Today, with the more sober perspective of nearly a century of peace, the business looks a little different. If the people of the North in the fall of 1865 had used the language of the late 1940's they would have said that Captain Wirz was a war criminal who had been properly convicted and then had been hanged for atrocious war crimes. And across the northern part of the recently reunited United States many people took note and rejoiced that a villain who richly deserved hanging had finally got what was coming to him. The drop was sprung, Captain Wirz dangled briefly at the end of a rope, died, and the thing was over. “I know what orders are, Major,” said Captain Wirz. To this major Captain Wirz turned, extended his hand, and offered his pardon for the thing which the Federal major, detailed to take charge of a hanging squad, was about to do. On the platform with him-with him, but separated from him by the immense gap which sets apart those who are going to live from those who are about to die-there was a starchy major in the Federal Army. On the tenth day of November, 1865, a pale, black-whiskered little man named Henry Wirz, a used-up captain in the used-up army of the late Confederate States of America, walked through a door in the Old Capitol Prison at Washington, climbed thirteen wooden steps, and stood under the heavy crossbeam of a scaffold, a greased noose about his neck.
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