Harpers+16

Harper's Weekly, August 19, 1865 page 515 (Editorial)
 * HENRY WERTZ **

The trial of Wertz renews the public interest in that most harrowing and ghastly chapter of the war, the torture of Union prisoners in the pen at Andersonville. But does the mind and heart of this country yet fully comprehend that incredible and unmatched crime, by comparison with which the Black Hole at Calcutta, the Jersey prison ship, the Dartmoor prison, and every historical cruelty is ridiculous?

The rebel J. H. Winder was made Commissionary-General of all Union prisoners. His son was sent to Andersonville to prepare a pen for the reception of many thousands. He chose a spot upon a slightly sloping hill-side of eighteen acres, afterward enlarged to twenty-seven. It was in a thickly wooded region, about nine miles from Americus, the county town of Sumter County, Georgia. A gentleman, who lives at the county town, and who tells us the story, having been a Union man throughout the war, seeing Captain Winder laying out the ground, asked if any shelter were to be provided. He was laughed at. "Then, had you not better leave some of the trees standing in the inclosure?" The Captain replied that he "was going to make a pen for the d—d Yankees, where they would rot faster than they could be sent there."

He kept his word. He stripped the slope, at the bottom of which a stagnant stream five inches deep crept through the pen. He surrounded it with a stockade eighteen feet high, with an outer gallery for the guard. Into this place the Union soldiers were turned, stripped of every thing valuable, even to their blankets; and there, in the heat and cold and storm, exposed equally by night and day, they sickened, they starved, they rotted, they stormed into madness or sank into idiocy, moaning, shouting, laughing wildly, groaning, panting, happily dying—thirty-seven thousand human beings at one time—and fifteen thousand of the whole number confined were taken out and laid under the ground but not buried. The loathsome stench of this living death infected the air for three miles around. People moved away to avoid the pestilence. The victims had no money to buy food. The prison rations were but a form. The only water was the stagnant stream, on which floated human excrement. If by any chance some inmate received extra food, as a charitable gift from some friend like our informant, it was snatched from his hands and devoured by his companions maddened into wild beasts.

The hospitals, like the rations, were a form only. Our informant was permitted to visit one patient. He picked his way with difficulty through the filth of the cabin toward the spot where the poor creature lay. The foulness of the air was such that the visitor was sickened and retched. He found the victim lying in a shirt black as it could be. His trousers were frayed away at the knee. He had no shoes. A strip of blanket lay across his middle. His disease was the common army form of chronic diarrhea; and his only relief, like that of all around him, was rolling himself two or three feet from where he lay and then rolling back again; he and all those men literally lying their own filth, and the shanty reeking with the foulest fumes.

In the winter some of the prisoners were sent out in squads of thirty, without axes or any tools, to pick up what stray wood they could find. If they overstayed the hour allotted them, they were tried by drum-head court-martial and hung. But there are truths of the rebel treatment of our prisoners too horrible to be told.

Of the pen Henry Wertz was keeper. Winder was commandant of the post. His son was adjutant. His nephew was commissary and sutler. But the turnkey, the man who immediately presided over this enclosure of anguish, despair, and death, was Henry Wertz. When Kilpatrick was known to be scouring the country with the hope of reaching Andersonville and releasing the prisoners there was a panic among the rebel officers at the pen. Winder posted his batteries upon heights commanding the enclosure, raking it in every direction; and Henry Wertz declared to the prisoners that when Kilpatrick came within seven miles of the spot the cannon would open upon them. Not an emotion of pity, regret, or doubt seems to have touched the hearts of the Winders or of Wertz. They were willing and delighted agents of a policy of which the mere conception curdles the heart, and which fiends only could have executed. It was a policy known to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Before God those two men are responsible for the crimes of Andersonville, as upon our side Abraham Lincoln and General Grant would have been responsible had they suffered such a pen to exist within our lines and such torture to be inflicted after the least rumor of them had reached their ears.

And for this incalculable offense Henry Wertz is to be tried. Of his guilt there is no doubt, unless there be doubt whether there were an Andersonville prison and whether he were the keeper—points which are not denied. His counsel beg the press not to prejudge him. They grant the atrocities. They were committed at Andersonville. Henry Wertz consented to be the agent. How can such an agent be prejudged?

If any man would know the rebellion, its spirit, its method, its honor, its chivalry, its heroism—if he would truly understand the character of that caste which has so long cozened the plain people of this country and the world as "high-toned," "gentlemanly," and "proud"—if he would comprehend the spirit which denies the rights of men and women under any pretext whatever—let him carefully ponder the revelations which will be made at the trial of Henry Wertz. May God have mercy upon his soul!


 * 1. Look up the Jersey Prison ship and Dartmoor Prison. What happened there? **
 * 2. How does Andersonville compare? **
 * 3. Why is a trial appropriate or inappropriate for Wertz? **