Captain Henry Wirz was the commandant of Andersonville Prison and the only Confederate soldier convicted and executed for war crimes during the Civil War. His conviction is in controversy still today.

The Georgia Division and the United Daughters of the Confederacy proposed a resolution at its 1905 convention to erect a monument in memory of Henry Wirz. The U.D.C. prevailed in this battle and the monument was erected at the prison site in Andersonville on May 12, 1908.

The Front of the Monument

"In memory of Captain Henry Wirz, C.S.A. Born Zurich, Switzerland, 1822. Sentenced to death and executed at Washington, D.C., Nov. 10, 1865.

To rescue his name from the stigma attached to it by embittered prejudice, this shaft is erected by the Georgia Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy."

On the Second Side

"Discharging his duty with such humanity as the harsh circumstances of the times, and the policy of the foe permitted, Captain Wirz became at last the victim of a misdirected popular clamor.

He was arrested in time of peace, while under protection of a parole, tried by a military commission of a service to which he did not belong and condemned to ignominious death on charges of excessive cruelty to Federal prisoners. He indignantly spurned a pardon, proffered on condition that he would incriminate President Davis and thus exonerate himself from charges of which both were...