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.
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.