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[178] of brigadier-general, and made inspector-general of camps around Richmond with charge of prisons. He soon became commander of the Department of Henrico, which is the county including the city of Richmond. Later he was placed in charge of all the prisons of Richmond, with a shadowy authority over those outside. After the prisoners were sent South, he was assigned to command the prisons in Alabama and Georgia. Finally, November 21, 1864, he was made commissary-general of prisoners east of the Mississippi. Evidence shown by his official papers is contradictory. Congressman Ely, who had been a prisoner in Liggon's factory, calls him ‘the kind-hearted general,’ but Colonel Chandler, in the supplement to his famous report, in words that sting and burn, holds him largely responsible for conditions at Andersonville, while other charges against his character were made. A wounded Federal officer writes of the tenderness with which General Winder carried him in his arms, and yet Richmond drew a sigh of relief when he was ordered away. We find that he quarreled with Lucius B. Northrop, the Confederate commissary-general of subsistence, insisting that the latter did not furnish sufficient food for the prisoners, and he constantly urges the construction of new prisons to relieve the crowding at Andersonville, and to enable the officers in charge to get food more easily for their prisoners. He many times makes requisitions for food and tools and, finally, when conditions had become intolerable, twice recommended that the prisoners be paroled, even without equivalents, declaring that it was better that they should go than that they should starve. On the other hand, he disputed with some of the surgeons whose reports upon hospitals and prisons had seemed to reflect upon his administration, and denounced Colonel Chandler, making a defense of the Andersonville prison not warranted by his own reports. His death, in February, 1865, did not end the controversy. The life of Wirz has been mentioned. At the close of the
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
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