There are many who think
Wirz never had a chance to establish a proper detention facility.
Hardly after the walls were up, hundreds and then thousands of
Union prisoners began
arriving by rail. His meager force of some 4000
guards had been stripped of all able-bodied fighting men and
replaced with old men and young boys. It was said by one General,
"The worst place you can find yourself is to be a prisoner
held by the losing side." In late 1864 and early 1865, the
South was losing. Only the most diehard thinkers held out any
hope, yet the battles continued to be fought and the prisoners
continued to be taken and sent south to Andersonville.
Unfortunately, the battle of attrition was coming to its
conclusion. Food, medicine, clothing, all the necessities of life
were running out. The prison guards and the prisoners were eating
the same food, although not necessarily in the same proportions.
Overcrowding and the lack of any sanitation hygiene quickly began
taking its toll. The death rate began to rise. First a few a day,
then a dozen, and finally at the peak of occupation with some
32,000 prisoners, over a hundred bodies a day, were removed by
funeral gangs and taken to a distant field to be buried. At first
there was honor and recognition, with each body placed in a pine
coffin and laid to rest in proper ceremony. Captain Wirz even
selected an educated prisoner from New York, nineteen-year-old
Dorence Atwater, and charged him with the responsibility of
maintaining a written record of the names of those buried.
Unknown to his captors, Atwater would make and hide a second list
of names, which would prove
instrumental in the post war reclamation of the
cemetery. As the death toll mounted, coffins were abandoned. Wide
flat shallow trenches were dug by details and bodies were lined
up, shoulder to shoulder. After the war, Atwater, along with
Clara Barker and others returned to the Andersonville Cemetery to
locate and identify those who had perished. Today the stones
which were later erected based on Atwater's written record that
he smuggled out when released, stand as the soldiers lie,
shoulder to shoulder with almost no space between. Even so, the
stones had to be cut down in size to maintain proper order. There
is one exception. Six graves are stationed outside the long line
of neat stones. These are the graves of 6 of the lowest life
forms incarcerated at Andersonville. Things were not always well
among the inmates. With officers having been removed and sent to
other holding facilities, order was for the most part,
non-existent. This was brought to a head when a group of men from
the New York area formed a quasi-organization called the Raiders.
They established an area around the entrance to the stockade
which had now been extended to over 26 acres, and would waylay
new arrivals
removing all things valuable by threat, or when
necessary, by force. This type of treatment was short lived. When
Wirz was told, he, with a sufficient complement of men, marched
into the compound and had the Raiders identified by their
victims. He separated the ring leaders from the rank and file
hoodlums. There were no rules or guidelines for such an action
and Wirz was on his own to make decisions. He had the victims
form two lines several yards apart, as long as the victims could
make it. Between these lines he forced the rank and file Raiders
to run. The victims, who had armed themselves with whatever club,
stick or stone they could find, wreaked revenge on those who had
preyed upon them. Those Raiders that did not make it to the end,
became an addition to the morning burial detail. The 
six ring
leaders, whos names are inscribed on the 6 separated headstones,
were turned over to the mob with sufficient lumber to build a
scaffold. Having done so, the group was unceremoniously hanged.
The next morning, the burial party refused to bury them with the
rest of the soldiers, feeling that they were unfit to lie with
good God-fearing men. A white post in the ground in the middle of
the stockade area, now marks the place where the scaffold stood.
Unfortunately for Wirz, it would not be the last hanging he would
attend. When the war ended in 1865, the Confederate guards
withdrew leaving the inmates in the hands of arriving union
troops. It was only then that the true amount of suffering became
public. The outcry was tremendous. Wirz was arrested and taken to
Washington for trial. He would establish his place in history as
being the only Confederate soldier ever tried for war crimes.
During his trial, witness after witness would testify to the
deplorable conditions that existed in the camp. 
Wirz's
lawyers would argue that he was a low ranking officer who was
doing what he had been ordered. The prosecution was determined to
get Wirz to implicate both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis as
co-conspirators to the camp, but Wirz stood mute, refusing to
name either man. With no evidence to implicate either Lee or
Davis, the jury was left with only one person on whom to lay the
blame. Their decision was quick, guilty of crimes against
humanity. The Judge was likewise swift in his sentence. Death by
hanging. And so, Captain Henry Wirz would attend his last hanging
on December 10th, 1865. But the verdict would not end the
controversy. Southern cries of scapegoat would continue for
years. Fifty years later the cry could still be heard from a
southern organization known as the United Daughters of the
Confederacy. With $2000 
of raised funds, a monument had been
commissioned honoring Captain Wirz. Completed in 1905, the
controversy over its placement in the Andersonville Town Square
continued for almost 4 years. Finally in 1909, amidst national
attention, the monolith was erected in the center of town. Four
thousand attended. Of the many writings inscribed on its sides,
those on the front sum up the sentiments of the time. "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." It is still one of those
debates that surfaces in academic halls or around campfires.
Monster or Martyr? In this present day of war crimes, there may
be some comfort in that knowledge that there really isn't much
new under the sun!
*** THE END ***
