The father was a coward and incompetent; the son, always cautiously distant from the scene of hostilities, was the tormentor of those whom fortunes of war and the arms of brave men threw into his hands.“
Of his personal appearance I have no recollection, but the above is a true picture of his character. He filled a place in the Confederacy which no brave officer of equal rank would have accepted. Hill, Longstreet, Early, Polk, Hardee, even Forrest and Mosby would have spurned with contempt an offer of assignment to the position occupied by the cowardly John H. Winder.
Of Captain Henry Wirz I can write of my own knowledge. In personal appearance he was about five feet nine or ten inches in height, slightly built with stooping shoulders. He had a small peaked head, small twinkling eyes, grisly, frowsy whiskers, and the general contour of his features and expression of eyes reminded one of a rodent.
In character he was pusillanimous, vindictive, mean and irritable to those beneath him, or who had the misfortune to be in his power; while to his superiors he was humble and cringing, an Uriah Heep; a person who would “Crook the pregnant hinges of his knee, that thrift might follow fawning.”
As a specimen of the contemptible meanness of these two persons, I was told by a prisoner who attempted to escape, but was recaptured and put in the stocks, that while at their head-quarters he saw a large dry-goods box nearly full of letters written by prisoners to their friends; and by friends to them, which had accumulated, and which they had neglected to forward or distribute. The paper upon which some of these letters was written, and the envelope in which it was enclosed had cost the prisoner, perhaps, his last cent of money, or mouthful of food. The failure to receive those letters had deprived many a mother or wife of the last chance to hear from a loved one, or a prisoner of his last chance to hear from those he loved more than life itself.
Wirz was Commandant of the inner prison and in this capacity, had charge of calling the roll, organization of prisoners, issuing rations, the sanitary condition of the prison, the punishment of prisoners; in fact the complete control of the inner prison.