Henry Wirz Heinrich Hartmann Wirz better known as Henry Wirz ( November 25 , 1823 – November 10 , 1865 ) was a Swiss - born Confederate officer in the American Civil War . He is best known for his command of Camp Sumter , the Confederate prisoner of war camp near Andersonville , Georgia ; he was tried and executed after the war for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of the camp . Medical career and family . Born in Zurich , Switzerland , Wirz attended the University of Zurich but there is no evidence he obtained a degree . Wirz practiced medicine for a time before he emigrated to the U . S . in 1849 , when many Forty - Eighters were fleeing the Swiss Sonderbund war and the failed Revolutions of 1848 in the German states and elsewhere . Wirz , who had married in 1845 and had two children , was imprisoned briefly in the late 1840s for unknown reasons . He established a medical practice in Kentucky , where he married a Methodist widow named Wolfe . Along with her two daughters , they moved to Louisiana . In 1855 his wife gave birth to their daughter , Cora . By 1861 , Wirz had a successful medical practice . Civil War . Wirz enlisted as a private in Company A , Fourth Battalion of Louisiana Volunteers of the Confederate States Army in May 1861 . He took part in the Battle of Seven Pines in May 1862 , during which he was wounded by a minie ball and lost the use of his right arm . After returning to his unit on June 12 , 1862 , Wirz was promoted to Captain " for bravery on the field of battle . " Because of his injury , Wirz was assigned to the staff of General John H . Winder , who was in charge of Confederate prisoner of war camps . President Jefferson Davis made Captain Wirz a Special Minister and sent him to Europe carrying secret dispatches to the Confederate Commissioners , Mister Mason in England and Mister Slidell in France . Wirz returned from Europe in January 1864 and reported back to Richmond , Virginia , where he began working for General Winder in the prison department . Wirz then served on detached duty as a prison guard in Alabama , then transferred to help guard Federal prisoners incarcerated at Richmond . Camp Sumter . In February 1864 , the Confederate government established Camp Sumter , a large military prison in Georgia near the small railroad depot of Anderson ( as it was called then ) , to house Union prisoners of war . In April 1864 , Wirz took command of Camp Sumter , where he remained for over a year . Shortly before the end of the war , Wirz was promoted to the rank of Major . Though wooden barracks were originally planned , the Confederates incarcerated the prisoners in a vast , rectangular , open - air stockade originally encompassing sixteen and a half acres , which had been intended as only a temporary prison pending exchanges of prisoners with the North . The prisoners gave this place the name Andersonville . The prison suffered an extreme lack of food , tools and medical supplies , severe overcrowding , poor sanitary conditions and a lack of potable water . Wirz would greet new arrivals to the camp brandishing a pistol , cursing at them in his heavily accented English , and threatening to shoot them personally if they attempted to escape or broke the camp rules . That , coupled with the harsh discipline he imposed on the prisoners , which included ball - and - chaining them for even minor infractions , made him hated by those confined there . Wirz recognized that the conditions were inadequate and petitioned his superiors to provide more support ; this was denied . In July 1864 he sent five prisoners to the Union with a petition signed by the inmates to reinstate prisoners ' exchanges that had been discontinued unilaterally by the North . The petition was denied , and the prisoners , true to their oath , returned . At its peak in August 1864 , the camp held approximately 32 , 000 Union prisoners , making it the fifth - largest city in the Confederacy . The monthly mortality rate from disease , dysentery , and malnutrition reached 3 , 000 . Around 45 , 000 prisoners were incarcerated during the camp ' s 14 - month existence , of whom close to 13 , 000 ( 28 % ) died . Trial and execution . Wirz was arrested by a contingent of federal cavalry in May 1865 and taken by rail to Washington , D . C . , where the federal government intended to place him on trial for conspiring to impair the lives of Union prisoners of war . A military tribunal was convened with Major General Lew Wallace presiding . The other members of the commission were Gershom Mott , John W . Geary , Lorenzo Thomas , Francis Fessenden , Edward S . Bragg , John F . Ballier , T . Allcock , and John H . Stibbs . Norton P . Chipman served as prosecutor . The military tribunal took place between August 23 and October 18 , 1865 , convened in the Capitol building , dominating the front pages of newspapers across the United States . The court heard the testimony of former inmates , ex - Confederate officers , and even nearby residents of Andersonville . Among those giving testimony was Father Peter Whelan , a Catholic priest who worked with the inmates , who testified on Wirz ' s behalf . The charges against him were for ' combining , confederating , and conspiring , together with John H . Winder , Richard B . Winder , Joseph [ Isaiah H . ] White , W . S . Winder , R . R . Stevenson , and others unknown , to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States ' , and for ' Murder , in violation of the laws and customs of war ' . The 13 murders committed by Wirz personally were by revolver ( specifications 1 , 3 , 4 ) , by physically stamping and kicking the victim ( specification 2 ) , and by confining prisoners in stocks ( specifications 5 , 6 ) , by beating a prisoner with a revolver ( specification 13 ) and by chaining prisoners together ( specification 7 ) . All murders occurred in 1864 . Wirz was also charged with ordering guards to fire on prisoners with muskets ( specification 8 , 9 , 10 , 12 ) , and to have dogs attack escaped prisoners ( specification 11 ) . Wirz was found guilty of all charges except the murder in specification 4 . Some of the evidence was hearsay , but there was one witness whose testimony was particularly damning . His name was Felix de la Baume , and he claimed to be a descendant of the heroic Marquis de Lafayette . He was able to name a victim killed directly by Wirz . This eyewitness was a skilled orator and his story was so compelling that he was given a written commendation signed by all the members of the commission for his part in the trial . He was also rewarded with a position in the department of the Interior while the trial was still in progress . Another witness was in Andersonville with his father . He described his father as having scurvy , and not being able to stand . Because he could not stand , Wirz repeatedly stomped and kicked him , and his father died a few days later . In early November 1865 , the commission announced that it had found Wirz guilty of conspiracy as charged , along with 11 of 13 counts of murder . He was sentenced to death . In a letter to President Andrew Johnson , Wirz asked for clemency , but the letter went unanswered . The night before his execution , Louis Schade ( an attorney working on behalf of Wirz ) was told that a high Cabinet official wished to assure Wirz that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville , his sentence would be commuted . Schade repeated the offer to Wirz and was told , " Mr . Schade , you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis . He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville . If I knew anything about him , I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else even to save my life . " Wirz was hanged at 10 : 32 a . m . on November 10 , 1865 , at the Old Capitol Prison , by the US Capitol , the present - day site of the Supreme Court of the United States . His neck did not break from the fall , and the crowd of 250 spectators watched as he writhed and slowly suffocated . He was buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington , D . C . He was survived by his wife and one daughter . Eleven days after the execution , it was revealed that the star witness from the trial had perjured himself . He was not Felix de la Baume from France , but Felix Oeser , born in Saxony , Prussia . He was actually a deserter from the 7th New York Volunteers . With his real identity revealed , he quickly disappeared . Henry Wirz was one of two men tried , convicted , and executed for war crimes during the Civil War ( the other being Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson ) . His conviction remains controversial today . Residents of the town of Andersonville annually march to a Wirz memorial , along with supporters of a congressional pardon for Wirz . Some writers have suggested Wirz ' s trial was unfair . because the South had low food rations and there was a Northern blockade of all medicines , both of which were out of Wirz ' s control . Even some of his former prisoners conceded that the low support he received from Confederate government in terms of food , water , and medical supplies made the conditions at Andersonville beyond his scope of responsibility . The trial , one of the nation ' s first war crimes tribunal s , created enduring moral and legal notions and established the precedent that certain wartime behavior is unacceptable , regardless if committed under the orders of superiors or on one ' s own . In a 1980 study , the historian Morgan D . Peoples refers to Wirz as a " scapegoat " .