President Davis and his cabinet knew of the atrocities of Winder and Wirz, and their ilk, and connived at them by keeping the perpetrators in place and power. Winder was a renegade Baltimorean who had received a military education at the expense of the United States government, but being too cowardly to accept a position in the field where his precious carcass would be exposed to danger, he accepted from his intimate friend, Jeff Davis, the office of Provost Marshal General, in which position he was a scourge and a curse to the rebels themselves. Becoming too obnoxious to the people of Richmond, Davis, at last, appointed him Commissary General of prisoners, in which capacity he had charge of all the Federal prisoners east of the Mississippi river.
The antecedents of Wirz are not known. McElroy, who has investigated the subject of Southern Prisons deeper than any man of my knowledge, has arrived at the conclusion that he was probably a clerk in a store before the war of the Rebellion. He arrives at his conclusion logically, for he asserts that Wirz could count more than one hundred.
That Davis and his cabinet knew of the terrible treatment bestowed upon the Federal prisoners at Andersonville, we have abundant proof. The following extract from the report of Colonel D. T. Chandler, of the Rebel War Department, who was sent to inspect Andersonville, was copied from “Andersonville.” The report is of date August 5th, 1864, and is as follows: “My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the officer in command of the post, Brigadier General John H. Winder, and the substitution in his place of some one who unites both energy and good judgment with some feelings of humanity and consideration for the welfare and comfort as far as is consistent with their safe keeping of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control; some one who, at least, will not advocate DELIBERATELY and in cold blood, the propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number is sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangements suffice for their accomodation, and who will not consider it a matter of self laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade—a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and which is a DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION—the condition of which he might by the exercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited means at his command, have considerably improved.”