On February 27, 1864, the first Union inmates begin arriving at Andersonville prison, which was still under construction in southern Georgia. Andersonville became synonymous with death as nearly a quarter of its inmates died in captivity. Henry Wirz, who ran Andersonville, was executed after the war for the brutality and mistreatment committed under his command.
The prison, officially called Camp Sumter, became necessary after the prisoner exchange system between North and South collapsed in 1863 over disagreements about the handling of Black soldiers. The stockade at Andersonville was hastily constructed using slave labor, and was located in the Georgia woods near a railroad but safely away from the front lines. Enclosing 16 acres of land, the prison was supposed to include wooden barracks but the inflated price of lumber delayed construction, and the Yankee soldiers imprisoned there lived under open skies, protected only by makeshift shanties called “shebangs,” constructed from scraps of wood and blankets. A stream initially provided fresh water, but within a few months human waste had contaminated the creek.
Andersonville was built to hold 10,000 men, but within six months more than three times that number were incarcerated there. The creek banks eroded to create a swamp, which occupied a significant portion of the compound. Rations were inadequate, and at times half of the population was reported ill. Some guards brutalized the inmates and there was violence between factions of prisoners.
Andersonville was the worst among many terrible Civil War prisons, both Union and Confederate. Wirz paid the price for the inhumanity of Andersonville; he was executed in the aftermath of the Civil War.
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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-treatment-of-soviet-pows-starvation-disease-and-shootings-june-1941january-1942
‘Death Island’: Britain’s ‘concentration camp’ in Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41271418
Because the Allies won the war.
I’m pretty sure someone in the Biden FEMA/DHS cabal will chose to name one of the FEMA camps…Camp Wirz in honor of the POS.
To be fair, the prison the Confederates ended up in was no picnic. But the south had trouble getting food and medical supplies so Andersonville inmates did suffer more.
The forerunner of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Actually, Camp Douglas, Illinopis was just about as bad if you count the death rate. An ancestor was locked up there and joined the Yankee army to save his ass. The decision to stop prisoner exchanges was a cold, heartless strategy. The Union leaders knew they had more men to lose, and could always import hapless, pennniless German and Irish immigrants to fill their ranks. So let the prisoners die.
Wirz was innocent. His execution was judicial murder to satisfy a Northern public understandably outraged by what happened at Andersonville. Read the memoirs of General Richard Taylor. Witz accosted him and begged him to help get more support for the prisoners. Of course, Wirz was a foreigner, so who cared?
“Henry Wirz, who ran Andersonville, was executed after the war for the brutality and mistreatment committed under his command.”
Wirz was the classic scapegoat and history.com knows better. As the only person executed for war crimes after the war, he was denied numerous requests for food and $. And, while the shear numbers of deaths were highest at Andersonville (which has an extraordinary Natl Prisoner of War Museum) they were not nearly as high as several prisons in the north on a mortality rate view. The great Lincoln also failed to do prisoner exchanges to save many at Andersonville because they were too sick to return and fight. What happened to his “better angels”?
Ike despised dem Natsis. Changed their classification from prisoners of war subject to Geneva convention standards to unarmed combatants so he could starve millions. He learned from Stalin quite well.