Andersonville National Historic Site - Aftermath

Aftermath

Andersonville Prison was liberated in May 1865.

After the war Henry Wirz, commandant of the inner stockade at Camp Sumter, was tried by a military tribunal on charges of conspiracy and murder. The trial was presided over by Union General Lew Wallace and featured chief Judge Advocate General (JAG) prosecutor Norton Parker Chipman.

A number of former prisoners testified on conditions at Andersonville, many accusing Wirz of specific acts of cruelty, most of which could not be substantiated, for some of which Wirz was not even present in the camp. The court also considered official correspondence from captured Confederate records. Perhaps the most damaging was a letter to the Confederate surgeon general by Dr. James Jones, who in 1864 was sent by Richmond to investigate conditions at Camp Sumter. Jones had been appalled by what he found and his graphically detailed report to his superiors all but closed the case for the prosecution. Wirz presented evidence that he pleaded to Confederate authorities to try to get more food and tried to improve the conditions for the prisoners inside.

Unfortunately for Wirz, President Abraham Lincoln had recently been assassinated, so the political environment was not sympathetic. Wirz was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. On November 10, 1865, he was hanged. Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the Civil War (but see reference to Champ Ferguson). The revelation of the prisoners' sufferings was one of the factors that shaped public opinion in the North regarding the South after the close of the Civil War.

In 1890 the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Georgia bought the site of Andersonville Prison from membership and subscriptions. In 1910 the site was donated to the federal government by the Woman's Relief Corps (auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic).