Henry Wirz was a Confederate captain and commander of Andersonville Prison Camp. He was charged with conspiracy and the murder of thirteen Union soldiers, and was executed on November 10, 1865—a mere seven months after the formal end of the Civil War. As the only Confederate officer executed after the war, Wirz has been described by many historians as the first war criminal in the history of the United States. However, through analysis of the trial transcript and the historiography between 1865 and 1921, it is apparent that Henry Wirz’s trial also presented Northerners and Southerners with a viable pathway to attempt to construct, or reconstruct, the image of the South in post-Civil War America. Wirz and Andersonville became the primary symbols of Southern atrocity, brutality, and illegitimacy to the North, but Southerners used those same symbols to challenge the representations allotted to them, and to redefine the South’s role in the war by redefining Wirz’s role at Andersonville. By challenging Wirz’s “guilt,” Southerners challenged the idea of “Southern guilt.” At the same time, by defending Wirz’s guilty verdict, Northerners upheld a carefully constructed account of not only the trial, but the Civil War as a whole.

The Trial of Henry Wirz: Reconstruction and Redefinition of the South in Post-Civil War America