A monument placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy honoring Capt Henry Wirz, CSA, commandant of Camp Sumter (Andersonville Prison), who was hanged for war crimes committed under his command against Union POWs.
Of all the "Lost Cause" revisionist monuments we have seen on this trip, this one is the most delusional, because it casts Capt Henry Wirz, Commandant of the infamous Andersonville Prison camp as not only blameless for the horrors that he was directly responsible for, but also absolves him of the deaths of 13,000 men.
Capt. Wirz was tried in court for war crimes connected with the conditions at Camp Sumter in Andersonville, and hanged.
The monument is made of red and grey granite, and stands in the center of the Main street of what's left of the city of Andersonville. The obelisk atop the monument is easily 20 feet tall.
The inscriptions around the monument read as follows:
"[North side]
When time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then justice, holding evenly her scales, will require much of past censures and praise to change places.
Jefferson Davis,
Dec. 1888
[South side]
Discharging his duty with such humanity as the harsh circumstances of the times, and the policy of the foe permitted, Capt. Wirz became at last the victim of a misdirected popular clamor. He was arrested in the time of peace, while under the protection of parole, tried by a military commission of a service to which he did not belong, and condemned to ignominious death on charges of excessive cruelty to Federal prisoners. He indignantly spurned a pardon proffered on condition that he would incriminate President Davis and thus exonerate himself from charges of which both were innocent.
[E side]
In memory of Captain Henry Wirz, C.S.A.
Born Zurich, Switzerland, 1822,
Sentenced to death
And executed at Washington D.C.
November 10, 1865.
To rescue his name from the stigma
attached to it by embittered prejudice,
this shaft is erected by
the Georgia Division,
United Daughters of the Confederacy.
[W side]
It is hard on our men held in southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners would insure Sherman’s defeat and would compromise our safety here.
Ulysses S. Grant,
Aug. 18, 1864"
The monument erected by the UDC is audacious and strident in its defense of Wirz. It's like they were trying to exonerate him by yelling the loudest, trying to escape the cold hard fact that 13,000 men died in his prison. As commandant, he WAS responsible.
From the Roadside America website: (
visit link)
"Only U.S. Monument to a War Criminal
Andersonville, Georgia
Henry A. Wirz was the officer in charge of the Confederate prison at Andersonville. Nearly 14,000 Union prisoners died during his relatively brief tenure, so he was tried as a war criminal and hanged in Washington, DC, on November 10, 1865.
Some people in the South felt that Wirz got a raw deal. In 1908 the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument honoring Wirz in the center of Andersonville, "to rescue his name from the stigma attached to it by embittered prejudice." The monument blames the Union deaths on "the harsh circumstances of the times and the policy of the foe," and claims that Wirz was "the victim of misdirected popular clamor," and that he "indignantly spurned a pardon, proffered on condition that he would incriminate President Davis." That's Jefferson Davis, president not of the United States but of the perfidious Confederacy.
Maybe Wirz's lasting punishment is that the people on his side went to all the trouble of erecting a big monument, filled it with inscriptions in his defense, but didn't make it particularly interesting to look at."