The War Crimes and Trial of Henry Wirz

??? WAR CRIMES AND TRIAL OF HENRY WIRZ Darrett B. Rutman on November 10, 1865, in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington D.C., Henry Wirz, late captain1 in the Army of the Confederate States of America, stood on a scaffold, a convicted war criminal. Turning to the major commanding the execution party, Wirz shook his hand and pardoned him for his actions. "I know what orders are, Major," he said, "and I am beinghungfor obeying them."2 Minutes later, his body constrained by leather straps, his bearded face masked by a black hood, Captain Wirz dangled hideouslyfrom the scaffold's crossbar. Who was this man? During the fall of 1865 his very name was a household word for all that was "odious and infamous." The New York Times stated: "If there is any bitterness entertained by the Northern people toward the South, it springs from the . . . incredible and infamous treatment which Northern captured soldiers received in Southern prison camps."3 Henry Wirz, in 1864-1865 the commander of prisoners at Andersonville , or, as officially known, Camp Sumter, was the unfortunate on whom this bitterness turned. To the North he was "the Andersonville savage," "the inhuman wretch," "the infamous captain," "the barbarian." The North knew him as a "short, thickset Dutchman, repulsive in appearance , besotted, ignorant and cruel"; "an undersized, fidgity man with an insignificant face, and a mouth that protruded like a rabbit's"; A former newspaperman turned historian, Dr. Rutman did his graduate work in history at the Universities of Illinois and Virginia. He is now a member of the historyfaculty at the University ofMinnesota. 1 Many writers have given Wirz the unwarranted rank of major. James M. Page and M. J. Haley, in The True Story of AndersonviUe Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz (New York, 1908), p. 187, stated that Wirz was promoted to major in the winter of 1864-1865. Yet no record of such a promotion exists, and as late as August, 1865, Wirz signed his name to letters as "Late Captain and AAG, CSA." See New York Times, August 31, 1865, hereafter cited as Times; and New York News, August 30, 1865, hereafter cited as News. 2 Harper's Weekly, November 25, 1865, hereafter cited as Harper's; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 25, 1865, hereafter cited as Leslie's. 3 Times, August 16, 1865. 117 118DABBETT B. RUTMAN "a fawning, creeping Uriah Heep sort of fellow . . . with a sneaking look in his face."4 The descriptions are symptomatic of the public feeling about Wirz: He was what a hostile people wanted him to be—foreign, ugly, cruel, hulking, yet at the same time cringing and cowardly. Fact was unimportantwhen it opposed the mass psychosis which gripped the triumphant Union. Even today, fact is disregarded. Henry Wirz still stands a black and fiendish creature, justly condemned as a torturer of Union prisoners.5 His story, though, is a tragedy. It is that of a man hurried to his death by vindictive politicians, an unbridled press, and a nation thirsty for revenge. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1822, a doctor by profession, Henry Wirz had abandoned Europe for the New World after the death of his first wife. In 1849 he settled in Louisville, Kentucky, and remarried. Five years later he moved to Milliken's Bend, Louisiana. By the time of the Civil War he had developed a large and lucrative medical practice.6 He was of medium height, about five feet eight inches, slim and slightly stoop-shouldered. His dark, partially gray hair and close-cropped beard accented a pale complexion and high forehead. His eyes were piercingly gray, but the whole aura of his face was one of subdued, shy sadness. Although he spoke with an accent, his writing was scrupulously correct, exhibiting a curtness and business-like air which tells much of the man's character.7 In the first enthusiastic war days of 1861, the thirty-nine-year-old Wirz left Milliken's Bend to enlist as a private in the elite Madison Infantry , Louisiana Volunteers. Wounded in the right shoulder and arm at Bull Run, he was reassigned to duty in the Confederate prisoner-ofwar establishment. Competent and...