Wizards. He was one of the first individuals in the modern era to be tried for war crimes. And henry wirz trial in the fall of 1865 actually set the precedent for more recent war crimes trials, most notely, the nurrenberg most notably, the nurrenberg trials after world war ii, the allied prosecutors who were preparing for those prosecutions in nurrenberg actually studied the wirz trial and particularly his defense so they could prepare for what they anticipated the naysy defense would be and actually called it the wirz defense, which was basically, you know, i was only following orders. That is the typical defense, and they used henry wirz trial to help prepare for that in 1945. This is a really important moment, not only in american legal history, but also in world legal history. We will be thinking about the conditions at andersonville itself and what led the conditions to be so horrible and what led to the, you know, catastrophic loss of life that was suffer there had in 1864. We will also talk about how it differed, and they were all pretty horrible in the civil war, but well talk about what, if anything, made andersonville different. And finally, we want to think about whether or not henry wirz was, in fact, guilty of war crimes and did he deserve the punishment he received. Did he deserve to die for his role in the events in 1864 at andersonville. So our terms and concepts for today, henry wirz, andersonville prison, the Prisoner Exchange, and we will be revisiting a topic we talked about several times throughout the semester, and that is the lieber code, okay . Who was henry wirz . He was from switzerland and he immigrated to the united states. And no one is sure when. It is possible he could have been what was known at the time as a 48er. Sort of a refugee from the democratic revolutions of western europe that occurred around 1848. There were a lot of refugees after those revolutions were over, so it is possible henry wirz could have immigrated around that time. We really dont know much about his life prior to his arrival in the united states. He never spoke about his life. The consulate who wrote a letter to Andrew Jackson about his behalf, he wrote that, he he didnt give a lot of detail either, buhe did say that wirz camfrom a very good background and had esteemable parents and came from a very respectable family, but we really dont know a lot about him, and he never spoke publicly about his life in europe. And once he arrived in the united states, he marries a fairly waity widow from wealthy widow from kentucky and he settles in kentucky for a while before eventually moving to louisiana. Once in louisiana, wirz sets up a medical practice. Now, he there is no evidence he received any kind of medical training, although he did say he had always wanted to be a doctor, but his father pushed him into business, right. He didnt want him to be a phi so once he is in louisiana, wirz sets up a medical practice, which, as you know from our previous discussions about medicine in the 19th century and during the civil war, that was not uncommon. It is the way things were done in the 19th century. You would apprentice with a practicing physician, and eventually go out on your own. There were medical colleges where you could get degrees, but at that time it wasnt required that you have formal pled call training to practice as a physician. It was more of an apprenticeship kind of thing, so that is what henry wiz henry wirz did. And when the war breaks out in 1861, like most patriotic southern men, dr. Wirz enlists with the confederate forces. And he served with distinction through 1862. He is actually wounded in the battle of seven pines in may of 1862 and he is wounded in his right arm and actually loses all use of his right arm. She cited for bravery, and he is cited for bravery and he is promoted to the rank of captain. After he recovers from his wound, he because he speaks fluent french and german as well as english, he is sent on special Diplomatic Missions by the confederacy to europe trying to get the european nations to come and support this confederacy and come out on the side of the south so he spends most of 1863 in europe doing it is not really clear who he is visiting or what he is doing, but he is on kind of a diplomatic tour for the confederacy. And when he returns to the south in early 1864, the spring of 1864, he is given the job of being the commandant or administrator of this prison camp which is being built in southwest georgia which is known infamously as andersonville prison. And at the time wirz thinks this is a pretty good way to sit out the rest of the war. He is not going to be in battle. His life is not going to be at risk. This is a pretty good job for someone who seriously he cant use his arm anymore, so he is impaired. Get to live with his family. His wife and children will be able to live nearby the camp so all in all, this isnt a bad post, right . But he doesnt know the situation that is going to be facing him once he arrives in southwest georgia at what is officially known as camp sumter, and camp sumter is near the nearest town of the Railroad Depot of andersonville, so it becomes known as andersonville prison. So camp sumter, was built in early 1864, and i use the term built very loosely because as you can see from this picture, sort of, theres not a lot of building in camp sumter, right. And most of the men you can see here, the prisoners are living in tents and kind of makeshift accommodations. It was originally intended to house about at maximum 10,000 prisoners of war that was the Maximum Capacity that this prison could hold. It was about 27 acres in the main confines. And you can see here from these drawings it was bounded by a very high stock aid fence. Stockade fence that goes all the way around the perimeter. There is a creek. It is called a sweet water creek, that actually runs here under the stockade through the middle of the camp. So there is a fresh water supply for the men there, but as you can imagine, the further in the creek flows into the camp, the worse the quality of the water gets. So that this is this part right up here that flows right under the closest to the stockade fence is the most sought after water in the camp, and that is going to become important for a story im going to tell you in jaw minute. So just a minute. And on top of the fences, you can see, ill point out to you, a little bit in this picture, on the top of the stockade spaced out periodically or what was known as a pigeon roost, which were the guard towers where the guards sat with their rifles. Guarding the prisoners. And as you can tell, there are many more prisoners than there are guards. Right . And so that is why theyre spaced out like they are on top of the fence. This rubbing along the bottom of the near the edge of the stockade, this is the la treen, also known as the sink, which you can see is just sort of a makeshift long trough of a toilet, and you can actually see some individuals using the toilet there that sort of stretches the length of one side of the stockade fence. And another thing i want to point out to you about the camp that you can notice in this photograph, right here you can sort of see a long sort of low railing. It is a piece of wood that is stretching sort of the length here in front of the sink. Lets see. If we go back, you can also get a sense of it here. And there is a space between this low railing and the stockade, and you can see this sort of space all along the edge of the fence that is devoid of people because the railing is keeping them back. And that, you can see it here as well. Was whoa was known as the deadline because if a prisoner stepped over or crossed the deadline, they were liable to be shot by one of the guards in the pigeon roof. And the deadline was there as a way to keep the prisoners back, to keep them from rushing towards the fence, climbing the fence or starting any kind of mutiny or move to overthrow the guards. And the guards, according to witnesses and survivors of andersonville, did, in fact, shoot men when they attempted to cross the deadline, and this is an illustration from one survivors testimony who claimed that they witnessed a Union Soldier who was trying to reach over the deadline with his cup and to get some of that fresher water, you recall some of that water that is just flowing into the camp. He is trying to reach over the deadline to dip his cup in the fresher water, and he is shot. For reaching over the deadline. Now, if you can imagine, this is not a Pleasant Place to be, right . It from about april of 1864 through the peak time in which the camp had its the most inmates, from april 1864 to october of 1864, the camp, which originally was meant to house about 10,000 p. O. W. S through that time has anywhere between 20,000 and 40,000 p. O. W. S during that time. The peak month for the population was august of 1864. So it is incredibly over crowded. However, as historians have pointed out, that population tended to fluctuate dramatically. It is at its peak in august of 1864 when it has between 30,000 and 40,000 prisoners in it, but at other times during the 14 month existence of this camp, that is all that really existed, 14 months, it probably has less than the appointed 10,000 p. O. W. S that it was supposed to have in the first place. So there is a lot of movement in and out of the camp, priers are being transferred from other confederate prisons. Theyre being transferred to other confederate prisons and, of course, men are dying all the time. These conditions, particularly the over crowding, the putrid water, which is breeding not only disease, but also mosquitoes, men are suffering from disentear, from gang green, from knew known i cant, curvey, malnutrition and exposure, southwest georgia is incredibly hot in the summer. It is also pretty cold in the winter, and they have very little of any kind of adequate shelter. So at its peak by the early fall of 1864, 5,000 men died between august and october of 1864, i believe. All in total, nearly 13,000 Union Soldiers died at andersonville in its entire existence. That is a death rate of about 45 of the total population. It is extremely high. H is a cemetery. Most of the soldiers have been positivetively identified, but several hundred remain unknown there at the cemetery. Positively identified, but several hundred remain unknown there at the cemetery. The andersonville raiders. These were gangs of inmates, of Union Soldiers who were armed with clubs and knives and various other kind of makeshift implements and they terrorized the other inmates in the camp. They robbed people of their supplies and there are reports of beating and killing people. And things are so bad with the raiders that another Group Organizes themselves into a kind of police force. They call themselveses the regulators and ultimately end up capturing several dozen of the raiders, and they have an actual trial. They put six of the leaders on trial and, as you can see here from this drawing, they end up with the permission of the camp superintendent, henry wirz, as well as some higher ups, some of wirz superiors in the confederate government, they get permission to hold this trial and they ultimately execute, they hang six of these sort of ringleaders of these raiders. And it has become one of the most notorious moments in andersonvilles history, and it gives you some indication of what a sort of state of nature, right, thee men are living in within the camp. Not only are they suffering from disease and malnutrition and mistreatment from the confederate authority there, theyre also at risk from each other, right, and from people who would take advantage of the situation to try to better their own situation to get more food or to get other kinds of property off of the less fortunate. So it really was a horrible place. Now, one of the things, if you have done much reading or you have heard much about andersonville, some feel will often say that andersonville was no worse than any other prisoner of war camp, in particular some of the most notorious p. O. W. War camps in the north, el myra prison, which is not too far from here. Anyone from the el myra area . So there was a large prisoner of war camp at el myra and another very large one were going to talk about in a minute outside of chicago. And sometimes people will say, you know what . Andersonville was no worse than these other prisons. I kind of take issue with that. And here is a picture of the evening roll call at el myra prison in 1864, and i think from looking at this image, you can tell where there was a significance difference, in my mind, between the conditions at andersonville, as we go back and look, right, and what you see at el myra. Number one, there is a lot more built struck includes or barracks structures or barracks for the prisoners to stay in. Now, el myra suffers from the same kind of overcrowding, which im going to explain why that is in just a few minutes that andersonville does so there are far more prisoners in el myra that they can actually properly house. You can see in the back they set up tents and a lot of the men, do, in fact, live in tents rather than, you know, actual housing. But to me, i mean, this looks nothing like the images that you see from andersonville, which is not to say that el myra was a great place to be. No prisoner of war camp is a great place to be in any war, right. It is not intended to be. And who wants to spend, you know, a winter in upstate new york sleeping out in a tent, right . None of us. We have all experienced it. It is not fun. It is brutally cold. And the death rate at el myra, which was known by the nickname myra, by the men who were in prison there, the death rate at el myra hovered around 25 compared to the 45 at andersonville, which is still im not trying to diminish it, but it is still incredibly high. All total, about 3,000 confederate soldiers who were in prison in el myra died there. So there were about 12,000 total. And they suffered largely from the same kind of ailment that the Union Soldiers at andersonville did. They suffered from malnutrition. They didnt have enough food. They suffered from exposure. Knee known i cant, outbreaks pneumonia, outbreaks of inflew endisa, smallpox, disentear. There was also a problem with drain knowledge and putrid water standing within the camp that bred sickness and disease. So really, you know, we might think of the differences between el myra and andersonville not really in terms of kind, but of scale. Right . The scale of sickness and over crowding in el myra is simply not to the scale that we see at andersonville. There is a monument there to the confederate soldier whose died. Soldiers who died. And camp douglas was in chicago, and it was initially used as a Training Camp as was el myra initially as well. But, you know, fairly early on camp douglas becomes one of the first union p. O. W. Camps for confederate prisoners. As early as 1862 theyre housing confederate prisoners there. And like el myra, there are far more soldiers in 1864 than the camp can reasonably accommodate. And they suffer from the same kinds of problems, malnutrition, exposure. The death rate at camp douglas is somewhere between historians estimate 17 and 23 . And that is because there is some discrepancy with actually how many soldiers, confederate soldiers died there. This is a mass grave in the nearby Oakwood Cemetery in chicago where, according to the monument, there are 6,000 confederate soldiers buried under this mound. But camp records only list about 4,000. So there are about 1,500 to 2,000 sort of unaccounted for people, so somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 confederate soldiers died at camp douglas. And, again, from the same kinds of conditions that soldiers died of at el myra and at andersonville. Chicago, it is incredibly cold in the winter. I spent 13 years in chicago in college and graduate school, and i wow not want to sleep in a tent when youre on the lakes or lake shore of lake michigan. It would not be fun. And so these camps, none of them are any place anyone would want to be. Theyre brutal. The conditions, the Living Conditions are bare bones, and a lot of the men who are arriving at these camps are already either wounded or sick. And if youre already wounded and sick and your immune system is compromised, this kind of exposure and lack of proper food is only going to contribute to your decline. So theyre not police where is one goes to flourish and to be healthy and well. They are in a sense any prisoner of war camp a place where men went to die. Some people who talk about and write about these prisoner of war camps will say that the conditions in places like el myra and camp douglas and northern p. O. W. Camps were as bad as they were because the union was retaliating against the treatment that their soldiers were receiving in confederate camps like andersonville and libby prison and some of the others. And there is some sort of, you know, kind of loose anecdotal evidence that the men running the camps are certainly not inclined to be particularly energetic or speedy in providing the confederated p. O. W. S there with the kinds of things that they need. So, for instance, there was one superintendent of camp douglas who it appears replaced all of the wood burning stoves in the barracks with boilers that didnt produce according to the men who live there had enough heat or as much heat tass wood burning stoves did, and they also tended not to cook the food as well, and so some people will say, well, he did that on purpose because Union Soldiers were suffering from the cold and deprivation, so they were trying to sort of pay back the confederate p. O. W. S for that. There is really not a lot of hard evidence to suggest that there was a, you know, concerted union policy to say, you know what . Our men are suffering at andersonville, so were going to make it just as bad for these confederate soldiers in these camps. But the fact of the matter is again, it is not a difference so much in kind but in scale. And if we remember, if we. Back to the lieber code, which we looked at several weeks ago, one of the articles of the lieber code, which was the cod phi sort of rule of warfare during the civil war, allowed prisoners of war to be subject to the inflicks of retaliatory inflicks of retall infliction of retaliatory measures. Specificsly Frances Lieber here is talking and writing about lincolns retaliatory order that he issued in 1863, as you recall, when the confederate government said any black soldier or white commander of black troops, who are caught will not be given quarter, right . They will not be treated as prisoners of war. They will be subject either to be sold into slavery or executed. When the confederacy releases that order, they released it in the l fall of1861862, lib kahn releases his re lincoln releases his retaliatory measure, he says for every black soldier executed, we will execute one confederate prisoner of war. Now, to my knowledge, they never did that. That never happened. I could be wrong. I have never seen evidence of that. It is entirely possible, but i dont think it ever occurred. But it was a threat, it was a retaliation order, and is, according to lieber, perfectly permissible to do that during war. So this is one of these, even though as were going get to in just a second, the lieber code had expressed prohibition against the mistreatment of prisoners of war. This is one of these gray areas in the lieber code that although youre not supposed to mistreat prisoners, youre supposed to feed them, give them medical care. Youre not supposed to mistreat them in any way, they are, according to lieber, still liable to this kind of retaliatory measure when they happen. Another sort of criticism or question that some people will raise about andersonville, is the question of whether or not sherman, william sherman, after he captures atlanta and he goes on his mar top the sea, if he, in fact, could have liberated andersonville, and why didnt he, right . So this is a map of georgia. And this is the town, the star represents the town of georgia, which is a town very near where andersonville was. So that is the general vicinity there in southwest georgia where andersonville prison was located. And if you recall, in september of 1864, atlanta falls to shermans rearm. In between september and november, he is laying out his plan. He is planning the march to the sea, which will ultimately take him to savannah, right . So he doesnt really go in the direction of sumter, but could he . Could he have done so . Certainly sherman and folks knew rabbit andersonville. Prisoners had escaped from there, so they knew that things were pretty bad there. However, i think it is, you know, a bad assumption to think that sherman could have reasonably done anything to alleviate the suffering of the men at andersonville simply because of the timeline. By the time that atlanta falls and slierman begins his mar and sherman begins his march in november, about november 15th of 1864, by that time the vast majority of the men who died at andersonville have already died, okay . And by the time that sherman does begin his march out of atlanta towards savannah on november the 15th, the population at andersonville prison has fallen to about 1,500 men at that time. Once the city of atlanta falls, confederate officials, because andersonville is so relatively close, they begin moving a lot of the prisoners out to other prison camps, and they actually begin transporting them up to the carolinas. So they dont they dont want them to escape. They dont want them to be liberated. So by and a lot of the men already, like i said vdied. So it have died. So it only would have been about 1,500 men or so left at andersonville at that time, and slierman knows this. Sherman knows this. He realized this. So he doesnt, you know, really consider the possibility of veering off his course or sending some of his men that way, right, because we talked about shermans march last week. He is really focused on what is ahead of him, of getting to the sea, and ultimately, you know, bringing the war to an end closer. So the idea that sherman could have averted the horrors of andersonville or alleviated Union Suffering there, i dont think simply because of the timeline it would have made that mump of a difference by that much of a difference by that point. So why were these prisons, not only andersonville, but also the northern ones, why were they so over crowded . That is the dequestion to understanding why the key question to understanding why the conditions were so bad at any of the prisoner war camps, i think, and that had to do with the collapse of the Prisoner Exchange system. So the prisoner when the war began, it is sort of convention to conspiracy a Prisoner Exchange, particularly among officers, but also for larger groups of enlisted men. And what would often happen, it was sort of an informal exchange, you know, we have a group of your guys. You have a group of our guys, they would simply exchange them. And they would go back to fight, although they werent supposed to go back into the army, they all did, and they would simply exchange the men because it is very taxing on an armys resources to try to take care of a lot of prisoners of war. You have to build camps for them. You to have guards, which means youre taking men out of your, you know, fighting force to work as guards and policemen, so it is not idea to have large amounts of p. O. W. S, so they try to exchange them that way. And that was the way things were up until the union army starts enlisting black soldiers. And the confederacy refuses to exchange any captured black soldiers. And because they refuse to Exchange Black soldiers, lincoln, president lincoln brings the Prisoner Exchange to a halt. He issues a command to all of his military officers that they are not to exchange any prisoners so long as the confederacy refuses to exchange africanamerican prisoners. And so this happens, the collapse of the Prisoner Exchange before you hisless s. Great becomes the commander of the majority of the forces, the army of the potomac a lot of critics of grant will use this quotation of his and say that, you know, he needlessly allowed these men to suffer and die in andersonville. The collapse of the Prisoner Exchange was not his policy. It was policy of the president. And he approached robert e. Lee several times throughout 1864 as the population of prisoners are growing and growing and growing, and he approaches him about the reinstatement of the exchange. Lets reinstate the Prisoner Exchange. Will you Exchange Black prisoners and lee responds i do not have the authority to Exchange Black prisoners because the confederate government will refuse to exchange them. And grant and lincoln both agree that as long as the confederacy refuses to Exchange Black prisoners, they cant in good faith participate in the exchange at all. Now, a lot of the men who, of course, are sitting in these putrid conditions in andersonville dont care, right . They want the exchange to get moving again. They want to go home. Theyre dying there, of course. But both grant and lincoln agree that they have, you know, asked africanamerican men to fight and to die on behalf of a country take up until auto point had not given them much to do so. By this point several hundred, 000 african thousand americans by the wars end will have fought for the union army. They cant very well simply say, okay. Well exchange our white soldiers and you can keep any black captives you might have, right . It is just morally wrong. Zit terrible for the morale it is terrible for the morale. How can you expect any more africanamericans to come and join the fight if they know that their commanders and their country thinks so little of them. Right . So it really is, you know, a Sticking Point morally for both lincoln around grant, and they and grant, and they refuse to exchange any prisoners if the confederacy will not Exchange Black prisoners as well. So grant here is right