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Such fare, if furnished to a sick or wounded Federal soldier, would have been regarded as evidence of a barbarous purpose to cause his death.
To inflame the minds of the Northern people and prejudice the civilized world against us, an investigation was had before a committee of the Federal Congress who made a report upon “rebel atrocities,” founded on the testimony of men who swore to some things they had seen, many that they had heard, and a great many more that they had neither seen nor heard.
The press was flooded with stories of cruel treatment, illustrated by pictures, and during the war every device was resorted to, to fix upon us the stigma of barbarous treatment of the prisoners in our hands.
After the close of the war a poor feeble foreigner, Captain Wirz, who had been in our service, and was then on the very verge of the grave from wounds received in battle, was selected as a victim to be sacrificed to the demands of the North for more blood, and, after a farce of a trial, was hung for alleged cruelty to prisoners.
As a specimen of the evidence given on his trial, it is only necessary to mention that of Boston Corbet, the man who killed Booth, while the latter, with a fractured leg, was in a house in flames and surrounded by a large party of Federal cavalry, by slipping up to the side of the house and firing his revolver through a crack.
Boston Corbet testified on the trial of Wirz, stating that he was a prisoner at Andersonville, and among other atrocities testified to, by him, he mentioned the fact that bloodhounds were kept to pursue escaped prisoners, and he said that he himself with some others made an escape, and the bloodhounds were put on the track; that while he was concealed in the bushes, one of the bloodhounds came up and rubbed its nose against his. When asked why the hound did not do any mischief to him, he said that he served the same Lord that Daniel served when in the lions' den.
There were many other witnesses in whose stories
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