The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz
A Union Prisoner's Eyewitness Defense of Andersonville and Civil War MemoryBy James Madison Page
Length6h 15m
About this audiobook
James Madison Page's The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirz is a polemical historical account of the Confederate prison camp whose name became synonymous with Civil War atrocity. Drawing upon personal experience as a Union prisoner and upon documentary and testimonial evidence, Page contests the dominant indictment of Wirz, the camp's commandant, and distinguishes the realities of wartime scarcity, administrative failure, and military policy from the image of a uniquely malicious perpetrator. The book combines prison memoir, evidentiary brief, and revisionist historical narrative; its urgent first-person perspective and prosecutorial organization place it within the postbellum literature of Civil War memory, when former participants sought to shape public judgment of the conflict and its leaders. Page writes as a former Andersonville prisoner who regarded the conventional story as historically incomplete and morally selective. His intimate knowledge of camp conditions, together with his dissatisfaction with Wirz's trial and execution, appears to have motivated this sustained effort to recover testimony favorable to the accused. Rather than treating memory as neutral, Page marshals it consciously in an argument about responsibility, justice, and the politics of remembrance. This volume is recommended to readers of Civil War history, prison memoir, military justice, and historical revisionism. It is especially valuable when read alongside contemporary accounts and modern scholarship, allowing readers to assess how evidence, personal suffering, and sectional memory interact in narratives of culpability. Page's defense does not end debate over Andersonville; it makes that debate more historically textured and intellectually necessary.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 4.2 (277)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon
GenreHistory
Length6 hrs 15 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 14, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1My Diary – North and South (Vol. 1&2) (Annotated)
2Preface
3Part I - Andersonville: The Prisoners and Their Keeper
4My First Soldiering
5A Sprint and a Capture
Show all chaptersShow less
6A Prisoner at Belle Isle
7From Belle Isle to Andersonville
8Daily Life at Andersonville
9"The Dead-Line" and the Death of "Poll Parrot"
10The Stanton Policy
11Execution of the Raiders
12The Mass Meeting of July Twentieth
13The Fate of a Traitor
14Billy Bowles Gives a Dinner in Baltimore
15Part II - Henry Wirz: The Man and His Trial
16The Facts of Wirz's Life
17The Accusations Against Wirz
18The Trial
19The Last Days of Wirz S Life
20Wirz's Attorney's Final Word
21The Great War Secretary
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