Prison Life in the Old Capitol and Reminiscences of the Civil War

Treatment of Prisoners of War 122

At Camp Chase, Camp Douglas and Johnson’s Island--Efforts of Confederate Authorities to Bring About Exchange--False Impression at the North--United States Authorities Did Not Want Exchange--Letter of Robert Ould to Major-General Hitchcock--Letter of Ould to _National Intelligencer_--Report of General Seymour to Colonel Hoffman, Commissary-General of Prisoners--General Ben Butler Tells How His Efforts Were Frustrated--General Jubal A. Early Comments on General Order No. 209, Issued by War Department, Washington--Extracts from Report of Committee of Confederate Congress on Treatment of Prisoners of War--Publications Issued by United States Authorities and Others to Stir Up and Keep Alive War Spirit Among Northern People--A Vindication of the South--About Dead-lines.

Major Henry Wirz, C. S. a. 131

True History of the Wirz Case: Sacrificed to Gratify Malignity of Men in Authority and Pander to the Passion of the Mob--Wirz Not Responsible for Sufferings at Andersonville--Brief Sketch of the Man--His Efforts to Better Condition of Federal Prisoners--His Trial--Witnesses Not Allowed to Testify in His Behalf--Letter of General John D. Imboden--Letter of Robert Ould--Rev. Father Whelan--Hired Witnesses Swear Away the Life of Wirz--Condemned on False Charges--Thirteen Specifications of Men Said to Have Been Murdered by Wirz, But Not One Named--Charged with Conspiracy and Hanged, But no Other Conspirator Punished--Offered His Freedom if He Would Incriminate Hon. Jefferson Davis--Testimony of Major Winder--Letter of Rev. Father Boyle--Wirz’s Bearing at the Trial and on the Scaffold--His Execution--Scenes at the Hanging--Rev. Father Boyle and Father Wiget--Letter from Wirz’s Wife Received After Termination of His So-Called Trial--His Last Letter to His Wife and Children.

DIARY KEPT BY WIRZ DURING HIS IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 147

Interesting Incident Related by General Stoughton’s Telegraph Operator--What the Chaplain of Fifth New York Cavalry Said of this Raid--Sergeant James F. Ames (Big Yankee).

Introductory

Prison life was much the same North or South in its general features, having its discomforts and privations, its days of worry, its longings and its disappointments, combined with that chafing under restraint, which is a feeling common to all men. Yet the sufferings of prisoners could have been alleviated in the North to a greater degree than was possible at the South, where in most cases the distress was due to lack of means to relieve it. The Confederate Government could not do for Federal prisoners what it was unable to do for its own soldiers or people.

It is not strange that when the flood of war swept over the country I should plunge into its turbulent waters and be carried along with the current. This martial spirit was inherited and fostered from the cradle up. My grandmother came to this country from Ireland in the stormy days of the rebellion of 1798. When but a little child I would sit by her side for hours, drinking in, like a heated, thirsty traveler, the wild stories of the exciting scenes she had witnessed there, and listening to the pathetic recital of the wrongs of her loved country and its people. And at night I would drop off to sleep on her lap with the old Irish rebel songs of ’98 murmuring a lullaby in my baby ears.

It was only natural, too, that I should be enlisted on the Southern side. I was born in Baltimore, and it was there I passed the early years of my life. My father, James J. Williamson, had the distinction of designing and building the first clipper ship ever constructed--the clipper ship Ann McKim, built in Baltimore in 1832, for the old house of Isaac McKim, of Baltimore. The history of Maryland, with the record of the heroic deeds of the Old Maryland Line in the War of the Revolution, had always possessed a charm for me above all other books. It was my greatest pride to know that I was a Marylander and that Baltimore was my home.

When I became of age I went to Washington and obtained a position in the Government Printing Office, where I remained until the breaking out of the war.

In the spring of 1861, the Federal troops were ordered to march on Washington. When the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment was attacked while passing through Baltimore, I was ill, in bed and under the doctor’s care. The next day my mother brought into my room the morning paper and read to me an account of the fighting in Baltimore, and of the threats made to invade my native State and bombard and destroy Baltimore. I felt all the youthful fire within me blazing with fury. The warm blood coursing in my veins carried with it a force which seemed to give an almost unnatural strength to my feeble body, weakened by a painful illness. I was seized with a desire to rush at once to the scene of action. I felt that the bed was no place for me--that I must rouse myself to meet the issue--that my dear old mother State was calling for her sons, and I would not let that call go unheeded, but must hasten on to help guard that sacred soil upon which I had received my being and in which reposed the ashes of those who were most near and dear to me. I felt all that enthusiasm with which the Southern hearts were filled when their States were invaded and their cities and their homes laid waste. Old Maryland was invaded--I did not care by whom--for whoever came with hostile intent was an enemy, and her enemies were mine.