Confederate President, Cabinet, &c.) If The Nation desires to discuss that question, we presume it could be accommodated, but we expressed absolutely no opinion whatever on it. Nor did we intimate the opinion that "Wirz was a saintly martyr." We simply showed that the charges against him were not proven—that his so-called "trial" was the veriest mockery of justice—that much of the testimony against him was afterwards proven to be perjured—and that the witnesses for the defence were summarily dismissed (without being heard) by the prosecution. Nor did we deem it incumbent upon us to enter into any defence of General Winder, distinctly averring that "if it could be proven beyond all doubt that the officers at Andersonville were the fiends incarnate that Northern hatred pictures them to be, there is not one scintilla of proof that the Government at Richmond ordered, approved or in any way countenanced their atrocities." But we did publish incidentally letters from Secretary Seddon, ex-President Davis, Adjutant-General S. Cooper, Colonel George W. Brent and General G. T. Beauregard, and the testimony of Federal prisoners themselves, going to show that the charges against him were false.
The Nation then proceeds to ring the same old charges on the horrors of Andersonville which we have heard for years, and utterly ignores the testimony which we introduced on the other side. We gave the statements of Mr. L. M. Park, of La Grange, Georgia (for whom we vouched as a gentleman of unimpeachable character), who was on duty at Andersonville nearly the whole of the time it was a prison, and who gives the most emphatic testimony to the effect that the water used by the prisoners was the same as that used by the guards, and was not "foul," as has been represented—that the failure to erect barracks was from want of mills to saw the lumber, want of timber, and lack of even a supply of nails—that the rations issued to the prisoners were precisely the same as those issued to the guard—that the mortality among the guard was as great, in proportion to numbers, as among the prisoners—and that the causes of the mortality were utterly beyond the control of the Confederate authorities.
We published also an able and exhaustive paper from Dr. Joseph Jones, of New Orleans (a gentleman who stands in the very front rank of his profession), who offically investigated and reported on the causes of mortality at Andersonville, and who, while admitting and deploring the fearful death rate, fully exonerates the Confederate authorities from blame in the matter. We also gave a number
