Valley Spirit

Letter from Lewis Schade, esq. Counsel of Captain Wirz.

To the American People:

Intending to leave the United States for some time, I feel it my duty, before I start, to fulfill in part a promise which, a few hours before his death, I gave to my unfortunate client, Captain Wirz, who was executed at Washington on the 10th day of November, 1865. Protesting up to the last moment his innocence of those monstrous crimes with which he was charged, he received my word, that, having failed to save him from a felon's doom, I would, as long as I lived, do everything in my power to clear his memory. I did that the more readily, as I was then already perfectly convinced that he suffered wrongfully.-Since that time his unfortunate children, both here and in Europe, have constantly implored me to wipe out the terrible stains which now cover the name of their father. Though times do not seem propitious for obtaining full justice, yet, considering that man is mortal, I will before entering upon a perilous voyage, perform my duty to those innocent orphans and also to myself.

I will now give a brief statement of the causes which led to the arrest and execution of Captain Wirz. In April, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation stating that, from evidence in the possession of the "Bureau of Military Justice," it appeared that Jefferson Davis was implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and for that reason the President offered a reward of $100,000 on the capture of the then fugitive ex-President of the Southern Confederacy. That testimony has since been found to be entirely false and a mere fabrication, and the suborner Conover is now under sentence in the jail in this city, the two perjurers, whom he suborned, having turned State evidence against him, whilst the individual, by whom Conover was suborned has not yet been brought to justice.

Certain high and influential enemies of Jefferson Davis, either then already aware of the character of the testimony of those witnesses, or not thinking their testimony quite sufficient to hang Jeff. Davis, expected to find the wanting material in the terrible mortality of Union prisoners at Andersonville. Orders were issued accordingly to arrest a subaltern officer, Capt. Wirz, a poor, friendless, and wounded prisoner of war, (he being included in the surrender of General Johnston), and besides a foreigner by birth. On the 7th of May he was placed in the Old Capitol Prison at Washington, and from that time the greater part of the Northern press was busily engaged in forming the unfortunate man in the eyes of the Northern people into such a monster that it became almost impossible for him to obtain counsel. Even his countryman, the Swiss Consul-General publicly refused to accept money to defray the expenses of the trial. He was doomed before he was heard--and even the permission to be heard according to law was denied him. To increase the excitement and give eclat to the proceeding, and to inflame still more the public mind, the trial took place under the very dome of the Capitol of the nation. A military commission, presided over by one of the most arbitrary and despotic generals in the country, was formed, and the paroled prisonerof war, his wounds still open, and so feeble that he had to recline during the trial on a sofa, carried before by the same. How that trial was conducted the whole world knows. The enemies of generosity and humanity believed it then to be a sure thing to get at Jeff. Davis.

Therefore the first charge was that of conspiracy between Wirz, Jefferson Davis, Seddon, Howell Cobb, R. B. Winder and a number of others, to kill the Union prisoners. The trial lasted for three months, but unfortunately for the blood-thirsty instigators not a particle of evidence was produced showing the existence of such a conspiracy; yet Captain Wirz was found guilty of that charge! Having thus failed another effort was made. On the night before the execution of the prisoner a telegram was sent to the Northern press from this city, stating that Wirz had made important disclosures to General L. C. Baker, the well-known detective, implicating Jeff. Davis, and that the confession would probably be given to the public. On the same evening some parties came to the confessor of Wirz, Rev. Father Boyle, and also to me, one of them informing me that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirz, that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted. He, the messenger, or whoever he was, requested me to inform Wirz of this. In the presence of Father Boyle I told Wirz next morning what had happened. The Captain simply and quietly replied: "Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything of him I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else, even to save my life." He likewise denied that he had made any statement whatever to General Baker.-Thus ended the attempt to suborn Captain Wirz against Jeff Davis. That alone shows what a man he was. How many of his defamers would have done the same? With his wounded arm in a sling, the poor paroled prisoner mounted, two hours later, the scaffold. His last words were that he died innocent-and so he did. The 10th day of November, 1865, will indeed be a black stain on the pages of American history.

To weaken the effect of his declaration of Innocence, and of the noble manner in which Wirz died, a telegram was manufactured here and sent North, stating that on the 27th day of October, Mrs. Wirz, (who actually was 900 miles on that day away from Washington,) had been prevented by that Stauntonian deus ex machina, General L. C. Baker, from poisoning her husband! Thus, on the same day, when the unfortunate family lost their husband and father, a cowardly and atrocious attempt was made to blacken their character also. On the next day I branded the whole as an infamous lie, and since then I never have heard of it again, though it emanated from a Brigadier General of the United States Army.

All those who were charged with having conspired with Captain Wirz have since been released, except Jefferson Davis, the prisoner of the American "Castle Chillon." Captain Winder was let of without trial, and if any of the others had been tried, which I do not know, certainly none of them would have been hung. As Captain Wirz could not conspire alone, nobody will now, in view of that important fact, consider him guilty of that charge. So much then for charge No. 1.

As to charge No. II., to wit: Murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war, I do not hesitate to declare what about 145 out of 160, witnesses on both sides declared during the trial-that Captain Wirz never murdered or killed any Union prisoners with his own hands or otherwise. All those witnesses (about twelve or fifteen) who testified that they saw Captain Wirz kill a prisoner, have sworn falsely, abundant proofs of that assertion being in existence. The hands of Captain Wirz are clear of the blood of prisoners of war. He would certainly have at least intimated to me a knowledge of the alleged murders with which he was charged. In most all cases no names of the alleged murdered men could be given, and where it was done, no such persons could be identified. The terrible scene in court, when he was confronted with one of the witnesses, and the latter insisting that Wirz was the man who killed a certain Union prisoner, which irritated the prisoner so much that he almost fainted will still be remembered. That man (Grey) swore falsely, and God alone knows what the poor innocent prisoner must have suffered at that moment! That scene was depicted and illustrated in the Northern newspapers as if Wirz had broken down on account of his guilt. Seldom has a mortal suffered more than that friendless and forsaken man.

Fearing lest this communication will be too long, I will merely speak of the principal and most intelligent of those false witnesses, who testified to individual murder on the part of Captain Wirz. Upon his testimony the Judge Advocate, in his argument, laid particular stress on account of his intelligence. This witness prepared also pictures of the alleged cruelties of Wirz, which were handed to the Commission, and are now on record, copies of which appeared at the time in Northern illustrated newspapers. He swore that his name was Felix de la Baume, and represented himself as a Frenchman and a grand-nephew of Marquis de Lafayette. After having so well testified and shown so much zel, he received a recommendation signed by the members of the Commission. On the 11th day of October, before the taking of the testimony was concluded, he was appointed to a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. This occurred whilst one of the witnesses for the defense (Duncan) was arrested in open court, and placed in prison before he had testified. After the execution of Captain Wirz some of the Germans of Washington recognized in de la Baume a deserter from the Seventh New York, (Steuben) regiment, whose name was not de la Baume, but Felix Oeser, a native of Saxony. They went to Secretary Hara in, and he dismissed the imposter and important witness in the Wirz trial on the 21st of November, eleven days after the execution. Nobody who is acquainted with the Conover testimony, in consequence of which the President of the United States was falsely induced to place a reward of $100,000 upon the head of an innocent man, will be astonished at the above disclosures of the character of testimony before military commissions. So much for charge No. II.

If from twelve to fifteen witnesses could be found who were willing to testify to so many acts of murder on the part of Wirz, there must certainly have been no lack of such who were willing to swear to minor offenses. Such was the unnatural state of the public mind against the prisoner at that time, and that such men regarded themselves, and were regarded, as heroes, after having testified in the manner above described; whilst, on the other hand, the witness for the defense were intimidated, particularly after one of them had been arrested.

But who is responsible for the many lives that were lost at Andersonville, and in the Southern prisons? That question has not fully been settled, but history will tell, on whose heads the guilt for those sacrificed hecatombs of human beings is to be placed. It was certainly not the fault of poor Captain Wirz, when, in consequence of medicines having been declared contraband of war by the North, the Union prisoners died for want of the same. How often have we read during the war that ladies, going South, had been arrested and placed in the Old Capitol Prison by the Union authorities, because some quinine, or other medicines, had been found concealed in their petticoats! Our navy prevented the ingress of medical stores from the sea-side, and our troops repeatedly destroyed drugstores, and even the supplies of private physicians in the South. Thus, the scarcity of medicines became general all over the South. Surgeon J. C. Pilot writes, September 6, 1864, from Andersonville, (this letter was procured by the Judge Advocate in the Wirz trial): "We have but little more than the indigenous barks and roots with which to treat the numerous forms of disease to which our attention is daily called. For the treatment of wounds, ulcers, etc., we have literally nothing, except water. Our wards, some of them, are wild with gangrene, and we are compelled to fold our arms and look quietly upon its ravages, not even having stimulants to support the system under its depressing influence; the article being so limited in supply that it can only be issued for cures [?] under the knife."

That provisions in the South were scarce will astonish nobody, when it is remembered how the war was carried on. General Sheridan boasted in his official report, that, in the Shenandoah Valley alone, he burned two thousand barns filled with wheat and corn, and all the mills in the whole tract of country; that he destroyed all factories of cloth, and killed, or drove off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute to human sustenance. And these desolation's were repeated in different parts of the South, and that so thoroughly that last month, two years after the end of the war, Congress had to appropriate a million of dollars to save the people of those regions from actual starvation. The destruction of railroads and other means of transportation, by which food could be supplied by abundant districts to those without it, increased the difficulties in giving sufficient food to our prisoners.

The Confederate authorities, aware of their inability to sustain their prisoners, informed the Northern agents of the great mortality, and urgently requested that the prisoners should be exchanged, even without regard to the surplus which the Confederates had on the exchange rolls from former exchanges, that is, man for man.-But our War Department did not consent to an exchange. The did not want to exchange "skeletons for healthy men." Finally, when all hopes of an exchange were gone, Colonel Ouid, the Confederate Commissioner, offered, early in August, 1864, to deliver up all the federal sick and wounded, without requiring an equivalent in return, and pledged that the number would amount to ten or fifteen thousand, and if it did not, he would make up that number with well men. Although this offer was made in August, the transportation was not sent for them (to Savannah) until December, although he urged and implored (to use his own words) that haste should be made. During that very period the most of deaths at Andersonville occurred.-Congressman Covode, who lost two sons in Southern prisons, will do well, if he inquired who those "skeletons" were, which the Hon. Secretary of War did not want to exchange for healthy men. If he does, he will hereafter be perhaps less bitter against the people of the South.

But has the North treated her Southern prisoners so well that she should lift up her bands and cry "anathesus" [UNCLEAR] over the South. Mr. Stanton reports to Congress, July 10, 1866, that of Southern prisoners there died in the North 26,436 and of Northern prisoners in the South 22, 576. What a fearful record! Over 26,000 of prisoners dying in the midst of plenty! Mr Stanton gives the total number of prisoners in the north at 220,000 and in the South at 126,940. Suppose this to be correct, though this statement comes certainly from no impartial source, there died of prisoners in the South without medicines and provision, the eighth part. But the number of Southern prisoners in the North are probably included the paroled prisoners of Lee's, Johnston's and Smith's armies, who never entered a Northern prison. If that be so the mortality of Southern prisoners in the North will be even greater than that of the Federal prisoners in the South!

We used justly to proclaim in former times that ours was "the land of the free and the home of the brave." But, when one-half of the country is shrouded in a despotism, which now only finds a parallel in Russian Poland; and when our generals and soldiers quietly permit that their former adversaries in arms shall be treated worse than the Helots of old, brave soldiers though they may be, who, when the forces and resources of both sections were more equal, have not seldom seen the backs of our best generals, not to speak of such as Butler and consorts, then we may well question whether the "star-spangled banner still waves over the land of the free or the home of the brave." A noble and brave soldier never permits his antagonist to be calumniated and trampled upon after an honorable surrender. Besides, notwithstanding the decisions of the highest legal tribunal in the land that military commissions are unconstitutional; the earnest and able protestations of President Johnson, and the sad results of military commissions, yet such military commissions are again established by recent legislation of Congress all over the suffering and starving South.

History is just, and, as Mr. Lincoln used to say, we cannot escape history. Puritanical hypocrisy, self-adulation, and self-glorification will not save those enemies of liberty from their just punishment.

Not even a Christian burial of the remains of Captain Wirz has been allowed by Secretary Stanton. They still lie, side by side with those of another acknowledged victim of military commissions, the unfortunate Mrs. Surrait [UNCLEAR], in the yard of the former jail in this city.

If anybody should desire to reply to this, I politely beg that it may be done before the 1st of May next, as then I shall leave the country to return in the fall. After that day letters will reach me in care of the American Legation, or Mr. Benedetto Bolzani, Leipzig street, No 38, Berlin, Prussia.

LOUIS SCHADE, Attorney-at-Law

Washington, April 4, 1867

The Stevens-Sherman bill, says the Age , is beginning to bear fruit. The planting of the dragon's teeth has produced a host of armed men, who are stealing away all the civil rights of the people of the South. In Military Division No. 2, formerly known as North and South Carolina, General Sickles has issued a proclamation which covers much of the ground formerly occupied by Courts of civil jurisdiction. That proclamation provides that no person shall be imprisoned for debt except upon conviction of fraud; that judgement or decrees for the payment of money on causes of action arising between December 19, 1860 and May 15, 1865, shall not be enforced by execution against the property or the person of the defendant; that sheriffs, coroners, and constables shall suspend for twelve months sales of 1860; that all proceedings for the recovery of money for the purchase of negroes are suspended; that in sales of property by execution or order of Court there shall be reserved to defendants having families depending upon them, implements of husbandry, household goods, etc, to the value of $500, and that the property of absent debtors shall not be taken under the foreign attachment process. The order also prohibits the carrying of deadly weapons, except officers and soldiers, and makes an offender amendable to trial and punishment by military commission; the punishment of death in certain cases of burglary and larceny is abolished.

If this is the initiative military authority in the South, what may not be expected in the future? Many of the matters decided by General Sickles have been debated for a long time in other portions of the Union and are not yet settled. The annulment of contracts, the placing of impediments in the way of executions for debt, and other radical changes in the laws of the States composing Military Division, No. 2, are serious attacks upon the rights of self-government guaranteed to the people by the Constitution. But whether the act in themselves are just or unjust, is not the pith and marrow of the point to be urged against the proclamation of General Sickles and the law of Congress under and by authority of which it was issued. The root of the mischief lies in the destruction of Sovereign States by legislative enactments and the subordination of the civil authority to the military power in a time of universal and profound peace in the country. Congress has just as much authority to appoint a military commander for this State, and he to change all its laws and ordinances, as they had to enact the Stevens-Sherman bill, and commission the officers under it to act as General Sickles has done. Such an assumption of power would have been scouted in the English Parliament of 1688, which led the advance of the battle for civil rights there, and was repudiated also in the American Congress of 1776, which gave a free government to a young Empire in the West. But the mischief has been consummated. The Radicals have openly disregarded the fundamental law of the land, reduced ten States to military provinces, and placed over them military rulers who are competent to alter, abolish or enact what laws they please without the "consent of the governed." This is a Radical change in our whole theory of Government. There can no longer be a question upon this point, and men interested in the political condition and material progress of the nation must ask themselves the question, how can the tide of innovation be stayed? It must be checked, or the Republic will be merged in a military despotism. A defeat of the Radical party at the polls is the surest road to relief, and such acts as those of General Sickles will aid materially in bringing about that result.

The Southern negroes seem to be apt scholars in the Radical school of aggression and plunder. A year or two ago they were thankful for the boon of liberty. A little later, for the privilege of civil rights. But now, grown great in arrogance, they demand free gifts of the lands owned by their late masters. What their next demand would be, if granted their desire in this, it is impossible to say, but possibly nothing short of the exclusive control of both the State and Federal Governments as the superior race. The following extract from the report of a Radical negro meeting held in Richmond, Virginia, on the 18th, not only bears out the foregoing statement, but it furnishes an instructive warning to the country:

"The convention re-assembled at 10 A. M., to-day. The prevailing feeling shown in the speeches of the colored members was confiscation. One or two who opposed it were saluted by cries of 'copperhead.' The announcement by one Freeland, of Petersburg, that if Congress did not give the negroes land, they would be taken by violence, was received with much applause."

Here we have the opening of a question that will eventually lead to disastrous results. The insane, dishonest and revolutionary utterances of Radical demagogues have been eagerly caught up by the negroes, and, sooner or later, must bear horrible fruits. Will not the country hold the Radical leaders responsible for what is to come, whilst crushing with military power the barbarous black savages who may undertake to overthrow the laws in order to satisfy their lust for plunder? Most certainly it will. When it becomes necessary to crush out with the bayonet the nigger free-booters who now threaten-under the very nose of the satraps-to commence a plundering war, the white Radical instigators will also be brought to judgement.-Patriot and Union

The question of colored suffrage at the North is purely one of prejudice . There is no reason for denying suffrage to the blacks of the North except the prejudice against them; for their numbers are too few to give the question any consequence as to its ill effect on the constituent body. In New York State, for example, the papers estimate that the extension of unrestricted suffrage to the negroes would only add ten thousand to the number of voters. As the aggregate vote actually cast for President three years ago was 780,000, the total number of voters in the State may be set down at little if any short of a million . Yet these ten hundred thousand white voters refuse to open the doors to ten thousand black voters. They would outnumber the admitted ones in the ratio of a hundred to one. Why do they not admit them? Are they afraid of them? or do they hate them? It is always a grave question how far ignorant and vagrant persons may safely be embraced among suffragans. It is generally conceded that it is a subject requiring much caution, and that there is bunt [UNCLEAR] somewhere. But no such prudential consideration controls the action in New York. The only test she makes against these excluded blacks is their color and the smallness of their number shows their exclusion to be from caprice and prejudice, and not from any conviction of necessity. Even arsenic, though poisonous, may be safely taken in minute doses.

With such an example at home, Northern Congressmen commend themselves neither to white or black by their different proceeding here; and this apart from the impropriety of their interference at all.

The colored people plainly see from their home policy that it is from no regard to them or their race that negro suffrage is ordered here; while the whites are constrained to regard it as an inexcusable and tyrannical trifling with the interests of the Southern community, white and black, to try suddenly and on a giant scale, at our risk, an experiment which they shrink from testing among themselves in the most attenuated degree. They give us by the spoonful what they refuse to take in homeopathic doses. A physician would pronounce such practice mere reckless and deliberate poisoning.

The habit of lounging seems to have grown quite popular now-a-days, particularly with the youthful inmates of our town; they seem to have to have become so enamored with the disgusting habit that I fear it would go hard with them if they were compelled to abandon their favorite mode of agreeably passing time away on the Sabbath, by "loafing" on the corners of our streets. Now why do our "Junior Sons of America" hold sociable Sunday meetings on the public streets of this town, and insult persons who necessarily pass them, by making presumptuous and silly remarks concerning those persons! Are those young gents very anxious to inform people universally that they are low and vulgar specimens of humanity?-If that is their desire they might appoint a new rendezvous, where they would not be interrupted by passers-by. What is more embarrassing to a lady than to hear the purposely loud-spoken opinion of some ungentlemanly young man concerning what he considers distasteful in her attire or appearance, as she passes by him on the street! I have seen the authors of such impoliteness completely canned, and I think the same treatment might be administered with good results, to some of impudent young men who have no other way of amusing themselves, than by standing upon the street corners of this town, expressing their crude and ill-founded opinions of their superiors. A reform in this respect is much needed in our town, and if all right-thinking persons would speak out against the disgraceful habit in fitting words of disapproval, we doubt not the young men who amuse themselves in this way would soon become ashamed of their conduct and amend their manners. H.