Henry Wirz
Henry Wirz , born Heinrich Hartmann Wirz (born November 25, 1823 in Zurich , Switzerland ; † November 10, 1865 in Washington, DC ), was a Swiss-American weaver, doctor and captain of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War .
Life
The German Swiss Heinrich Hartmann Wirz left his home country in 1849 and emigrated to the United States from. Wirz initially worked as a weaver in a factory in the south before heading west to work as an assistant doctor in Kentucky in 1854 .
With his mostly self-taught medical skills, he found a job as a doctor on a plantation in Louisiana. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Wirz joined the 4th Louisiana Infantry and was wounded several times in the Battle of Seven Pines . After he rose to the rank of captain, he came under the command of General John Henry Winder . Under Winder he was on March 27, 1864 camp commandant of the POW camp Camp Sumter of the Confederate Army in Andersonville.
Wirz was arrested by Union troops in 1865 , charged with war crimes and sentenced to death . The sentence was carried out on November 10, 1865 in Washington DC. Besides Champ Ferguson, Wirz was the only southerner convicted of war crimes and executed by an ordinary court . Lincoln and his cabinet had decided to forego long prison terms and further executions in the course of reconciliation, so as not to give the impression of an occupying victor but rather that of the regular government, which is gently bringing its "lost children" into the Union returns.
The war with its restrictions was seen as punishment enough for the people of the south, while the soldiers clearly recognized the need for orders as an obstacle to successful trials. Therefore, the execution of Henry Wirz was seen as a signal of readiness for harsh sentences, but at the same time as the beginning of a reconciliation and reconstruction, since further executions did not take place.
execution
Tomb
literature
- Weibel, Jürg: Captain Wirz. Eine Chronik, Edition Erpf, Bern 1991, ISBN 978-390551-736-1 (detailed novel biography about Henry Wirz, partly psychologizing and with a slightly exculpatory tendency: Wirz is portrayed as a scapegoat and a pawn, compared to other war crimes of the Civil War .)
- Kantor, MacKinlay: Andersonville, Stuttgart 1955 (Broad representation of the camp history, partly like a novel, but with processing of many contemporary sources about Henry Wirz and his actions in Andersonville, which also makes Wirz's internal and external compulsions to act understandable.)
Web links
- Christian Baertschi: Wirz, Henry. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- The trial of Captain Henry Wirz (English)
- About the Andersonville Prison Camp ( June 3, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive )
- Ronald D. Gerste : 150 years of execution of Henry Wirz from Zurich. The American prototype of modern military tribunals. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from November 10, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Simkin: Henry Wirz. In: Spartacus Educational
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wirz, Henry |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wirz, Heinrich Hartmann (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss-American revolutionary, weaver, doctor, and captain in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 25, 1823 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Zurich , Switzerland |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 10, 1865 |
| Place of death | Washington, DC |