Walkabout With Wheels Blog: The Only Monument in the US for a War Criminal in Andersonville, Georgia

Thursday, February 12, 2015

The Only Monument in the US for a War Criminal in Andersonville, Georgia

Eric & I return to Andersonville
in search of a monument
honoring a war criminal.

We visited Andersonville National Historic Site last week, on a grey, rainy day. After visiting the National Prisoner of War Museum, Andersonville Prison and the National Cemetery, a tour around the village in the rain was not appealing.

The weather is great and Andersonville is kind of on our way back to Southern Trails RV Resort in Unadilla. Eric's peaked my interest with the phrase, "monument for a war criminal."

The background to the infamous Andersonville Prison:

Following the massacre of Black Union prisoners after the surrender of Fort Pillow in Tennessee on April 12, 1864, The North and The South stopped exchanging prisoners. Confederate Forces were running short of supplies on everything as Union Armies destroyed railroad lines and blockaded southern ports in an effort to bring the three year conflict to a close. Southerners were suffering as the needed imported goods were blocked from marketplaces.

Andersonville Prison was built in February 1864 to hold 10,000 Union prisoners. Eventually, 45,000 men would be crammed behind stockade walls. Lacking supplies for everything, including shelters, prisoners at Andersonville constructed tents with whatever they brought with them to their confinement. There were food shortages. There was no medical services available. Of the 45,000 men who entered the prison, nearly 13,000 men died of malnutrition, dysentery, and disease.

Following the end of the Civil War on June 2, 1865, Captain Wirz was arrested, charged with conspiracy to injure the lives and health of Union soldiers and murder. He was put on trial an executed on November 10, 1865.