Redecorating the Beast: The Life and Death of Captain Henry Wirz, CSA
“We redecorate the beast in all sorts of political coats, hoping that we change him, but is he to be changed?” — Saul Levitt, The Andersonville Trial
Please read an advisory note from the author.
ON A SUNNY FRIDAY MORNING, November 10, 1865, four companies of United States infantry filed into the common yard of the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D. C., where a tall scaffold fitted with a single noose stood in the center of the yard. Outside the prison’s wooden fences, dozens of other soldiers, not invited to the ceremony, peered over the towering walls from high in the trees, where they had climbed to witness the upcoming spectacle. After a few moments, a small group of officers and civilians escorted a hobbling, bearded man out of the prison and up the scaffold stairs. Derisive cries rang out from the tree-perched men, and, as the noose was slipped around the prisoner’s neck, the ranked soldiers began to chant, “Remember Andersonville! Remember Andersonville!”
It was seven months and a day after Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. The victorious Union was still angry after the assassination of President Lincoln, and the shattered South was writhing under the…
