27 Facts About Henry Wirz

Henry Wirz was the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 Union Army prisoners of war died as a result of inhumane conditions.

Henry Wirz received elementary and secondary education, and he aspired to become a physician but his family did not possess funds to pay for his medical education.

Henry Wirz married Emilie Oschwald in 1845 and had two children.

In 1847, Henry Wirz was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of embezzlement and fraud.

Henry Wirz was released the next year and his sentence was commuted to 12 years of exile from the canton of Zurich, but his wife refused to emigrate and obtained a divorce in 1853.

Henry Wirz first went to Moscow, in 1848, and the next year to the United States, where he found employment in a factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Henry Wirz tried to establish his own homeopathic medicine practice in Cadiz, Kentucky, and worked as superintendent of a water cure clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts.

In 1854, Henry Wirz married the Methodist widow Elizabeth Wolfe.

In 1856 Wirz made the acquaintance of Levin R Marshall, the owner of the plantation Cabin Teele, who employed him as its overseer and where he set up a practice for homeopathic medicine.

Later accounts by Henry Wirz's daughter alleged that Confederate President Jefferson Davis made Captain Henry Wirz a "special minister" and sent him to Europe carrying secret dispatches to Confederate Commissioners James Mason in England, and John Slidell in France.

Henry Wirz returned from Europe in January 1864 and reported to Richmond, Virginia, where he began working for General Winder in the prison department.

Henry Wirz initially served on detached duty as a prison commandant in Alabama, but was then transferred to help guard Union prisoners incarcerated at Richmond.

Henry Wirz was praised by his many superiors and even by some prisoners, and was even recommended for, but not promoted to, major.

Henry Wirz recognized that the conditions were inadequate and petitioned his superiors to provide more support, but was denied.

Henry Wirz was arrested by a contingent of the 4th US Cavalry on May 7,1865, in Andersonville.

Henry Wirz was taken first to Macon, Georgia, and then by rail to Washington, DC, arriving there on May 10,1865, where he was held in the Old Capitol Prison since the federal government decided to put him on trial for conspiring to impair the lives of Union prisoners of war.

Henry Wirz was charged with ordering guards to fire on prisoners with muskets and to have dogs attack a prisoner.

Henry Wirz was acquitted of specifications 4,10, and 13.

The night before his execution, Louis F Schade, an attorney working on behalf of Wirz, was told by an emissary from a high Cabinet official that if Wirz implicated Jefferson Davis in the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted.

Henry Wirz had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville.

Henry Wirz was hanged at 10:32 am on November 10,1865, at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington DC, located next to the US Capitol.

Henry Wirz's neck did not break from the fall, and the crowd of 200 spectators guarded by 120 soldiers watched as he writhed and slowly strangled.

Henry Wirz was buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, DC.

The Henry Wirz controversy grew out of the questions remaining after his trial pertaining to guilt and responsibility for multiple deaths of prisoners of war in camps on both sides following suspension of the Dix-Hill Cartel prisoner exchange agreement in July 1863.

Henry Wirz is an important character in MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Andersonville, introduced in the third chapter during his mission to France in October 1863.

In Saul Levitt's 1959 play The Andersonville Trial, Henry Wirz was first played by Herbert Berghof.

Henry Wirz was portrayed by Stevo Zigon in the Yugoslav TV film Andersonvil - Logor smrti [sh], an adaptation of Saul Levitt's 1959 play.