Dr. J. C. Bates, who was a Surgeon of the Prison Hospital, (a Rebel), testified that the condition of things in his division was horrible.  Nearly naked men, covered with lice, were dying on all sides.  Many were lying in the filthy sand and mud.

He went on and described the terrible condition of men—­dying from scurvy, diarrhea, gangrenous sores, and lice.  He wanted to carry in fresh vegetables for the sick, but did not dare, the orders being very strict against such thing.  He thought the prison authorities might easily have sent in enough green corn to have stopped the scurvy; the miasmatic effluvia from the prison was exceedingly offensive and poisonous, so much so that when the surgeons received a slight scratch on their persons, they carefully covered it up with court plaster, before venturing near the prison.

A number of other Rebel Surgeons testified to substantially the same facts.  Several residents of that section of the State testified to the plentifulness of the crops there in 1864.

In addition to these, about one hundred and fifty Union prisoners were examined, who testified to all manner of barbarities which had come under their personal observation.  They had all seen Wirz shoot men, had seen him knock sick and crippled men down and stamp upon them, had been run down by him with hounds, etc.  Their testimony occupies about two thousand pages of manuscript, and is, without doubt, the most, terrible record of crime ever laid to the account of any man.

The taking of this testimony occupied until October 18, when the Government decided to close the case, as any further evidence would be simply cumulative.

The prisoner presented a statement in which he denied that there had been an accomplice in a conspiracy of John H. Winder and others, to destroy the lives of United States soldiers; he also denied that there had been such a conspiracy, but made the pertinent inquiry why he alone, of all those who were charged with the conspiracy, was brought to trial.  He said that Winder has gone to the great judgment seat, to answer for all his thoughts, words and deeds, “and surely I am not to be held culpable for them.  General Howell Cobb has received the pardon of the President of the United States.”  He further claimed that there was no principle of law which would sanction the holding of him—­a mere subordinate —­guilty, for simply obeying, as literally as possible, the orders of his superiors.

He denied all the specific acts of cruelty alleged against him, such as maltreating and killing prisoners with his own hands.  The prisoners killed for crossing the Dead Line, he claimed, should not be charged against him, since they were simply punished for the violation of a known order which formed part of the discipline, he believed, of all military prisons.  The statement that soldiers were given a furlough for killing a Yankee prisoner, was declared to be