Talk:Henry Wirz

message: As noted below, there are at least 3 significant works available that argue that Henry Wirz treated the prisoners as decently and humanely as his resources allowed; that he attempted to get more resources; and that he attempted to get more prisoners exchanged:
The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz 
by James Madison Page (Author), M. J. Haley (Contributor) 
Andersonville: The Last Depot (Civil War America)
by William Marvel
History of Andersonville Prison
by Ovid L. Futch
I have added these as citations --64.142.36.76 (talk) 18:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If this bugs you edit the article and include sources, also please sign your comments. It can be annoying to see what looks like a complete article intead of a series of comments between separate people Ronduck 23:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy Disputed 

message: I removed this paragraph:
The Union needed to paint the Confederates as inhuman monsters so that it would be easier to impose war debt upon the Confederates as one of the stipulations of returning to the Union(which they were given no choice but to do).  According to the first hand accounts of a truthful ex-prisoner Henry Wirz was not only innocent but deserved praise for his attempts to nourish both guards and prisoners with a food supply almost completely destroyed by the "Scorched Earth" policy of the Union.  It is also said that Henry Wirz sent missives to Abraham Lincoln, first asking for food and medicine to be sent for the prisoners and then later offering to release the prisoners outright if someone would be sent to collect them.  Abraham Lincoln had no response, he needed Andersonville to be a hell on earth to both continually justify fighting the war caused by his election and decision to entice the confederates to attack a Union ship as well as an excuse to excise war dead from the Confederates without opposition.
Because of a lack of citation.  It says things like, "Accoring to a first hand account of a truthful ex-prisoner" without naming the prisoner or how it could possibly be proven that he was truthful.  Sentences that begin with things like, "It is also said..." are pretty close to weasel words and that sentence also lacks any scholarly citation to back up its contentions.  Finally, the last sentence is pretty blatant POV (blaming the war on Lincoln).  You may think it was totally his fault, but the majority of scholars do not, and it does not belong in this encyclopedia.  I know it had a citation needed tag, but the whole thing was pretty bad, so I removed it until there's citation and a removal of POV. mweng 22:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no "benefit of the doubt" to be given in an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia requires citations, of which none are provided.  Even with citations, the paragraph would need an extensive re-write to have a neutral point of view instead of an obviously anti-Lincoln, pro-Neo-Confederate point of view.mweng 16:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced information 

message: Wirz was NOT hanged in the same place as the Lincoln conspirators.
A look at the photographs of the two executions will immeditely show that the conspirators were hanged elsewhere in Washington, D.C. in 1865. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.174.134.45 (talk) 15:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  different site 

message: This article perpetuates old public myths which began in 1865. The death rate of the Confederate guards was as high as the prisoners'. The Confederates offered to buy medications for the prisoners and even permit Union doctors to administer them but were rebuffed. The reason there was so little food was that Lincoln had ordered his generals to burn crops and destroy whatever food supplies Union armies couldn't carry for their own needs. Wirz sent a delegation of union prisoners to Washington with a proposal for a prisoner exchange. Lincoln refused to see them, Stanton saw them but gave them nothing. There is no evidence the south ever refused to exchange black prisoners. The north refused the exchanges because Lincoln thought it would be more to the advantage of the south than to the north. Lastly, immediately before his execution, Wirz was offered what amounted to a pardon if he would say Jefferson Davis (who was then in a northern prison) had ordered the mistreatment of Union prisoners. Wirz refused and was hanged. 26,436 confederates died in union prisons, 22,576 union soldiers died in southern prisons. Gwen Gale 02:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: what a mess

message: The novel called "Andersonville" by MacKinlay Kantor was an opus magnum. It was the result of twenty-five years of careful and thorough research. By the time of its publication, Kantor could have passed an oral examination for a doctoral degree on the history of the Civil War. His opus magnum was, basically, a doctoral thesis on the prison at Anderson Station, Georgia. One reason that "Andersonville" won the Pulitzer Prize was the inclusion of an Appendix listing the most important references he had used to make the novel historically accurate. The appendix was not exhaustive. The irritating error is to assume that Kantor would have taken liberty with history to serve the goal of writing a work of fiction. That is offensive.  
Kantor could have composed a biography of Henry Wirz, and it is a shame that he did not do so. I have no reason to disbelieve his account of Wirz's life. For example, the miniball struck his forearm, passing between the radius and ulna, badly damaging the ulnar nerve. Kantor says that Wirz tried, over and over, to operate upon the wound single-handed. Frustrated, Kantor says that Heinrich Wirz briefly returned to Switzerland for surgery. In any event, his right arm was not paralyzed nor rendered completely useless.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.82.49.241 (talk) 16:27, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: An irritating error

message: Is there some doubt about his record?  Here's what the article says:
:It is reported that he took part in the Battle of Seven Pines in May 1862, during which he was supposedly severely wounded by a minie ball and lost the use of his right arm. Wirz allegedly then served on detached duty as a prison guard in Alabama
Why 'reported', 'supposedly', 'allegedly'?  The writing casts complete doubt on his record, but doesn't make any effort to explain why there is doubt.  Some time in this period he was promoted from private to captain, but again no effort is made to explain this.  In fact, reading the text you would think he was put in command of a prison camp while still carrying the rank of private; the only place his later rank is referred to is in the data box at the right. GoldenRing (talk) 10:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: A totally unencycopeadic article and it clearly violates the WP:NPOV requirement, not to mention (as you pointed out) WP:WEASEL. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 16:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  War Record 

message: I've edited the paragraph concerning the prisoners' petition to the U.S. government for neutrality, and secondarily for accuracy.  Since the original passage may appear neutral on its face, I include a justification for the edit here, starting with the historical background.
The Union and the Confederacy reached an agreement, known as the Dix-Hill cartel, under which all prisoners of war were released shortly after capture.  If possible, they were exchanged for prisoners held by the other side.  Otherwise, they were paroled, which meant they were released with the understanding that they would not to return to military service until they were matched with a prisoner released by their side.
Then Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclaimation, which declared that slaves within the Confederacy were considered to be free, and would be accepted into the armed forces of the United States.  From the perspective of the Confederacy, this was incitementing slave insurrection, a criminal act.  The Conferate Congress passed a resolution stating that captured black soldiers would be turned over to the governor of the state where the capture occurred, and their white commanders would be executed.  In response to Union protests that this violated the cartel, the Confederate negotiator partially backed off, but insisted that captured soldiers who were slaves under Confederate law were property which would be sold off if not claimed by the owner.
Prisoners continued to be exchanged, but only by special agreements, typically between commanders in the field.  A prerequisite for an exchange between commanders was that the Confedrate command hold only white prisoners of war, since the Confederate commander wouldn't exchange the black soldiers and the Union commander wouldn't make a deal that discriminated against black soldiers.
With this background, it should be clear that the assertion that "exchanges...had been discontinued unilaterally by the North," is not a neutral statement.  From the Union perspective, it was the Confederacy had unilaterally discontinued the general exchanges, by refusing to exchange black prisoners of war.
The background on prisoner exchanges I recite above probably should appear somehwere in Wikipedia, but this is not the page for it.  The topic of exchanges is too complex to be explained in one or two sentences, at least not while maintaining neutrality.  Therefore, I have excised all references to it.
The footnote states that the petition asks the Union to "reinstate prisoner exchanges."  However, the petition actually requests the following:
:"In view of the foregoing facts we your petitioners. most earnestly yet respectfully pray that some action be immediately taken to effect our speedy release, either on parole or by exchange, the dictates both of humanity and justice alike demanding it on the part of our Government."
So the cited secondary source is slightly inaccurate.  I therefore write that the petition asks the goverment to "negotate their release", which is consistent with both both the secondary source and the actual text of the petition.
--Kalmquist (talk) 21:09, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prisoners' petition and prisoner exchanges 

message: I noticed that Wirz's rank in the sidebar is set as Captain in the CSA, but one of the sections states that he was promoted to Major. Was he demoted after the war or during his court-martial?
Doghouse09 (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Captain or Major? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Sleazy research: Oeser, not Oessel.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C0:DBD4:BA00:B519:CACE:7965:C738 (talk) 18:24, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Be nice. However I do think it was an error. This NPS website uses "Oesser", except when quoting an 1865 news account, which uses "Oessel". A student-create source uses "Oeser", but it's not reliable (see below). If you have more sources we could list all the spellings.  Anyway, I've edited the article to reduce the confusion, I hope. Mobi Ditch (talk) 00:31, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oessel 

message: *Bill Carnes. Captain Henry Wirz, Materials prepared as part of a class assignment for The Seminar in Famous Trials course at the University of Missouri-K.C. School of Law.
*
*Scopes Trial Home Page – UMKC School of Law
*
*
These citations all go to a class project. The articles were all written by students. It doesn't seem like it qualifies as a reliable source. Mobi Ditch (talk) 23:38, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone removed a caveat to the story line. I checked the source, Marvel, and edited the text to better describe Marvel's view. I also removed the UMKC citations, which are poor quality. Mobi Ditch (talk) 00:37, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious sources