a long time refused exchange of prisoners, finally consented to a
partial exchange of the sick and wounded on both sides. Accordingly
a number of such prisoners were sent from the hospitals in Richmond.
General directions had been given that none should be sent, except
those who might be expected to endure the removal and passage with
safety to their lives; but in some cases the surgeons were induced
to depart from this rule by the entreaties of some officers and men
in the last stages of emaciation, suffering not only with excessive
debility, but with ‘nostalgia,’ or home-sickness, whose cases were
regarded as desperate, who could not live if they remained, and might
possibly improve if carried home. Thus it happened that some very
sick and emaciated men were carried to Annapolis, but their illness
was not the result of ill-treatment or neglect. Such cases might
be found in any large hospital North or South. They might even be
found in private families, where the sufferer would be surrounded by
every comfort that love could bestow. Yet these are the cases which,
with hideous violation of decency, the Northern Committee have
paraded in pictures and photographs. They have taken their own sick
and enfeebled soldiers, have stripped them naked; have exposed them
before a daguerrean apparatus, have pictured every shrunken limb and
muscle, and all for the purpose, not of relieving their sufferings,
but of bringing a false and slanderous charge against the South.
“A candid reader of these publications will not fail to discover
that, whether the statements they make be true or not, their spirit
is not adapted to promote a better feeling between the hostile
powers. They are not intended for the humane purpose of ameliorating
the condition of the unhappy prisoners held in captivity. They are
designed to inflame the evil passions of the North; to keep up the
war spirit among their own people; to represent the South as acting
under the dominion of a spirit of cruelty, inhumanity and interested
malice, and thus to vilify her people in the eyes of all on whom
these publications can work.
“But even now enough is known to vindicate the South, and to furnish
an overwhelming answer to all complaints on the part of the United
States Government or people, that their prisoners were stinted in
food or supplies. Their own savage warfare has wrought the evil. They
have blockaded our ports; have excluded from us food, clothing and
medicines; have even declared medicines contraband of war, and have
repeatedly destroyed the contents of drug stores, and the supplies of
private physicians in the country; have ravaged our country, burned
our houses and destroyed growing crops and farming implements. One
of their officers--(General Sheridan)--has boasted in his official
report that in the Shenandoah Valley alone he burned 2,000 barns
filled with wheat and corn; that he burned all the mills in the whole
tract of country, destroyed all the factories of cloth, and killed or
drove off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute
to human sustenance. These desolations have been repeated again and
again in different parts of the South. Thousands of our families
have been driven from their homes, as helpless and destitute
refugees. Our enemies have destroyed our railroads and other means
of transportation, by which food could be supplied from abundant
districts to those without it. While thus desolating our country in
violation of the usages of civilized warfare, they have refused to
exchange prisoners; have forced us to keep 50,000 of their men in
captivity, and yet have attempted to attribute to us the sufferings
and privations caused by their own acts.”
The report also contains a great amount of testimony concerning the
cruel treatment of Confederate prisoners in Northern prisons.
Pollard, in his history of the “Lost Cause,” after reciting the
extraordinary efforts made by the Confederate authorities to relieve
the sufferings at Andersonville, says:
“Who was responsible for the sufferings of the sick and wounded
prisoners at Andersonville, from August to December, 1864? The
world will ask with amazement if it was possible that thousands of
prisoners were left to die in inadequate places of confinement,
merely to make a case against the South--merely for romance! The
simple fact gives the clue to the whole story of the deception and
inhuman cruelty of the authorities at Washington with reference to
their prisoners of war--the key to a chapter of horrors that even the
hardy hand of history shakes to unlock. To blacken the reputation of
an honorable enemy; to make a false appeal to the sensibilities of
the world; to gratify an inhuman revenge, Mr. Stanton, the saturnine
and malignant Secretary of War at Washington, did not hesitate to
doom to death thousands of his countrymen, and then to smear their
sentinels with accusing blood.”
ABOUT DEAD-LINES
Much has been written and spoken of the “dead-lines” in Southern
prisons. One would suppose they were unknown in Northern prisons. The
fact is, they were as common at the North as in the South. There was
not a Northern prison-camp but had its “dead-line,” and at all these
prisons men were shot at and many killed _for passing over them_. And
there was no reason to complain of this, for the lines were plainly
marked, and it was known that anyone attempting to cross them would
be shot. So, any man--no matter whether North or South--killed in
violating this regulation did not deserve any sympathy.
Even in the Old Capitol Prison guards with loaded guns were stationed
around the prison, within and without, and any prisoner attempting to
escape, or overstepping the bounds, was liable to be shot. Two men,
at least, were killed there--Wharton and Stewart, as described in my
Prison Diary, page 36. And this in the city of Washington, a fortified
city, within the Union lines, surrounded by camps, with thousands of
soldiers, and the prisoners confined in a walled prison-house heavily
guarded.
MAJOR HENRY WIRZ, C. S. A.
_The True History of the Wirz Case._
I was living in Washington at the time Captain Wirz underwent the
travesty of a trial--a farce which ended in a tragedy.
I frequently met and conversed with Louis Schade, his counsel, and his
associate, Judge Hughes. I also met and conversed with witnesses on the
trial.
Rev. Father Boyle and Father Wiget, who attended Wirz during his
imprisonment and ministered to him in his last moments on the scaffold,
were both warm personal friends of mine--Father Wiget particularly. I
not only regarded him as a spiritual father, as he was, but with all
the respect and affection which a devoted son would have for a kind,
loving father. Had I any doubts in the matter of the guilt or innocence
of Wirz, I would take the word of either of these good and true men
before that of the whole tribe of hired perjurers who testified against
him.
There are many persons at the present day who know nothing as to the
truth or falsity of the record of events which took place during and
immediately after the Civil War, except what they have heard or perhaps
read in histories written in the heat of passion, with prejudice and
malice, and their minds are often poisoned and their judgments warped
by the misrepresentations and sensational stories invented at the time
to exasperate the people of the North.
Major Henry Wirz was a native of Switzerland. He came to this country,
and in 1861 was a physician practising his profession in Western
Louisiana.
He entered the Confederate Army at the beginning of the war, was
wounded--his right arm shattered by a ball, so that he remained a
cripple permanently. As his right arm was powerless he did not have
the physical ability to ill-treat prisoners as some of the witnesses
testified at his trial. Even if this charge had been true, that he
exercised undue severity toward some of the prisoners, he might have
been justified in so doing, when their fellow-prisoners were compelled
to hang a half a dozen in self-defense.
[Illustration: MAJOR HENRY WIRZ, C. S. A.]
In 1862 he was promoted to the rank of Captain “for bravery on the
field of battle,” and to that of Major a few months before the close of
the war.
He was an impulsive man--some said he was rough in his manner. This
apparent roughness in persons of foreign birth sometimes proceeds
from difference in language and their mode of expression, which may
only need a little prejudice or ill-will to distort into something
offensive. But that he was a man kind at heart is shown by his earnest
endeavors to relieve the sufferings of the prisoners under his charge.
In the Official Records of the Rebellion, published by the United
States Government, will be found letters of Wirz to Captain R. D.
Chapman, Acting Adjutant of Post, and Colonel D. S. Chandler, Assistant
Adjutant and Inspector-General, showing his efforts to better the
condition of the prisoners, both with regard to rations and hygiene.
In the Southern Historical Society Papers is a letter from General John
D. Imboden, written in 1876, from which the following extracts are
taken:
“I have already alluded to Captain Wirz’s recommendation to put up
more shelter. I ordered it, and thereafter, daily, a hundred or more
prisoners were paroled and set to work in the neighboring forest. In
the course of a fortnight comfortable log-houses, with floors and
good chimneys--for which the prisoners made and burnt the brick--were
erected for twelve or fifteen hundred men.
“This same man (Captain Wirz) who was tried and hung as a murderer,
warmly urged the establishment of a tannery and shoemaker’s shop,
informing me that there were many men among the prisoners skilled in
these trades, and that some of them knew a process of very rapidly
converting hides into tolerably good leather. There were thousands
of hides at Andersonville from the young cattle butchered during the
previous summer and fall, whilst the country yet contained such
animals. A few weeks later many of the barefooted prisoners were
supplied with rough, but comfortable shoes. Another suggestion came
from the medical staff of the post, that I ordered to be at once put
into practice: It was to brew corn beer for those suffering from
scorbutic taint. Captain Wirz entered warmly into this enterprise.
I mention these facts to show that he was not the monster he was
afterward represented to be, when his blood was called for by
infuriated fanaticism. I would have proved these facts _if I had
been permitted to testify on his trial, after I was summoned before
the Court by the United States_, and have substantiated them by the
records of the prison and of my own headquarters.”
When the Federal troops were sent to Georgia Major Wirz was placed
under guard and taken to the Old Capitol Prison, in Washington, D. C.,
where he remained from the 10th of May, 1865, until November 10th,
1865, when he was hung.
For three weary months he was kept a close prisoner, and then he was
taken before a Military Commission for trial (?).
In the case of Major Wirz the usual course of procedure was
reversed--he was first condemned, then tried, and finally executed.
Yet this was not the final act, for the malignity of his persecutors
followed him even after death. When Father Boyle and others sought
to give the body of Wirz Christian burial in consecrated ground the
request was denied and the body deposited beside those executed for the
assassination of President Lincoln, in the yard of the old arsenal.
The regard for law and justice which usually governs in a Civil Court
had no holding in the proceedings of a Military Commission, where the
decisions of the Court were rendered in accordance with the opinions
of the Judge Advocate, who admitted or rejected testimony as he
thought it affected the case. Consequently persons whose testimony was
considered vital for the defense, were not allowed to testify, while
witnesses for the prosecution were permitted to give their evidence, no
matter how inconsistent or manifestly false it was.
In a letter dated August 17th, 1868, to the _National Intelligencer_,
Robert Ould, who was Confederate States Agent of Exchange, says:
“I was named by poor Wirz as a witness in his behalf. The summons
was issued by Chipman, the Judge Advocate of the Military Court. I
obeyed the summons and was in attendance upon the court for some ten
days.... Early in the morning of the day on which I expected to give
my testimony I received a note from Chipman requiring me to surrender
my subpoena. I refused, as it was my protection in Washington....
I engaged, however, to appear before the court and did so the same
morning. The Judge Advocate endorsed on my subpoena these words: ‘The
within subpoena is hereby revoked; the person named is discharged
from further attendance.’ I have got the curious document before me
now, signed with the name of ‘N. P. Chipman, Colonel,’ etc. I intend
to keep it, if I can, as the evidence of the first case _in any court
of any sort_, where a witness who was summoned _for the defense_ was
dismissed _by the prosecution_.”
Rev. Father Whelan, of Savannah, Ga., a venerable Catholic priest, who
had been in the habit of visiting and ministering to the prisoners at
Andersonville, went to Washington, as a witness. He was asked by the
prosecuting attorney what he knew, and after telling his observations
at the prison, he was told he was not wanted and could go home.
In an old diary of mine, I find this entry:
“A man named Marini was in the store to-day. He was called as a
witness in the Wirz case. He had been a prisoner at Andersonville.
He said many of the witnesses had sworn falsely. Some swore he had
been bitten by bloodhounds. This he said was false; that he had shown
them his person to prove there were no marks of wounds. ‘If I had
been torn by the dogs as they swore I had,’ said he, ‘would there not
have been at least some scars to show it?’ He said that at the time
some of the witnesses swore Wirz had shot prisoners, Wirz was not at
Andersonville, but was absent from the post for about four weeks on
surgeon’s certificate, suffering from gangrene; that the accounts
of the prisoners being killed by Wirz were false. Marini was in the
employ of the United States Government as a spy during the war. He
said that one of the witnesses swore he had been sick during the
whole time he was at Andersonville. ‘So he should have been,’ said
Marini; ‘he didn’t wash himself the whole time he was there; he was
too lazy.’”
The star witness for the prosecution was the Marquis De la Baume,
who claimed to be a grand nephew of Lafayette. He testified to the
“individual killing” or murder “committed by Wirz.” Before the
conclusion of the trial he was, _on the recommendation of the members
of the Military Commission_, appointed to a clerkship in the Interior
Department at Washington. He was afterward recognized as a deserter
from the Seventh New York Regiment, and his name was plain Felix Oeser.
When this fact became known he was dismissed from his office, a few
weeks after the execution of Wirz. There was no further need of his
services.
Another witness against Wirz was John Rainbow. In September, 1894,
he was sentenced in Union County (N. J.) Court to one year in State
Prison for stealing a watch. A petition, signed by Grand Army men,
was presented to the court and this sentence was revoked and he was
committed to the county jail for six months.
In the charges upon which Wirz was condemned and hung were thirteen
specifications of men said to have been murdered by him, but though all
the most minute details were given, it is a singular fact that there
is not given the _name_ of any one of these persons--in every instance
mentioned, it is “name unknown.”
In the first specification Wirz was charged with conspiring with
Jefferson Davis, James A. Seddon, Howell Cobb, and others, named and
unnamed, “to injure and impair the health and destroy the lives,” etc.,
“of soldiers in the service of the United States.” On this charge Wirz
was declared guilty and hanged. Why were none of the other conspirators
punished? Did he conspire alone?
Had the case been brought in any Civil Court--no matter where--it would
have been thrown out of court.
What must have been the agony of this poor victim, sitting in the
courtroom, day after day, and week after week, listening to the recital
of the horrible tales, describing him as a fiend incarnate, by wretches
who were swearing his life away. He looked in vain upon the faces
around for a glance of pity, but on all sides he met the glaring eyes
of men thirsting for his blood.
Foiled in their efforts to incriminate Jefferson Davis, his cruel and
vindictive persecutors determined to wreck their vengeance upon Wirz,
poor and friendless, whom they had in their power, and who had rejected
their proposal to purchase his life by swearing falsely against
Jefferson Davis.
Major Richard B. Winder, M.D., and dean of the Baltimore Dental
College, was a prisoner in the Old Capitol, Washington, at the time of
Wirz’s imprisonment and execution. A statement of his in regard to an
occurrence which took place the evening before Wirz was executed has
been extensively published, but an extract from it will not be out of
place here:
“A night or two before Wirz’s execution--early in the evening, I saw
several male individuals (looking like gentlemen) pass into Wirz’s
cell. I was naturally on the _qui vive_ to know the meaning of this
unusual visitation, and was hoping and expecting too that it might be
a reprieve--for even at that time I was not prepared to believe that
so foul a judicial murder would be perpetrated. I think--indeed, I am
quite certain--there were three of them. Wirz came to his door, which
was immediately opposite mine, and I gave him a look of inquiry,
which was at once understood. He said: ‘These men have just offered
me my liberty if I will testify against Mr. Davis, and criminate him
with the charges against the Andersonville Prison. I told them that I
could not do this, as I neither knew Mr. Davis personally, officially
or socially, but if they expected with the offer of my miserable
life to purchase me to treason and treachery to the South they had
undervalued me.’”
In reply to a letter of inquiry from Hon. Jefferson Davis, Rev. Father
Boyle wrote:
“On the evening before the day of the execution of Major Wirz a man
visited me, on the part of a cabinet officer, to inform me that Major
Wirz would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the
cruelties at Andersonville. No names were given by this emissary,
and, upon my refusing to take any action in the matter, he went to
Mr. Louis Schade, counsel for Major Wirz, with the same purpose and
with a like result.
[Illustration: REV. F. E. BOYLE
Pastor of St. Peter’s R. C. Church, Washington, D. C.]
“When I visited Major Wirz the next morning he told me that the same
proposal had been made to him and had been rejected with scorn. The
Major was very indignant, and said that while he was innocent of the
charges for which he was about to suffer death, he would not purchase
his liberty by perjury and a crime such as was made the condition of
his freedom.
“I attended the major to the scaffold, and he died in the peace of
God and praying for his enemies. I know that he was indeed innocent
of all the cruel charges on which his life was sworn away, and I
was edified by the Christian spirit in which he submitted to his
persecutors.
“Yours very truly,
F. E. BOYLE.”
Wirz spent the greater part of the night before his execution in
writing, but slept for a few hours before daylight and awoke cheerful
and refreshed. He was calm and self-possessed and had left nothing
undone. His own books, as well as those borrowed, were all neatly done
up and left for delivery to the proper parties. His diary was completed
up to the last day.
He felt keenly the abuse that was heaped upon him. As he bade farewell
to his old associate, Captain R. H. Winder, he said:
... “Promise me, if you live, to do all in your power to wipe out
this awful stain upon my character. Make my name and character stand
as bright before the world as it did when you first knew me. Promise
me you will do something to assist my wife.”
Winder turned his face away to hide his tears, as he replied: “Captain,
I will.”
One of the daily newspapers, after relating this parting with Winder,
said:
“Wirz passed on down the stairs, out between the files of men facing
outward, up to the scaffold, showing something in his face and step
which in a better man might have passed for heroism.”
How contemptible! His courage and fortitude shone out in spite of the
infamous position in which his enemies sought to place him, but even
the eyes blinded by prejudice and the callous hearts around him could
not fail to note, though they could not appreciate, the lofty spirit of
the man.
From the little room in the third story, designated “No. 9--Wirz,
H., Captain C. S. A.,” he was marched to the scaffold, erected in
one corner of the prison yard. Here he took a seat on a small stool,
immediately under the gaping noose swaying over him. A soldier stood
at shoulder arms on either corner of the platform, and four companies,
one each from the 195th and 214th Pennsylvania, and two from the
9th Regiment of Hancock’s Corps, formed a hollow square around the
scaffold. Fathers Boyle and Wiget never left his side until the last
moment. Indeed, when the noose was adjusted his face wore a smile and
he was still talking to Father Boyle.
For eighteen minutes he was compelled to sit and listen to the reading
of the findings and sentence--the enumeration of the crimes with which
he was charged, while on the housetops and in the branches of the trees
in the Capitol grounds men and boys crowded, all eager to witness the
ghastly spectacle; and their inhuman shouts, and brutal jests about
the “dead-line,” pendant above him, could be heard by Wirz, who sat
apparently calm and unmoved, save when amid the groans and outcries,
a voice called out “Hang the scoundrel.” As this reached his ears
he turned quickly, with a defiant look in the direction from which
the sound proceeded, then, giving a cool glance on the surroundings,
he resumed his self-command, giving his undivided attention to his
spiritual advisers.
At the close of the reading Major Russell asked Wirz if he wished to
say anything to the public before the execution. He replied: “I have
nothing to say, only that I am innocent, and will die like a man, my
hopes being in the future. I go before my God, the Almighty God, and
he will judge between me and you.” At twenty minutes to eleven o’clock
Sylvester Ballon kicked away the prop and Henry Wirz passed from life
to the dark valley of the shadow of death.
[Illustration: St. Aloysius R. C. Church, Washington, D. C.]
I saw Father Wiget a few hours after the execution. He, with Father
Boyle, had stood with Wirz on the scaffold--had clasped his hand just
as he was about to be launched into eternity. He had been with him
through the mockery of a trial, and when I saw him his breast was
filled with emotion. He said: “Oh! he was a brave man!” He had stood by
him as the rabble thirsting for his blood, like the cruel Jews, cried
out “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and he knew the man was innocent of the
crimes imputed to him. “He was a brave man”--the good old priest could
say no more; his heart was touched, and his feelings too deep for mere
words. Between what is felt and what is expressed there is often an
immeasurable distance. It is impossible at times to give expression in
words to the most touching--to the most beautiful emotions of the heart.
In Wirz’s letters to his wife there is an amount of pathos--a bitter,
yet mournful wailing. The soft notes which he touches with trembling
fingers will strike a sympathetic chord in hearts not utterly lost to
all sense of tenderness or humanity.
A letter written by his wife just after she had learned of the
termination of her husband’s trial would in itself show how false and
malicious were the assertions of sensational newspapers that there was
no kindly feeling between them. After speaking of her distress at the
necessity of leaving him at that critical moment, and telling him not
to despair--that all would come out right--she speaks of their past
happiness, and cannot believe the authorities will tear them apart;
that if the members of the court only knew how much they suffered, a
pardon would be granted him. The letter concludes as follows:
“Dear husband, bear up bravely, whatever your fate may be. If I could
but see you for one short hour I should be much comforted. I cannot
describe to you on paper the distress of my mind. May angels watch
and protect you from all harm, is the constant prayer of your loving
wife.”
In Wirz’s last letter to his wife and children are the sad, soft
breathings from a bosom filled with the warmest affection and anxious
solicitude for their welfare:
“Old Capitol Prison,
Washington, D. C., Nov. 10, 1865.