Chapter 81

CAPTAIN WIRZ THE ONLY ONE OF THE PRISON-KEEPERS PUNISHED--HIS ARREST,
TRIAL AND EXECUTION.

Of all those more or less concerned in the barbarities practiced upon our
prisoners, but one--Captain Henry Wirz--was punished. The Turners, at
Richmond; Lieutenant Boisseux, of Belle Isle; Major Gee, of Salisbury;
Colonel Iverson and Lieutenant Barrett, of Florence; and the many brutal
miscreants about Andersonville, escaped scot free. What became of them
no one knows; they were never heard of after the close of the war. They
had sense enough to retire into obscurity, and stay there, and this saved
their lives, for each one of them had made deadly enemies among those
whom they had maltreated, who, had they known where they were, would have
walked every step of the way thither to kill them.

When the Confederacy went to pieces in April, 1865, Wirz was still at
Andersonville. General Wilson, commanding our cavalry forces, and who
had established his headquarters at Macon, Ga., learned of this, and sent
one of his staff--Captain H. E. Noyes, of the Fourth Regular Cavalry
--with a squad. of men, to arrest him. This was done on the 7th of May.
Wirz protested against his arrest, claiming that he was protected by the
terms of Johnson's surrender, and, addressed the following letter to
General Wilson:

ANDERSONVILLE, GA., May 7, 1865.

GENERAL:--It is with great reluctance that I address you these lines,
being fully aware how little time is left you to attend to such matters
as I now have the honor to lay before you, and if I could see any other
way to accomplish my object I would not intrude upon you. I am a native
of Switzerland, and was before the war a citizen of Louisiana, and by
profession a physician. Like hundreds and thousands of others, I was
carried away by the maelstrom of excitement and joined the Southern army.
I was very severely wounded at the battle of "Seven Pines," near
Richmond, Va., and have nearly lost the use of my right arm. Unfit for
field duty, I was ordered to report to Brevet Major General John H.
Winder, in charge of the Federal prisoners of war, who ordered me to take
charge of a prison in Tuscaloosa, Ala. My health failing me, I applied
for a furlough and went to Europe, from whence I returned in February,
1864. I was then ordered to report to the commandant of the military
prison at Andersonville, Ga., who assigned me to the command of the
interior of the prison. The duties I had to perform were arduous and
unpleasant, and I am satisfied that no man can or will justly blame me
for things that happened here, and which were beyond my power to control.
I do not think that I ought to be held responsible for the shortness of
rations, for the overcrowded state of the prison,