Hy.  Wirz, Captain C. S. A.
Major General T. H. Wilson,
Commanding, Macon.  Ga.

He was kept at Macon, under guard, until May 20, when Captain Noyes was ordered to take him, and the hospital records of Andersonville, to Washington.  Between Macon and Cincinnati the journey was a perfect gauntlet.

Our men were stationed all along the road, and among them everywhere were ex-prisoners, who recognized Wirz, and made such determined efforts to kill him that it was all that Captain Noyes, backed by a strong guard, could do to frustrate them.  At Chattanooga and Nashville the struggle between his guards and his would-be slayers, was quite sharp.

At Louisville, Noyes had Wirz clean-shaved, and dressed in a complete suit of black, with a beaver hat, which so altered his appearance that no one recognized him after that, and the rest of the journey was made unmolested.

The authorities at Washington ordered that he be tried immediately, by a court martial composed of Generals Lewis Wallace, Mott, Geary, L. Thomas, Fessenden, Bragg and Baller, Colonel Allcock, and Lieutenant-Colonel Stibbs.  Colonel Chipman was Judge Advocate, and the trial began August 23.

The prisoner was arraigned on a formidable list of charges and specifications, which accused him of “combining, confederating, and conspiring together with John H. Winder, Richard B. Winder, Isaiah II.  White, W. S. Winder, R. R. Stevenson and others unknown, to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States, there held, and being prisoners of war within the lines of the so-called Confederate States, and in the military prisons thereof, to the end that the armies of the United States might be weakened and impaired, in violation of the laws and customs of war.”  The main facts of the dense over-crowding, the lack of sufficient shelter, the hideous mortality were cited, and to these added a long list of specific acts of brutality, such as hunting men down with hounds, tearing them with dogs, robbing them, confining them in the stocks, cruelly beating and murdering them, of which Wirz was personally guilty.

When the defendant was called upon to plead he claimed that his case was covered by the terms of Johnston’s surrender, and furthermore, that the country now being at peace, he could not be lawfully tried by a court-martial.  These objections being overruled, he entered a plea of not guilty to all the charges and specifications.  He had two lawyers for counsel.

The prosecution called Captain Noyes first, who detailed the circumstances of Wirz’s arrest, and denied that he had given any promises of protection.

The next witness was Colonel George C. Gibbs, who commanded the troops of the post at Andersonville.  He testified that Wirz was the commandant of the prison, and had sole authority under Winder over all the prisoners; that there was a Dead Line there, and orders to shoot any one who crossed it; that dogs were kept to hunt down escaping prisoners; the dogs were the ordinary plantation dogs, mixture of hound and cur.