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In an englargement of an Alexander Gardner image, a noose is placed around the neck of Henry Wirz, who appears stunned by his fate. (Library of Congress Civil War collection) |
"A lovelier day never dawned on the capital of the United States," a correspondent for the Hartford Courant wrote of the fall day that Captain Henry Wirz was hanged on the grounds of the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. "...Long before the appointed hour, an eager crowd of soldiers and civilians gathered on the prison, house-tops and trees adjoining, all anxious to get a sight of the condemned man."
The crowd also included famed Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner, who recorded at least five glass plate images that, upon closer inspection, reveal remarkable detail of the gruesome hanging of the former commander of Andersonville prison.
Four days earlier, on Nov. 6, 1865, Wirz had been found guilty after a lengthy trial of "wanton cruelty" and murder of Union soldiers at the notorious POW camp in Georgia. Among the 13,000 men who died at Andersonville were 290 soldiers from Connecticut, including nearly 100 from the 16th Connecticut, who were captured at Plymouth, N.C., on April 20, 1864. Survivors Austin Fuller and Wallace Woodford of the 16th Connecticut were in such wretched condition that the privates died in their hometowns of Farmington and Avon shortly after they were released.
Whether Wirz was indeed guilty of the crimes he was charged with remains controversial even today, but there's no doubt that the Swiss-born soldier was viewed with particular enmity in the North in 1865. "Every paper he looked at (during his trial) cried for his execution," the Courant correspondent wrote.
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The scene at Old Capitol Prison shortly before Henry Wirz was hanged on Nov. 10, 1865. This is one of at least five images of the hanging taken by Alexander Gardner. (Library of Congress Civil War collection) |
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Northern newspapers such as the Hartford Courant covered Wirz's trial and hanging extensively. |
"What his thoughts were during these brief moments there was nothing in his expression to betray," the Courant reported, "but the spectator into whose imagination the story of this man's brutalities had been indelibly burned, as with a branding iron, could vividly recall the crowded prison pen, with its scurvy-eaten, starving, vermin-infested victims; the yelling of the dogs through the woods and swamps, where poor, escaping fugitives had sough refuge from the unspeakable horrors of their confinement."
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Exterior of Old Capitol Prison. (Library of Congress Civil War Collection) |
At 10:32 a.m., the trap door was sprung, sending Wirz to his death.
"There were a few spasmodic convulsions of the chest, a slight movement of the extremities," the New York Times reported, "and all was over." Left hanging for 14 minutes, Wirz was cut down and taken to a hospital for an autopsy. Gardner also shot an image of the autopsy, but it was ordered to be kept from the public by the War Department.
"What a day of judgment is coming when all these devils in human form shall be brought up to the final answer for their crimes," the Courant concluded in its coverage of Wirz's hanging. "Every maimed and wounded soldier will be there, every weeping widow, helpless orphan, and every sorrowing sister will be a witness, and every starved and poisoned prisoner will raise his bony hand in judgment."
(For a terrific analysis of the Wirz hanging photos, check out this post on Andy Hall's excellent Dead Confederates blog.)
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Major George B. Russell reads the death warrant to Wirz, who was seated on a stool to Russell's left and not seen in this enlargement of an Alexander Gardner image. |
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Wirz's body dangles in the noose near the stool where he was seated minutes earlier. |
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An enlargement of Alexander Gardner's image of Wirz's hanging reveals bystanders in trees outside the prison grounds and the Capitol building in the background. |
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In this enlargement of a Gardner image, the soldier at left appears to be bored shortly after Wirz's hanging. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
The scaffold on which Wirz was hanged stood just about in the center of what is now the piazza in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteBS article-He did his best and how about the sadistic Northern POW camps where there was rampant mistreatment and deaths of Confederates. Typical one sided article.
ReplyDeleteMy great, great uncle who was in the 16th Conn was wounded and captured in April 1864. They sent him to Andersonville. He died 4 months later from wounds and starvation and is buried there. In 1907 his brother who was also in the 16th attended the dedication of the Conn POW war memorial at Andersonville. Many more men of the 16th died from the terrible conditions at Andersonville than from battle.
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ReplyDeleteTo the victor go the spoils to the defeated go the atrocities. Combatants on either side of a conflict or always guilty of atrocities. I think there was much abuse at the prisoner of war camp in Chicago which has mostly gone undocumented. War itself is an obscenity for which no hanging can bring back the dead.
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ReplyDeleteMy great-uncle, Peter Kiene, who had lied about his age to sign up, was interned there at the age of fourteen. Miraculously, he survived to go home to Dubuque, where he grew up to be a respected citizen.
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