The Commandant's Perspective

From these heights near headquarters, Capt. Henry A. Wirz could observe everything within the prison walls: the white post perimeters of the stockade, 30,000 human beings crowded inside, the din of voices, groans from the hospital, shouts of the guards, and the smell of unwashed clothes and bodies. As prison commandant at Andersonville, Wirz was responsible for maintaining order and discipline, imposing punishment, and providing rations. By the summer of 1864, the stockade had become so overcrowded that the prisoners may have appeared as a single, shuffling organism, and even residents of Americus, some ten miles south, complained of the smell. After the war, the federal government tried Wirz for "murder, in violation of the laws of war," and sentenced him to death.

Andersonville, Georgia · United States