On this day in 1865 Henry Wirz, the commander of the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville GA was executed for; “violation of the laws of war
On this day in 1865 Henry Wirz, the commander of the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville GA was executed for; “violation of the laws of war , to impair and injure the health and to destroy the lives—by subjecting to torture and great suffering; by confining in unhealthy and unwholesome quarters; by exposing to the inclemency of winter and to the dews and burning sun of summer; by compelling the use of impure water; and by furnishing insufficient and unwholesome food—of large numbers of Federal prisoners” Wirz was the commander of the Andersonville Prison camp in Georgia, a wretched place where at any given time 45,000 American Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines were held in conditions so horrible that at one point American Servicemen were dying at the rate of 3,000 a day. Andersonville became the 5th largest city in the south...though with none of the sanitation provisions. Robert Kellog, a sargent from a Connecticut regiment imprisoned at Andersonville later recalled; “As we ...