To preside over this assemblage, with its arranged, premeditated, and
atrocious system, were selected men well known for their energy of purpose
and their ferocity of soul, and who hoped, like the Parthian, that cruelty
might seem to the eye of man a warlike spirit. Winder has already been
summoned to his God, without affording to the tribunals of men the
opportunity to judge of his justification or his shame. The wretched Wirz,
arraigned and convicted by the most overwhelming evidence, has since paid
the severest penalty which the majesty of violated law can exact on earth.
The instincts of nature always demand a certain respect for the memory of
the dead, no matter how the death may take place. But shall this shield
for the executioner obstruct justice, or reverence and admiration for the
remembrance of the virtues of the nobler victims? Let us bring to light,
and praise the heroism of noble men, even if we violate and break to
pieces the sacred mausoleums where a thousand criminals lie buried.