He entered the Confederate Army at the beginning of the war, was wounded—his right arm shattered by a ball, so that he remained a cripple permanently. As his right arm was powerless he did not have the physical ability to ill-treat prisoners as some of the witnesses testified at his trial. Even if this charge had been true, that he exercised undue severity toward some of the prisoners, he might have been justified in so doing, when their fellow-prisoners were compelled to hang a half a dozen in self-defense.
MAJOR HENRY WIRZ, C. S. A.
In 1862 he was promoted to the rank of Captain “for bravery on the field of battle,” and to that of Major a few months before the close of the war.
He was an impulsive man—some said he was rough in his manner. This apparent roughness in persons of foreign birth sometimes proceeds from difference in language and their mode of expression, which may only need a little prejudice or ill-will to distort into something offensive. But that he was a man kind at heart is shown by his earnest endeavors to relieve the sufferings of the prisoners under his charge.
In the Official Records of the Rebellion, published by the United States Government, will be found letters of Wirz to Captain R. D. Chapman, Acting Adjutant of Post, and Colonel D. S. Chandler, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General, showing his efforts to better the condition of the prisoners, both with regard to rations and hygiene.
In the Southern Historical Society Papers is a letter from General John D. Imboden, written in 1876, from which the following extracts are taken:
“I have already alluded to Captain Wirz’s recommendation to put up more shelter. I ordered it, and thereafter, daily, a hundred or more prisoners were paroled and set to work in the neighboring forest. In the course of a fortnight comfortable log-houses, with floors and good chimneys—for which the prisoners made and burnt the brick—were erected for twelve or fifteen hundred men.
“This same man (Captain Wirz) who was tried and hung as a murderer, warmly urged the establishment of a tannery and shoemaker’s shop, informing me that there were many men among the prisoners skilled in these trades, and that some of them knew a process of very rapidly converting hides into tolerably good leather. There were thousands of hides at Andersonville from the young cattle butchered during the previous summer and fall, whilst the country yet contained such animals. A few weeks later many of the barefooted prisoners were supplied with rough, but comfortable shoes. Another suggestion came from the medical staff of the post, that I ordered to be at once put into practice: It was to brew corn beer for those suffering from scorbutic taint. Captain Wirz entered warmly into this enterprise. I mention these facts to show that he was not the monster he was afterward represented to be, when his blood was called for by infuriated fanaticism. I would have proved these facts if I had been permitted to testify on his trial, after I was summoned before the Court by the United States, and have substantiated them by the records of the prison and of my own headquarters.”
When the Federal troops were sent to Georgia Major Wirz was placed under guard and taken to the Old Capitol Prison, in Washington, D. C., where he remained from the 10th of May, 1865, until November 10th, 1865, when he was hung.