Was the commandant of andersonville prison camp. Its one of the most notorious camps in the mihistory of moder warfare. It was in the southwest of georgia and well talk about hanging henry wirz. Wirz was hanged for his role in perpetuating according to the federal government mistreatment and murder at that camp and he was one of the first individuals in the modern era to be tried for war crimes and henry wirzs trial in the fall of 1865 set the precedent for more recent war crimes trials, most notably the nuremberg trials of nazi perpetrators after world war ii, the american the allied prosecutors who were preparing for those prosecutions in nuremberg actually studied the wirz trial and particularly his defense so that they could prepare for what they anticipated the nazi defense would be and called it the wirz defense which was basically, you know, i was only following orders. Thats the typical defense and they used henry wirzs trial to help prepare far in 1945. So this is a really important moment not only in american legal history but also in world legal history. And were going to be thinking about the prison at andersonville itself and what led conditions there to be so horrible and what led to the catastrophic loss of life that was suffer there had in 1864 well also think about if andersonville was different than other p. O. W. Camps, it wasnt the only one, and they were all pretty horrible but well think about what if anything made andersonville different. Finally we want to think about whether or not henry wirz was in fact guilty of war crimes and did he deserve to die for his role in the events in 1864 at andersonville . So our terms and concepts for today, henry wirz, andersonville prison, the Prisoner Exchange and well be revisiting a topic weve talked about several times throughout the semester and that is the lieber code. Henry wirz was a native of switzerland who immigrated to the United States. No one is sure when. Its possible he could have been what was known at the time as a 48er, sort of a lrefugee of th democratic revolutions that occurred around 1848. There were a lot of refugees after those revolutions were over so its possible henry wirz could have immigrated around that time. We dont know much about his life prior to his arrival in the United States. He never spoke publicly about his life the consul general of switzerland who wrote a letter on his behalf when wirz was on trial didnt give detail but he said wirz came from a very good background and haddest steamable parents and came from a very respectable family but we dont know a lot about him and he never spoke publicly about his life in europe. Once he arrived in the United States he marries a fairly wealthy widow from kentucky and he settles in kentucky for a while before moving to louisiana. And once in louisiana wirz sets up a medical practice. Theres no evidence hed received any kind of medical training, he wanted to be a doctor but his father pushed him into business. So he sets up a medical practice which as you know from our previous discussions about medicine in the 19th century that wasnt uncommon, that wasnt the way things were done in the 19th century. You would apprentice with a practicing physician and eventually kind of go out on your own. There were medical colleges where you could get degrees but at that time it wasnt required that you have formal medical training to practice as a physician. It was more of an apprenticeship kind of thing and thats what he did. In the years leading up to the civil war wirz is a country doctor in rural louisiana and when the war breaks out in 1861, like most patriotic southern men dr. Wirz enlists with the confederate forces. And he serves with distinction through 1862. Hes wounded at the combat l of seven pines in may of 1862 and is wounded severely in his right arm and loses all use of his right arm. Hes cited for bravery and he is promoted to the rank of captain after he recovers from his wounds he because he speaks fluent french and german as well as english he is sent on special Diplomatic Missions by the confederacy to europe to get those european nations to come and support the confederacy and come out on the side of the south. So he spends most of 1863 in europe doing its not clear who hes visiting but hes on a diplomatic tour for the kae confederacy and when he returns in the spring of 1864 he is given the job of being the commandant or the administrator of this new program camping with built in southwest georgia which becomes known infamously as andersonville prison. And at the time wirz would probably thinking this a good way to sit out the rest of the war. Hes not going to be embattled. His life isnt going to be at risk. This is a good job for someone who seriously he cant use his arm anymore so hes impaired. Hell get to live with his family, his wife and children can live nearby the camp so all in all this isnt a bad post but he doesnt really know the situation thats going to be facing him once he arrives in southwest georgia at what is officially known as camp sumpter. And camp sumpter is near the nearest town of is the Railroad Depot of andersonville so it becomes known as andersonville prison. So camp sumpter was built in early 1864 and i use the term built loosely because as you can see from this picture sort of theres not a lot of buildings in camp sumpter. Most of the prisoners are living in tents in kind of makeshift accommodati accommodation. It was originally intended to house at maximum 10,000 prisoners of war. That was the Maximum Capacity that this prison could hold. 27 acres in main confine. You can see it was bounded by a very high stockade fence. That goes all the way around the perimeter. There was a creek that actually runs here under the stockade through the middle of the camp so there shall a fresh water supply from the men there but as you can imagine the further in the creek flows into the camp the worse the quality of the water gets. So this part right up here that flows right under closest to the stockade fence is the most sought after water in the camp and that will become important for a story ill tell you in just a minute. So and on top of the fences you can see, ill point out to you, you can see them, a little bit in this picture. On the top of the stockade spaced out periodically is what was known as a pigeon roost which were the guard towers where the guards sat with their rifles garden the prisoners and as you can tell there are many more prisoners than there are guards. And so thats why theyre spaced out like they are on top of the fence. This running along the bottom of the near the edge of the stockade this is the latrine, you can see its a makeshift long trough of a toilet and you can see individuals using the toilet there that stretches sort of the length of one side of the stockade fence. And another thing i want to point out to you about the camp that you can notice in this photograph, right here you can sort of see a long sort of low railing, its a piece of wood stretching the length here in front of the sink. Lets see, if we go back. You can also get a sense of it here and theres a space between this low railing and the stockade and you see this sort of space all along the edge of the fence thats devoid of people because the railing is keeping them back and that, you can see it here as well, what was was known as the dead line because if a prisoner stepped over or crossed the dead line, they were liable to be shot by one of the guards in the pigeon roost. And the dead line was there as a way to keep the prisoners back, to keep them from rushing towards the fence or starting any kind of mutiny or move to overthrow the guards. And the guards, according to witnesses and survivors of andersonville did, in fact shoot men when they attended to cross the deadline and this is an illustration from one survivors testimony who claim that they witnessed a Union Soldier who was trying to reach over the dead line with his cup and to get some of that fresher water if you recall. Some of that water thats just flowing into the camp. Hes trying to reach over the deadline to dip his cup into the fresher water and hes shot. As you can imagine this is not a Pleasant Place to be. From april 1864 through the peak time in which the camp had its the most inmates from april, 1864 to october 1864 the camp which was meant to house 10,000 p. O. W. S through that time has anywhere between 20 and 40,000 p. O. W. S during that time. The peak month for the population was august of 1864. So its incredibly overcrowded however as historians have pointed out, that population tended to fluctuate dramatica y dramatically. Its at its peak in august of 1864 when it has between 30,000 and 40,000 prisoners in it but at other times during the 14month existence of this camp and thats all it existed 14 months, it probably has less than the the appointed 10,000 p. O. W. S it was supposed to have in the first place so theres a lot of movement in and out of the camp prisoners are transferred to other confederate prisons and, of course, men are dying all the time. These conditions, particularly the overcrowding, the putrid water breeding not only disease but also mosquitos, men are suffering from dysentery, gangrene, pneumonia, scurvy, malnutrition and exposure southwest georgia is pretty not the summer and cold in the winter and they have very little of any kind of adequate shelter so at its peak by the early fall of 18645,000 men died between august and october, 1864, i believe. All in told nearly 13,000 Union Soldiers died in andersonville in its entire existence. Thats a death rate of about 45 of the total population. So its extremely high. There is the National Cemetery which now exists at andersonville. If you here in the vicinity you can go there and visit. Most of the soldiers who are buried there have been identified positive ly but several hundred remain unknown at the cemetery. Another notorious facet of andersonville prison were the andersonville raiders. Now, these were gangs of inmates, of Union Soldiers who were armed with clubs and knives and various other kind of makeshift implements and they terrorized the other inmates in the camp. They robbed people of their rations, of their personal property and they were also reported to have beaten and killed inmates in the attempts to rob them. Things get so bad with the rard th raiders that another group of inmates organize themselves the a police force, they call themselves the regulators and ultimately end up capturing several dozen of the raiders and they have an actual trial, they put six of the leaders on trial and as you can see here from this drawing they end up with the permission of the camp superintendent henry wirz as well as some higher up, some of wirzs superiors in the confederate government, they get permission to hold this trial and they ultimately execute, they hang six of these sort of ring leaders of these raiders. And this becomes one of the most notorious moments in andersonvilles history and it gives you some indication of what a sort of state of nature these men are living in within the camp. Not only are they suffering from disease and malnutrition and mistreatment the confederate authorities, theyre also at frisk each other and from people who would take advantage of the situation to try to better their own situation to get more food or to get other kinds of property off the less fortunate. So it really was a horrible place. Now, one of the things if youve done much reading or youve heard much about andersonville, some people will often say andersonville was no worse than any other prisoner of war camp, in particular some of the most notorious p. O. W. Camps in the north, elmira prison, which was not too far from here. Anybody from near the elmira ar area . There was also another one ill talk about outside of chicago. And sometimes people will say andersonville was no worse than any of these other prisons. I take issue with that. Heres a picture of the evening roll call in elmira prison in 1864 and looking at this image you can tell why. There was a significant difference in my mind between the conditions at andersonville if you go back and look and what you see at elmira. Number one, theres a lot more built structures or barracks for the prisoners to stay in. Now elmira suns from the same kind of overcrowding which im going to explain why that is in a few minutes that andersonville does. There are far more prisoners in elmira than they could properly house so in the back they set up tents and a lot of the men do, in fact, live in tents rather than actual housing. But to me, i mean, this image looks nothing like the images that you see from andersonville, which is not to say that elmira was a great place to be. No prisoner of war cramp is a great place to be in any war, its not intended to be and who wants to spend a winter in upstate new york sleeping in a tent . None of us. Weve all experienced it, its not fun, its brutally told. And the death rate at elmira, which was known by the nickname hellmira by the men imprisoned there, the death rate at elmira hovered around 25 compared to the 45 at andersonville which is still im not trying to diminish it, its still incredibly high. All total, about 3,000 confederate soldiers who were imprisoned in elmira died there. So there were about 12,000 total. And they suffered largely from the same kind of ailments the Union Soldiers at andersonville did. They suffered the malnutrition, they didnt have enough food. They suffered the exposure. Pneumonia outbreaks of various kinds of diseases like influenza and smallpox, dysentery. There was also a problem with drainage and putrid water standing within the camp that bred sickness and disease. So really we might think of the differences between elmira and andersonville not really in terms of kind but of scale. The scale of sickness and overcrowding in elmira is simply not to the scale that we see it at andersonville. There is now a National Cemetery atm myra as well and there is a monument there to the confederate soldiers who died. Camp douglas was in chicago and it was officially used as training camp, as was elmira initially as well. But, you know, fairly early on camp douglas backs one of the first union p. O. W. Camps for confederate prisoners, as early as 1862 theyre housing confederate prisoners there. And like elmira there are far more soldiers in 1846 than the camp can reasonably accommodate and they suffer from the same kinds of problems, malnutrition, exposure. The death rate at camp douglas is somewhere between historians estimate 17 and 23 . And thats because theres some discrepancy with actually how many soldiers, confederate soldiers, died there. This is a mass grave in the nearby Oakwood Cemetery in chicago where, according to the monument there are 6,000 confederate soldiers buried under this mound. But camp records only list about 4,000. So there are about 1500 to 2,000 sort of unaccounted for people. So somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 confederate soldiers died at camp douglas and, again, from the same kinds of conditions that soldiers died of at elmira and andersonville. Chicago, its incredibly cold in the winter. I spent 13 years in chicago in college and graduate school and i would not want to sleep in a tent on the lakes of the shore of lake michigan, it would not be fun. So these camps, none of them, are any place anyone would want to be, theyre brutal, the conditions the Living Conditions are barebones and a lot of the men who were arriving at these camps were already either wounded or sick and if youre already wounded and sick and your immune system is compromised this kind of exposure and lack of proper food is only going to contribute to your decline so theyre not places where one goes to flourish and be healthy and well,er in a sense any prisoner of war camp is a place where men went to die. Some people who talk about and write about these prisoner of war camps will say that the conditions in places like elmira and camp douglas, the northern p. O. W. Camps were as bad as they were because the union was retaliating against the treatment that their soldiers were received in confederate camps like andersonville and libby president , belle isle, some of the others and there is some sort of kind of loose anecdotal evidence to suggest that the me who are running these camps are certainly not inclined to be particularly energetic or speedy in providing the confederate p. O. W. S there with the kinds of things that they need. So, for instance, there was one superintendent of camp douglas who it appears replaced all the woodburning stoves in the barracks with boilers that didnt produce, according to the men who lived there, enough heat or as much heat as the woodburning stoves did and they tended not to cook the food as well and so some people will say he did that on purpose because Union Soldiers were suffering from the cold and deprivation so they were trying to pay back the confederate p. O. W. S for that. Theres really not a lot of hard evidence to suggest that there was a concerted kbrun i dont know policy to say, you know what . Our men are suffering at andersonville so were going to make it just add because for these confederate soldiers in these camps but the fact of the matter is, again, its not a difference so much in kind but in scale and if we remember, if we go back to the lieber code which we looked at several weeks ago, one of the articles of the lieber code, which was the codified sort of rule of warfare during the civil war allowed for prisoners of war to be subject to the infliction of retaliatory measures now, specifically Francis Lieber here is talking and writing about lincolns retaliatory order that he issued in 1863 if you recall when the confederate government said any black soldier or white commander of black troops who are caught will not be given quarter, they will not be treated as prisoners of war they will be subject either to be sold into slavery or executed. And when the confederacy releases that order, they released it in the fall of 1862 after the preliminary emancipation proclamation lincoln issues whatsretaliatio he says for every black soldier or white officer executed we will execute one confederate prisoner of war. Now, to my knowledge they never did that. They never happened. I could be wrong, ive never seen evidence of that, its entirely possible but i dont think it ever occurred but it was a threat, it was a retaliation order and is according to lieber perfectly per miss to believe do that during war so this is one of these even though were going to get into in just a second the lieber code had express prohibitions against the mistreatment of prisoners of war, this is one of these gray areas in the lieber code that although youre not supposed to mistreat prisers, youre supposed to feed them, youre supposed to give them medical care, youre not supposed to mistreat them any way, they are, according to lieber, still liable to this kind of retaliatory measure when they happen another sort of criticism or question that some people will raise about andersonville is the question of whether or not sherman, William Sherman after he captures atlanta and goes on his march to the sea if he, in fact, could have liber e liberated andersonville. So why didnt he . This is a map of georgia. The star represents the town of americus, georgia, which is a town very near where andersonville was. So thats the general vicinity in southwest georgia where andersonville prison was located and if you recall in september of 1864, atlanta falls to shermans army. In between september and november hes laying out his plan, hes planning the march to the sea which will ultimately take him to savannah. So he doesnt wraelly go in the direction of sumpter. But could he . Could he have done so . Well, certainly sherman and folks knew about andersonville. Prisoners had escaped from there so they knew that things were pretty bad there, however, i think it is a bad assumption to think that sherman could have reasonably done anything to alleviate the suffering of the men at andersonville simply because of the timeline. By the time that atlanta falls and sherman begins his march in november, about november 15 of 1864, by that time the vast majority of the men who died at andersonville have already died and by the time that sherman does begin his march out of atlanta towards savannah on november 15, the population of andersonville prison has fallen to about 1500 men by that time. Once the city of atlanta falls, confederate officials, because andersonville is so relatively close, they begin moving a lot of the prisoners out to other prison camps and they actually begin transporting them up to the carolinas. So they dont because they dont want them to escape, they dont want them to be liberated. So by the and a lot of the men already like i said, have died. So it would only have been about 1500 men or so left at andersonville by that time and sherman knows this. He realizes this so he doesnt consider the possibility of veering off his course or sending his men that way. Hes really focussed on getting to the sea and ultimately bri bringing the war to an end close y closer so the idea that sherman could have alleviated Union Suffering there i dont think simply because of the timeline that would have made that much of a difference by that point. So why were these prisons, not only andersonville but also the northern ones, why were they so overcrowded . Thats the key question to understanding why the conditions were so bad at andersonville and the other prisoner of war camps, i think, and that had to do with the collapse of the Prisoner Exchange system. So the prisoner when the war begins its convention to have a Prisoner Exchange, particularly among officers but also for larger groups of enlisted men. And what would often happen . It was sort of an informal exchange, we have a group of your guys, off group of our guys, they would simply exchange them and they would go back to fight, that will though they whether or not supposed to go back into the armies they all did and they would simply exchange the men because its very taxing on an armys resources to try to take care of a lot of prisoners of war. You have to build camps for them, you have to have guards which means youre taking men out of your fighting force to work as guards and policemen so its not ideal to have large amounts of p. O. W. S so they try to exchange them that way and that was the way things were up until the union army starts enlisting black soldiers. And the confederacy refuses to exchange any captured black soldiers. And because they refuse to Exchange Black soldiers, lincoln, president lincoln, brings the Prisoner Exchange to a halt, he issues a command to all of his military officers that they are not to exchange any prisoners so long as the confederacy refuses to exchange africanamerican prisoners. So this happens, the collapse of the prisoner a exchange, before ulysses s. Grant becomes the commander of the majority of the union forces, the army of the potomac. A lot of critics of grant will use this crowication of his and say that, you know, he needlessly allowed these men to suffer and die in andersonville. The collapse of the Prisoner Exchange was not his policy, it was a policy of the president. And he approached robert e. Lee several times throughout 1864 as the population of prisoners are growing and growing and growing and he approaches him about the reinstatement of the exchange. Lets reinstate the Prisoner Exchange. Will you Exchange Black prisoners and lee responds i do not have the authority to Exchange Black prisoners. Because the confederate government would refuse to exchange them and grant and lincoln both agree that as long as the confederacy refuses to Exchange Black prisoners they cant in good faith participate in the exchange at all. Sfou a lot of the men sitting in these pew tritt conditions in andersonville dont care, they want the exchange to get moving again. They want to go home. Theyre dying there, of course. But both grant and lincoln agree that they have asked africanamerican men to fight and to die on behalf of a count kri that up until that point had not given them much reason to do so and by this point several hundred thousand africanamericans by the wars end will have have fought for the union army. They cant simply say okay, well exchange our white soldiers and you can keep any black tappive thes you might have. Its morally wrong. Its terrible for morale. How can you expect any more africanamericans to come and join the fight if they know that their commanders and their country think so little of them . So its really a Sticking Point morally for both lincoln and grant and they refuse to exchange any prisoners if the confederacy will not Exchange Black prisoners as well. So grant here is right. He said its hard on our men to be in southern prisons but when we start releasing confederate prisoners, theyre simply going to go back into their ranks and pick up the guns and start fighting again. But for grant its not simply a matter of trying to outlast the confederate supply of manpower. Its more complicated than that and theres a serious moral imperative at stake for grant and lincoln regarding the exchange of black soldiers along with white ones. To so the perhaps of the Prisoner Exchange is important if were going to understand why the population of these prisons grow so astronomically in 1864, why conditions get so out of hand there. But its not a simple case of just saying, oh, well, the government let this happen both lincoln and grant felt like they were not in a position to do otherwise. Its a complicated issue. So wirz certainly never expected to be put on trial for war crimes. In the first place because the idea of war crimes really comes into being through wirzs trial. Hes kind of the first person to get charged with this in the modern era. And another piece of evidence that suggests, you know, he didnt imagine that he was going to be in any way held accountable or prosecuted for what happened at andersonville is that when the war is over he just goes to his house which is next to the prison and he stays there and he waits for the Union Soldiers to arrive and liberate the camp, which they do and he doesnt expect theyre going to hold him accountable for that but he is arrested in may of 1865. Hes taken to washington, d. C. And, lets see, in the fall of that year, beginning in august, he is put on trial and its important to note that this trial is not a civilian trial. Like the trial of the lincoln conspirators that i talked about the other day, the trial is conducted by a military tribunal and that was controversial at the time. People thought the lincoln spir ors and wirz should have been tried by a civilian court but the army and the federal government thought, you know, this is even though peace has technically been declared, the war is technically over at this time this is still part of the war itself. And they wanted to and they wanted to hold they saw what the lincoln conspiratored has done as an extension of the confederate war effort as an act of war and like wise they were holding wirz to trial for his wartime actions. So thats how they justify a military tribunal. So hes tried by a military commissi commission. The government hopes to prove really what theyre trying to do is not simply hold wirz accountable, which they are, because people are up in arms about andersonville and how many men have died there and the survivors are coming back in terrible condition. They want to hold someone accountable but they also intend to lay the ground work for future trials, they hope, of highranking confederate leaders, men like president Jefferson Davis and perhaps even general robert e. Lee they believe that and they want to prove that there was a broader conspiracy among these highranking confederate officials to deprive these Union Soldiers, these Union Prisoners of war of life and to act victoria azaren vengefully in addition to holding wirz accountable. So wirz is charged not only with being an incompetent supervisor or superintendent, hes actually charged with maliciously knowing of all the sort of mistreatment and abuse going on, allowing it to happen, but in at least 13 cases hes charged with committing murders by his own hand so hes charged with 13 counts of murder that he committed personally. He was charged with shooting with his revolver prisoners. He was charged with at least one count of stomping a prisoner to death he was also charged with allowing dogs to maul prisoners who had escaped or attempted to esca escape. He was charged with giving orders to the guards to shoot men from the pigeon roosts. Now, at the trial there was not a lot in the way of direct eyewitness testimony that wirz had done any of these things. Most of the evidence amounts to hearsay, right . Oh, someone told me that they heard someone say that wirz had shot someone. So there was not a lot in the way of direct testimony and this is a key difference between a military tribunal and a Civil War Court because in a civilian court hearsay evidence is not admissible. But a military tribunal, the level of proof that one must produce is much looser than what would is much less stringent than in a civilian court which is why some people at the time, certainly wirzs lawyers and people advocating for him said, you know, this isnt right, this military tribunal, zwoub really easy to railroad someone if thats what you had in mind, it would be much easier to do that than it would be in a civilian case and they said the same thing, mary seurats lawyers said the same thing about her trial by military commission earlier that year so it was controversial. The commission saw actual photographs taken of andersonville survivors and once theyre presented with this kind of photographic evidence, you know, that is very hard to deny that men did not the men who survived andersonville they left looking like this. Theyre skeletons, severely emaciated, many liberated in the spring didnt live because they were too far gone already. So this was very powerful evidence against henry wirz. How can he explain this . And the prosecutors would point to the lieber code which weve already studied and various articles talking about how prisoners of war are not supposed to be mistreated, theyre not supposed to be starved. Theyre supposed to be given adequate food. Theyre not supposed to be mutilated. Theyre supposed to be given medical treatment where thats possible and the fact that wirz was a physician, he worked as a doctor before the war, several people in his trial pointed out that he knew that he was a doctor, he should have known these men were so ill and he should have done more to provide them with care, with medicine. For his part, what is wirzs defense . What kind of defense can you put on to this . First of all to the charges he had by his own hand murdered prisoners, he flat out denied it. He said theres no i didnt do that. I do not kill anyone. And to the other all conditions at the prison he said, look, i did the best with what i had. The camp was horribly overcrowded because the Prisoner Exchange had collapsed. The confederacy, they didnt have money to feed its own soldiers or provisions or resources to take care of its own man, how was i supposed to take care of these inmates i had when i had nothing to feed them with . I would have fed them if i had stuff to feed them with. I would have given them medicine if i had had medicine to give them but i had nothing to work with because the confederacy by this time was collapsing. It was on its last leg. What could i do . I can only work with what i had and i told my superiors in richmond that i needed help but they said there was no help so what could i do . I was given this job, this was my job, i was just doing the best i could, i was just following orders. But that wasnt good enough. The military Commission Found him guilty and nonnovember 101865 he was executed in the same prison yard that mary surratt and the lincoln conspirators were executed the previous july and this is a picture just moments after he actually drops through the scaffold. Wirz is buried in the same cemetery as mary surat, Mount Olivet Cemetery in washington, d. C. And you can see here they have put a small marker on his grave that says captain henry wirz csa, confederate hero, martyr. Died november 10, 1865. So how should we remember henry wirz . Should we think of him as a martyr . Im confused by that because you think a marter to what . Theres supposed to be a bigger cause one is martyred for. I dont know how to think about wirz as a martyr but its also, ill admit, difficult for me to think about him as someone who intentionally inflicted cruelty and suffering on those men at andersonville. I think the evidence against him for having actually killed people is pretty sketchy. I dont think it would hold up in a court of law, a civilian court of law. So if we discount that do we or should we hold him responsible in some way for those terrible conditions . And for the 45 death rate . For 12,000 men, nearly 13,000 men who perished at andersonville . What was his responsibility for that . Who was ultimately responsible . You read one your reading for today was an account of andersonville prison by a survivor, it was his diary that he kept while he was there, michael doherty, the online diary and one thing i think that stands out about dohertys that wirz doesnt appear very often. Theres not a lot of wirz he doesnt see wirz a lot and actually one of the things wirz said during his defense was that for most of the time he was sick himself and confined to his house so he wasnt out and about circulating, killing prisoners or kicking prisoners or siccing dogs on prisoners. He said i wasnt even around a lot. And in dohertys diary, he doesnt talk about wirz very much and doherty actually has much harsher criticisms for men like Jefferson Davis who he says, you know, the confederate government didnt do its job. This is why the conditions in this camp are so bad, camp are. Its because jeff davis is sitting up there in richmond and he doesnt care whats happening to these prisoners at these camps. So you know, its a quandary. Its a problematic question that cops out of the civil war, and its one that is really applicableable to warfare in general, not just the civil war but lots of wars previous to that. And ones that are currently going on today, as well. So are there any questions about henry wirz and vendsville. Who makes a decision by trying somebody by a military tribunal instead of a civilian court . The reason than that decision was made at the time was because the events had happened during the war. So they said and wirz had and basketing as an emissary or a person of the Confederate Army and these were part of his war duties. So the army pretty much decided that this is a wartime issue. So it can be decided by a military Commission Rather than a civilian court. Any other questionses . Yes. Do you know wirz ever like asked the confederate government for better food or better like was there any bet letters or anything like any printed documents . So did wirz ever ask for help from the confederate government . Yes, he did. And there are letters that he sent to his superiors and said you know, i need food. I need medicine. And they did say, we dont have any. Right . So there is evidence that he did try to get some assistance, and there was no assistance forthcoming. Largely you know, he was right that the confederacy have it to send. They didnt have food and shoes and medicine for their own troops at that time. So i think that i mean to my mind, thats a legitimate argument that he made. Thats not simply you know sort of him trying to get out of responsibility. I mean, its one of those cases which sort of makes you stop and think, well, what could he have done . What would i have done in that situation . You know . And you know, it could be at the end of the day, you know, henry wirz is one of those pitiful figures who you know had the shoe been on the other foot, right, had the confederacy won and the union lost, you know, you might think, would the superintendent of camp douglas or the superintendent of elmira have been held accountable in the way that wirz was, right . Winners get to write history, right . And they also get to decide the terms of peace after a war is over. Any other questions . Yes. Was anyone else like did they attempt to hold anyone else accountable for happened . Was anyone else ever held accountable for andersonville . No. So they initially hoped that wirzs trial would be the first of several, right . And they wanted to bring Jefferson Davis and high ranking confederate leaders, the men who had instigated and encouraged secession. They wanted to bring them to trial for treason. In fact,ever son davis is indicted, and hes held on that indictment for nearly two years before hes finally released. Because government prosecutors really cant come to a consensus about whether or not hes guilty of treason and if they could get a conviction, you know, for him, for that. So it was, flow, so wirz is really the only confederate official who was held accountable for certainly for andersonville but really for the for what happened from 1861 to 1865. And it, you know, it was an ongoing question then. What should be done, should these confederate leaders be punished . Should they be executed . Certainly there were people in 1865 who thought so, but there were many others who thought no, that the best way to forward forward to try to bring the country back together is to avoid that kind of vengeance some would say or those kinds of really dramatic punishments and just try to move forward from that. Were going to Start Talking about reconstruction next. And there were some legal limitations or punishments for exconfederates and many people argue today that they werent, you know, they werent very strict and they werent harsh enough. Yes. Is [ inaudible question ] right. So yes, wirz wirz trial as i mentioned at the beginning of the lecture becomes sort of the precedent for what happens at nuremberg and later in the 20th century where you have war crimes trials. So the allied prosecutors, when theyre preparing for the nuremberg trials they actually go back and try to find, where has this happened before . Whats the precedent. And this was the main case they could find. And so they studied the wirz trial, the transcripts, the eyewitness testimony to try to anticipate what the defense of the nuremberg, nazis is going to be. Right . And how theyre going to counter that. So how do they counter, how do you prepare for the defense that i wasnt personally responsible. I was only following orders which is the main line defense of the nazi officials at nuremberg. So you know, wirz is a really important case for nem sort of setting the precedent of how to prosecute these kinds of cases when they occur later on in the 20th century. Yes. Did wirz have legal representation . If so, who was it . Yes, he did have legal representation. He had a couple of different lawyers. They were private lawyers. Of who represented him. I cant think of their names off the top of my head, but he did have legal representation. He was entitled to that. Youre still entitled to that with a military commission. He also had, you know, some clergymen and other people who came out in support of him. Some other folks at the time who had been prominent sort of anticapital punishment, antideath penalty movements in the mid19th century came out against his execution. They said okay, he should be imprisoned but not executed. This is far too great a punishment for him. But in the end, you know, Andrew Johnson could have pardoned hip, president johnson but he chose not to do that in large part because the public outcry against what had happened at andersonville was so great that im sure johnson just thought it wasnt going to be politically expedient for him to pardon this be particular person. And i think, too, and one thing we havent talked about is the fact that wirtz was foreign born. Right . Hes not an american by birth. Hes swiss. Although hes often misidentified as german. Hes not. Hes swiss. You know, you have to wonder what role that played in him being found guilty, as well. Right . Because hes or being held accountable or being held up as an example. You know, did it matter that he was foreign born and not american . Did that make a difference . Whos to say . Okay. Thank you guys very much. Ill see you friday. 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