Chapter 3
Part III of Henry Wurtz, Commander of Andersonville Confederate Prison, Trial and Execution by United States Army Staff Judge Advocate. Part III. Statement of Prisoner Henry Wurtz in Answer to Charges. Part I. In this closing scene of a trial, which must have wearied the patience of this honorable commission, and which has all but exhausted the little vitality left me, I appear to put on record my answer to the charges on which I am arrived, and to protest and vindicate my innocence.
I know how hard it is for one, helpless and unfriended as I am, to contend against the prejudices produced by popular clamor and long-continued misrepresentation. But I have great faith in the power of truth, and I have much confidence in the intelligence and impartiality of the officers who are my judges. I am here to answer for all my official and personal acts at Andersonville, and if I can convince this court that they have been void of offense before God
and man, I trust that I shall not be held responsible for the official or personal misdeeds of others. That is all I ask. By my own acts let me be judged, and if they have been such as to warrant my conviction on any one of the charges or specifications preferred against me, let me be visited with punishment commensurate with the offense. I do not ask mercy, but I demand justice, and I humbly pray that the God of justice will enlighten the minds and quicken the perceptions
of those whose solemn duty it is to discriminate between the truth and falsehood of all that has been testified to in the case. I will leave to my counsel the presentation and argument of such points of law as they may deem of importance, and will myself endeavor to analyze the evidence, group together the main facts, and explain away all that may seem to weigh so heavily against me. In doing so, I will strive to be simple and concise, and let me beg the court
to believe that I will be, above all things, frank and truthful. There are three distinct and clearly defined parts into which the prosecution and the defense are necessarily compressed, and it appears to me that a close observance of those natural divisions will do much to simplify the question and to enable the court to arrive at a fair and just conclusion. These are, first, have I, as is charged, maliciously, willfully, and traitorously combined,
confederated, and conspired with John H. Winder and others to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States? Second, am I the person who was officially responsible for the privations and sufferings of the federal prisoners at Andersonville? And third, have I committed the crime of murder, or perpetrated all or any of the atrocities laid to my charge? In regard to the first division, that of conspiracy, I am not conscious
of there being one particle of testimony in the entire record going to establish the charge, or giving even faint color of probability to its existence. Out of the hundred and sixty witnesses that have testified before this court, has anyone said that I was ever heard or known to have uttered a syllable or done an act tending to show my knowledge of the existence of such a hellish plot? Has anyone shown or even hinted in the remotest manner that such a conspiracy existed? And if no
living witness could be found to lend even the weakest support to the monstrous supposition, surely if it was not all a myth, a dream of the imagination, a fantasy of the brain, there could be found among the papers of my office or in the archives of the Confederate government some scrap of documentary evidence to give it at least the semblance of probability. I think the court may fairly assume that if this wild chimera was not as unsubstantial as the baseless fabric of a vision, there would have been some effort made by the learned and diligent judge-advocate to give it form and substance.
No such attempt has been made. No such attempt could be successfully made. The idea is altogether too horrible for human credence, and I can hardly think the learned judge-advocate is serious in asking this honorable court to pass upon that charge. Even if all the specifications which are grouped under it were literally true, if hundreds and thousands of brave men were subjected to all the horrible sufferings depicted therein, there is not a shadow of testimony by which it can be proven that it was the fruit of a conspiracy. It is incredible to believe that any number of created beings, wearing the imprint of their maker, could be found in any one age and clime to band together for such a purpose.
The land that could produce one such fiend should stand accursed. No country could possibly be expected to contain two such monsters. Is it necessary for me to address another word to this Honorable Court defending myself from the charge of conspiracy? If it be, let me say this. The government has shown in this very prosecution that its high officers do not believe that there is any foundation for the charge.
The court has official cognizance of the fact that on my first arraignment some of the highest functionaries of the Confederate government, General Robert E. Lee, James A. Seddon, Secretary of War, Lucius D. Northrup, Commissary General, and Dr. Moore, Surgeon General, were described as my co-conspirators. The facts on which the charge rested were as fully known to the government then as they are now. if the charge be true now it was true then and if there was guilt anywhere in connection with it that guilt lay more deep and damning on their souls than it did on mine just in proportion as their positions were high and mine was humble those co-conspirators were all in the custody direct or implied of the government yet not one of them was called upon to take his place beside me and answer to this court for his crime on the contrary they have all been favored with executive clemency and their names have been expunged from the charge i appeal to the intelligence of this court whether there could be a plainer or ampler disavowal by the government of its belief in the existence of this monstrous thing styled conspiracy
and then i appeal to its sense of justice and fair play whether a different rule shall be applied to me from that which was applied to my superiors i am no lawyer gentlemen and this statement is prepared without the aid of my counsel but unversed as i am and as perhaps some of you may be in legal lore my reason tells me that before a man can be convicted of a crime there must be either a confession on his part or some proof of his guilt here there is no confession of guilt but a solemn affirmation of innocence here there is no attempt at proof but a virtual abandonment of the charge as against the real culprits if there were any such is not conspiracy a positive crime just as murder is or as robbery is and is it not like those crimes to be proved by direct testimony my reason answered yes can a charge of conspiracy bringing with it such consequences as are involved here be supported on far-fetched inferences surely not
common sense revolts at such an idea and i am confident that law which is said to be the perfection of common sense utterly repudiates it i believe that that which the judge advocate principally relies upon as proof of the existence of a conspiracy is the expression attributed to me by some of the witnesses that i was of more service to the confederate government than any regiment at the front connected with equally wicked and significant expressions attributed to general winder general howell cobb and captain w s winder so far as concerns the remark imputed to myself i will speak of it in another part of my defence general winder has gone to the great judgment seat to answer for all his thoughts words and deeds and i surely am not to be held culpable for them general howell cobb has received the pardon of the president of the united states showing that he could not have been regarded as a conspirator and when i asked that he should be brought here as a witness and given an opportunity of contradicting the testimony referring to him
the judge-advocate in the exercise of his large discretion declined to summon him thus virtually admitting that which i desired to prove as to captain w s winder he is i believe within the jurisdiction of the united states government and can be made amenable for any crime committed by him surely under such circumstances i am not to be held to answer for the rash wicked or imprudent expressions of general winder captain winder or general howe i think i may also claim as a self-evident proposition that if i a subaltern officer merely obeyed the legal orders of my superiors in the discharge of my official duties i cannot be held responsible for the motives which dictated such orders and if i overstepped them violating the laws of war and outraging humanity i am to be tried and punished according to the measure of my offence
as well might every general colonel and captain in the rebel service be held criminally responsible as a co-conspirator with the chiefs of the rebellion as i who simply held a subordinate position at andersonville be held to answer with my life for the motives which may or may not have inspired my superior officers for all these causes i humbly but confidently submit to this honorable commission that on charge one a verdict of not guilty must be rendered I also submit it to the consideration of the court, whether, if the charge fall, the specifications under it must not, as a legal and logical consequence, fall with it. The charge is, as it were, the foundation of the edifice, and when it gives way, the whole superstructure topples with it. this however is a legal question which i am incompetent to argue and which i willingly leave to the court to decide for itself under the rules governing military courts i now come to the second division of the question viz am i the person who from my position at andersonville should properly be held accountable for the crowded condition of the stockade the want of shelter the unwholesomeness of food the impurity of the water the inadequacy of hospital accommodation and the lack of medicine and medical supplies
all which causes combined led to the dreadful mortality which prevailed at that place this division covers a large proportion of the testimony and will render it necessary for me to go a little into detail I will endeavor to avoid prolixity and to present the points as briefly as possible. It is in evidence before the court that the stockade was laid out in the winter of 1863 by Captain W. S. Winder, and that I was assigned to duty there on the 27th of March, 1864. Whatever, therefore, may be thought of the good or bad selection of the locality,
no imputation in that respect can rest on me. I was actually in Europe at the time of its formation. It is no part of my purpose in this defense to accuse or to defend others, and therefore I pass by the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Persons, one of the principal witnesses for the prosecution, tending to show that, for the accommodation of 10,000 prisoners, the stockade was sufficiently large and properly located. but lieutenant colonel persons does give some evidence which has a direct bearing upon my own guilt or innocence and to which i ask the attention of the court he testifies that in february 1864 he was assigned to duty as commander of the troops at andersonville and was subsequently advanced to the command of the post from which duty he was relieved in may or june that captain w sydney winder had laid out the prison that at that time he persons was relieved he was in the act of procuring lumber for the purpose of erecting shelter for the prisoners who then numbered between fifteen and twenty thousand
that there was great difficulty in procuring transportation, that there were a great many trees inside the stockade when the prisoners first went in, and which were used by them in erecting buildings, that the Confederate authorities never removed those trees, and that W. S. Winder had told him he had had absolute discretion in the location of the prison. As to the question of responsibility, the following testimony, drawn out by the judge-advocate, is of great importance.
Part 10, page 607 Question. What control had he, General Winder, of the prison? Answer. He was, as I understand, in command of all the prisoners. Question. He had control over everything. Answer. That was my understanding.
On cross-examination, Lieutenant Colonel Persons gives the following testimony. Page 621. Question. By whose orders was that prison enlarged? Answer. I think I did it without any orders. Question. Would Captain Wirtz have had any authority to enlarge that prison?
Answer. No, sir. Question. Would he have dared to do it? Answer. No, sir. Question. Was he to be blamed at all for the size of it? Answer, no, sir. Again, on page 623, the witness says, I remember that Captain Wirth time and again
wanted to have lumber brought there. Question, did he ever show any inclination to prevent its being used? Answer, never. On page 627, he testifies, question, was there anything about the location of that prison that you discovered which led you to suppose that it was located for any bad purpose? Nothing, sir. Did that idea ever enter your mind?
No, sir. Again, on page 629, Lieutenant Colonel Persons says, When that prison was in its infancy, in its very inception, and when the officers there were instructed not to build accommodations for more than 10,000, there were 40,000 prisoners sent there. Was Captain Wirtz to be blamed for that? Answer. No, sir. Captain Wirz was not to be blamed for that.
By the court. Question. Who, in your opinion, was responsible for that? Answer. Well, sir, the authorities were responsible for that. I cannot say who. The great blunder on the part of the government was the concentration of so many men at one place without preparation being made to receive them. The authorities were notified of the act, but to no advantage.
I think that some of the higher officials were responsible, but who they were I cannot say. No man on earth could have abated the rigors of that prison except the man who wielded the power over them. Question, who was that man? Answer, I do not know. General Winder was in advance of me, and several others were in advance of him.
Who was responsible, I cannot say. I think the court will agree with me that so far as the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Persons can do so, it completely exonerates me from all complicity in the selection of the locality, the overcrowding of the stockade, and the failure to provide proper shelter for the prisoners. And the court will not fail to take notice of the fact that this gentleman was an important witness for the prosecution, that he had evinced no leaning or sympathy towards me, and that his testimony stands above all suspicion. Another important witness for the government was Dr. John C. Bates. He has given to this court a terrible but truthful picture of the stockade and of the hospital.
I do not wish to have a single line erased from that description. It is all but too true. The only question with me here, as it is all through the case, is, was I to be blamed for the existence of those things? I will let Dr. Bates, that humane physician and honorable man, speak for me. On page 205 and following pages, part 4, he testifies as follows. Question. Was he, Captain Wurtz, responsible for anything the prisoners lacked or for anything good that they had?
Answer. It was not considered so by the medical officers there. They never blamed Captain Wurtz that I heard of. I never heard Captain Wurtz's name mentioned in reference to the ration, so far as the sick were concerned. Question. As to the medical department, did he have anything to do with it? Answer. Not that I knew. Did you not recognize him as having any right to do so?
I did not. You have no hard feelings towards him? None at all. He always treated me very respectfully and kindly. Do you know of his treating anyone else otherwise? I never saw him use any hard means towards anybody.
On page 224, Dr. Bates testifies as follows. question did it ever strike you that any one about those premises was conspiring for the death of union prisoners there answer it never so impressed me i always objected to the shortness of the allowance but i never attributed it to a conspiracy I claim, therefore, and ask the court so to hold that, so far as any responsibility for the condition of things in the hospital is concerned, the testimony of Dr. Bates entirely relieves me. That testimony is also corroborated by that of Dr. G.G. Roy, who says on page 513, part 8, Question. Then Captain Wirz exercised no control in that respect over the good effects of Dr. Clayton's administration any more than over the bad effects of the other surgeon's administration.
Answer. No, sir, the fault was with the surgeon. The same witness on the preceding page, having spoken of seeing one case of a man being bucked as a punishment, says, he, meaning me, would have been more severe and his orders would have protected him. Question. You never saw Captain Wirth exercise severity except in the one instance you speak of? Answer. Only in the one instance that came under my special observation.
So far, the court will observe, I have been relying on the statements of the most intelligent witnesses on behalf of the government. I propose to continue to quote from that class of witnesses and to extract from the evidence for the prosecution the elements for my own vindication. Lieutenant Colonel D.T. Chandler, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General at Richmond, was sent, as the court will recollect, to inspect the condition of the prison at Andersonville. He was there at the end of July and beginning of August, and his report of 5th August is one of the exhibits in this case. He found General Winder in command of the post and Captain R.B. Winder in the position of Quartermaster.
The suggestions which he had to make for the amelioration of affairs there were made, as the court will recollect, not to me, showing that I was not the responsible party. I quote from the report of his testimony, page 1618, part 24. Question. With whom did you at first consult when you arrived at Andersonville? Answer. General Winder, the commandant of the post and prison. How long had he been in command there?
I cannot say. Several months, I know. What was his whole duty as Commandant of the Post? In regard to the prisoners, to keep them safe, to have them taken care of properly, protect them, defend them, prevent them being recaptured.
Who had the ordering or directing of the surgeons, or who ought to have given orders for them to go inside, the surgeon-in-chief or General Winder? Answer. The order would properly have come, I should think, from the senior surgeon. Question. Then, if they did not go in, it was owing to his negligence in not giving the order. Answer. Yes, sir, I suppose so.
Question. Page 1644. You looked upon Captain Wirtz and his duty as nothing more than a part of General Winder? Answer. I considered him merely the executive officer of General Winder in his particular branch of the business. Question. Page 1649. You have no reason to believe that they, General Winder's staff officers, had any unusual latitude? Answer. No, sir, I have not. Question. By the court. Page 1674, part 25. How did you regard General
Winder? Answer. As commander of the post in prison. Question. Under whose orders were those medical officers? Answer. Under the orders of the chief surgeon and General Winder. They were under the immediate orders of the chief surgeon. Question. Was Captain Wirtz responsible in any degree for the scarcity of rations in the commissary department? Answer. I should think not. I can state positively he was not. He had nothing to do with it and no control over it. General
Winder was in command, with Captain Armstrong reporting directly to him. Question. Who established the police regulations for the stockade, General Winder or Captain Wurtz? Answer. General Winder was responsible for them. I do not know who drew them up. I suppose that the deadline was established certainly with the knowledge and consent if not by the direction of General Winder. Question. The regulations touching that, from whom did they come? Answer.
Those instructions, I suppose, came from General Winder. I know that he was responsible for them. By the Judge Advocate, page 1686. Question. You have given it as your opinion that Captain Wirtz was not responsible for the rations furnished to the prisoners? Yes, sir. Are you positive of that?
Yes, sir. By the court. Page 1690. Did the post commander always exercise command over the prison? He did, through his executive officer.
With these extracts from the testimony of the most reliable witnesses for the prosecution, all of them officers of the late confederate government all of them in positions favourable to a knowledge of the subject none of them evincing any bias in my favour and none open to a question as to their veracity i submit that on the second division of this subject that of responsibility for the general management of the prison at andersonville i am entitled to an acquittal it seems to me with great respect to this court that there is no room for doubt or hesitancy on the subject i have deemed it entirely unnecessary to put in any evidence on my own side bearing on that point although the testimony of captain wright quartermaster major proctor and captain armstrong commissary of post would have furnished additional proof and unqualified evidence that their respective departments were under the exclusive control of the commandant of post the judge advocate has very kindly saved me that trouble and indeed has not so far as i recollect made any serious effort to contest the point
and the court will recollect that it embraces stockade and hospital alike that i have neither to answer for the location of the stockade the establishment of the police regulations in it the lack of supplies or of accommodation the management of the hospital nor any of those matters which have entered so largely into the evidence It is not for me to suggest where the culpability or responsibility lay, enough for me to defend myself. I try to do so without reflecting on anyone else, and I trust that that will not be regarded as diminishing the strength of my case. And now, may it please the court, I come to that division of the case where I could not, if I would, evade or shirk responsibility for my acts. I do not seek to evade it. If I have violated the laws of war, if I have outraged humanity,
if I have perpetrated any of the murders or atrocities laid to my charge, let me suffer. But I hope to be able to convince the court that I am not guilty, and to that object I will now devote myself. It does seem to me that, with great respect for the judge-advocate, whose many acts of kindness, I appreciate, that this should have been the starting point of the prosecution, and to that class of allegations it should have been confined. A poor subaltern officer should
not have had the ordinary performance of his routine duties treated and characterized as proof of his being a conspirator, nor should he have been called upon to bear upon his overburdened shoulders the faults or misdeeds of others. Enough for him, if, on being called to account, he can show that in fulfilling his own hard task he acted honestly, faithfully, humanely. I do hope and trust that this enlightened court will bear with me in my humble effort to convince
it that, while commandant of the prison at Andersonville, I was not the monster that I have been depicted as being, that I did not cause or delight in the sad spectacle of the sufferings, woes, and death of Union prisoners, that I did not contribute to their sufferings, but that on the contrary I did what little lay in my power to diminish or alleviate them, and prove that although I have been represented as little less than a fiend in human form,
heaven left some remnant of the angel still in that poor jailer's nature. But how can I approach the task before me? How can I collect and bring together the varied statements made by the witnesses before this court in a trial of nearly two months' duration? And, particularly, is it impossible to do so with any approach to completeness from the fact that there was no regular order observed in the proofs, and that there was no connection established
between the circumstances testified to by one witness and the same circumstance detailed by another in a different version, and perhaps with an interval of weeks between them. I must therefore appeal to the court to believe that if I do not allude to and try to disprove or explain every piece of testimony against me, it is owing to these facts and not to my inability to do so. Let the court be tolerant and charitable, and I will do my best.
And first, as to the charge of murder, the specifications accuse me of no less than 13 distinct crimes of this grade, three by shooting with my own hand, one by jumping and stamping upon a prisoner, three by torturing prisoners in stocks and chain-gang, four by ordering sentries to fire upon prisoners, one by having a soldier torn in pieces and one by beating a soldier with a revolver.
The name, regiment, date, or circumstances are not, in a single instance, stated in the specifications and in the whole mass of testimony there are but two cases of this character that there is any possibility of fixing with any definiteness. In these two cases I am prepared to make my defense, and I hope to do so satisfactorily and completely. It cannot be expected, neither law nor justice requires, that I should be able to defend myself against the vague allegations,
the murky, foggy, indefinite, and contradictory testimony in which the other so-called murders are enwrapped. I do not know that even these two were in the judge advocate's mind when he prepared the charges and specifications. I should suppose that they were not. Otherwise, it would have been his duty, and I am sure he would have performed it, to have described them with some particularity. The two cases that can be reached with any definiteness are, first, the real actual case
of a federal prisoner well known by the nickname of Chickamauga, and the second, the unreal imaginary case of a myth described by the name of William Stewart and represented as having belonged to the 9th Minnesota Infantry. As to the real case of Chickamauga, it has been described by at least twenty witnesses and in as many different versions. These versions range all the way from one or two highly colored descriptions in which I am made to shoot him with my own hand, down to one in which
I am shown not to have been present at all. The truth in this matter is to be found, as usual, midway between the two points. One witness, whom for his own sake I will not name, inasmuch as his statements must have been, and were, I believe, recognized by everyone who heard them as undeserving of the slightest belief, describes him as a kind of weakly man, who when i entered the stockade one day wormed around me saying that he wanted to go out to get air whereupon captain wirtz wheeled again pulled out a revolver and shot him down
another witness who i believed meant to tell the truth testifies part seven page four fifty seven he was asking the sentinel to take him outside of the prison as he had enemies in the camp he said his leg was not healed and that he had enemies in camp who clubbed him captain wirz never answered him but said to the sentinel shoot the one-legged yankee devil the sentinel shot and the ball struck him in the head and passed out the lower jaw This witness, the court may recollect, was one of those who, from a circumstance that occurred about that time, was not cross-examined. That may account for his statement not being corrected by himself. Another witness gives this version of it. Part 14, page 882.
Captain Wurtz was in the stockade, and this man went up to him and wanted him to take him outside. Captain Wurtz would not do it, and finally this cripple went over the deadline and said that he would rather be shot than to stay there, and begged the guard to shoot him. The guard would not shoot him, and Captain Wurtz went outside the stockade. There was a large crowd inside the stockade. Pretty soon I heard Captain Wirtz halloo to the sentry on the post. I heard him tell him if the man did not go back over the deadline, the guard was to shoot him. The guard told the man to go back, he did not, and was shot. This witness testified on his cross-examination that Chickamauga had been inside the deadline fifteen or twenty minutes, that the sentry wanted him to go back over the deadline, saying that he did not want to shoot him, that there were from 150 to 200 federal prisoners near the deadline, that they did not try to persuade him to return from inside the deadline, that page 892, they stood there and looked at the man, no one
said anything. A still different version of this transaction is given in a more laconic and reckless style by another witness. Page 936. I will quote it. Question. Did you ever see Captain Wurtz shoot any man? Answer. Yes. Question. When? Answer. About the 1st of April, I think, shortly after he took command there. Question. State the circumstances of the shooting. Answer. Captain Wurtz was coming in the south gate one day, a sick man, as I took him to be, a lame man, asked Captain
Wirtz something, and Captain Wirtz turned round and shot him. There is but one of all the witnesses who testifies on this point, whose testimony was absolutely correct. He stated that being out on parole, he noticed one evening an excitement down at the gate, that he started to see what was the matter, that down near the gate he met Captain Wirtz, riding back from the stockade to his quarters, that he asked the captain what the fuss was about,
that the captain told him it was that Chickamauga fellow who was jawing with the sentry and insisting on going into the line, that after Captain Wirtz had parted from him, he heard the report of a musket, and on arriving at the gate he found that Chickamauga had been shot. Will the court permit me to make a statement which may serve to explain all these conflicting accounts of the death of poor Chickamauga.
On the evening in question, the sergeant, or the officer of the guard, came to my quarters, and stated that there was a man within the dead-line, jawing with the sentry, and refusing to go outside, and that there was a crowd of prisoners around him, and a good deal of disturbance. I rode my horse down to the stockade, dismounted outside, and went in. There I found things as they had been described to me. I went up to Chickamauga and asked him in a rough tone
of voice what the hell he was doing there. He said he wanted to be killed. I took my revolver in my hand and said in a menacing manner that if that was all he wanted, I would accommodate him. I scared him somewhat, and he was taken outside by some of the prisoners. I then, in his presence, and solely as a menace, told the sentry to shoot him if he came in again. I little thought that he would come back, or that his comrades would permit him, after their hearing the order,
to go once more across the forbidden line. I left the stockade, remounted my horse, and was on my way back to my quarters when I heard the report of a musket. I hastened back, and ran up to the sentry-box from which the shot had been fired. There is the simple history of the case, without any reserve or misrepresentation, the court, I am sure, will recognize all the marks and evidences of truth in it. It is consistent with itself, and consistent with
the average line of the testimony. It also explains many statements of witnesses that have probably been made by them under the impression of their truth, but which were absolutely untrue. For instance, the two men who swore they saw me shoot the prisoner with my own hand were probably led to make that statement from having seen me draw my revolver in the manner I have described. The witness, who swore that I was within the stockade and gave the order to fire
when the man was shot, had seen me there and may have witnessed what passed, their mistake being in making me present when the shot was fired. And other witnesses who swore that I gave the order from outside the stockade had supposed that that was so, but this instance will suffice to show how very carefully the court should deal with all the evidence produced against me. I might take the ground that the witnesses for the prosecution so contradicted each other and gave such totally
opposite versions of the same transactions that I could not properly be called upon to refute them. They refute each other. I am sure the judge-advocate would have been inexplicably puzzled to select which version he would adopt. But I have thought it better, in this and in every other matter charged against me, to give a truthful, honest account of it. I pray the court to believe me and to give me whatever consideration that truthfulness should entitle
me to. There can be no doubt that the unfortunate man, whose name appears to be unknown, and whose only appellation in this court is derived from the name of the famous field of battle where he lost his leg, was shot in consequence of a violation of a rule of prison discipline, not an unnecessarily harsh rule nor an unusual one because at Andersonville it was absolutely indispensable to the security of the prison and because the same rule was enforced at Macon, Florence,
Salisbury, Belle Island, and the other principal prisons of the Southern Confederacy, and I presume, though I do not assert, in the military prisons of the United States. This court will know better than I whether the presumption is a correct one. I have certainly heard of cases occurring in the very prison wherein I am now confined, of prisoners having been shot for similar violations of prison discipline. The court cannot but be aware of the fact that such rules
are not unusual even in other than military prisons. And it may remember the incident which occurred some years since in France, where an American citizen was shot at the debtor's prison of Vichy for standing at a window against the rules, and that too even without warning from the sentry. It is important to me also that the court will take cognizance of the fact that the rules of the prison at Andersonville were printed and posted on conspicuous places all through the
stockade that the internal police of the stockade was exclusively in the hands of federal prisoners and that the squads of ninety men into which the occupants of the stockade were divided were officered by federal soldiers. Is it therefore within the range of probability that there was a single prisoner within the stockade who did not know the penalty of encroaching on the deadline. If there was not, and if the rule was violated, and the penalty inflicted,
on whom does the responsibility rest? Certainly not on me. If there was, and if soldiers ignorant of the rule and violating it were shot, who was responsible? Again, I say, certainly not I. While on this subject, although it diverts me a little from the direct line of argument, which I had intended to pursue, I suppose I had better dispose of all these cases connected with a violation of this rule. It is impossible for me to say what number of prisoners shot upon the
deadline might not be counted up from the evidence for the prosecution if each case sworn to by each witness is regarded as a distinct and separate case. And the difficulty is that there is no key to the arithmetical problem furnished by the prosecution. The judge advocate did not, in the course of the trial or at its close, intimate how he proposed to solve it. Am I to be called upon to defend myself in regard to one, two, three, ten, twenty, or a hundred such cases? Really,
gentlemen, I do not know. Is the court any wiser? Is the judge advocate? I can do nothing more than dismiss with these remarks the whole of this class of cases.
