Wirz Monument - Andersonville, Ga.
N 32° 11.676 W 084° 08.408
16S E 769606 N 3565592
This Monument to Captain Heinrich "Henry" Wirz who served as served as commander of the Andersonville Civil War Prison.
Waymark Code: WMW8CV
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 07/23/2017
Views: 2
The Wirz Monument is located in the Village of Andersonville and is outside the boundary of the Andersonville National Historic Site. Captain Heinrich H. Wirz served as the commander of Camp Sumter which is also known as the Andersonville Civil War Prison. During the 14-months the prison existed more than 45,000 prisoners were confined there and almost 13,000 died from their wound, starvation, and disease. Prisoners had little or no shelter and were exposed to the blistering summer sun and the cold winter rains. Due to the deplorable conditions Captain Wirz was arrested following the war Captain Wirz was arrested and taken to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D. C. where he was tried and convicted of war crimes. On November 10,1865 Captain Henry Wirz was hanged, becoming one of only two people to be executed for war crimes during the Civil War. This monument to Captain Wirz stands at the center of Church Street in the Village of Andersonville.
The monument bears the following inscriptions:
North Side
When time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentations, 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.
East 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.
West 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
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