Tennessee, suffered the highest loss of men per capita of all of the regiments interred at Andersonville. Tennessee Unionists were frowned upon and were dealt some of the harshest treatment.