events
Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming one of only three American Civil War soldiers executed for war crimes.
Related Wikipedia articles
Henry Wirz
Confederate States Army officer (1823–1865)
Henry Wirz was a Swiss-American convicted war criminal who served as a Confederate Army officer during the American Civil War. He was the commandant of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where nearly 13,000 Union Army prisoners…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Andersonville, Georgia
City in Georgia, United States
Andersonville is a city in Sumter County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 237. It is located in the southwest part of the state, approximately 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Macon on the Central of Georgia railroad. During the American…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Hanging
Death by suspension around the neck
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. As a form of execution, it is…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
American Civil War
1861–1865 conflict in the United States
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
Capital punishment
Legal killing of a person as punishment for committing a crime
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence,…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
War crime
Individual act constituting a violation of the laws of war
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)