dives that the first concrete evidence is found. in a remarkable series of pictures. in one photo the numbers show clearly. the tail section is plainly visible here. part of the mystery is solved. >> next, the author and history professor discusses the legacy of the confederate capital henry z to his arrest for war crimes. that hisssor argues trial was framed in the context of slavery, but it has changed in 20th century events. u.s.is hosted by the

capitol historical society. >> i want to thank my fellow symposium members. i think they really set high standards to try to wrap things up. i am going to try to wrap things up quickly and to keep rings energetic with images. i want to thank the historical society for posting this. that is the hanging of henry on november 10, 1865. if you want answers to your questions about wirz you should go to andersonville on november isof any year, because that the day they remember him and honor him. tony horwitz writes about chapter ofs with a this. there is a society dedicated to wirz.

platform,ed on this and that moment i think plays into our notions of an end of four moment. war moment. we have come to expect at the end of the war there will be a punishment but that more importantly, it will be visible. this is a visible thing. they did this in the capital prison. climb the trees to see over. they climbed the walls to see over. they had to see the body. was the finale of a very long trial just described. see something like this when wars and. that is a 20th and 21st century

phenomenon. to see after the nuremberg trials, people executed, after the tokyo trials or in italy, people hanging from meat hooks upside down after world war ii. there is a sense that when the war ends, somebody has got to swing. that breaks me to i guess the larger point about the words trial. think paul's talk makes this very clear in its tone, which is you cannot look the word trial objectively. you cannot look at it without looking through the lens of the 20th century, without looking at nuremberg and the war crimes issue that followed in the 20th

century, or even without thinking about things like the was dealt hussein with or even the way osama bin laden was dealt with, which was a killed. capture order. precisely because these trials on american soil of war criminals have become such disasters for various reasons that if you can find an opportunity to pawn them off on someone else, although that helps give legitimacy, or to kill them so this person never comes to trial. is words trial and execution not a disaster. it is a disaster procedurally, in terms offailure

what they try to achieve. you cannot see the trial on its own without looking through the lens of the presence. the second point i am trying to make is this is a way to think about the end of the war because whene trial, the issue of the war is over becomes an issue. becomes in terms of what congress is debating. but continues to go on, these issues are already there in the summer of 65. you have to figure out, is this a war crime that happened during the war? is it happening after the war? is neverwar crime

used. i think that is important to remember. that comes later in large part because of the trial. he is on trial for multiple counts of murder were no actual about is named. to talk irregularities, that is a big one. they have no names of murder victims. and he is on trail -- trial for violations of customs of war. the real reason why he is there, is that there is a bigger game they have in mind. that is that they want to get him to implicate hires up. here is an interesting contrast with nuremberg. nuremberg trials start the highest they can get.

the second trials are for the lesser people. they want to implicate jefferson davis. comfortably into a home where his wife does get to the issue is what is going to happen to jefferson davis. the book is good to be very important about why davis is not brought to trial. that is the goal to havewirz as leverage to implicate davis. he intends to do that. reason why they call

him a martyr to the lost cause. to the end he will not give up jefferson davis. he will insulate him from prosecution. wirz hangs. his body is cut down. i should say this is not a pretty thing at all. after he is cut down, his body is autopsied. sorry.

this may take a second to work out. first of all i should say public executions by this time were well known in america but not so much because they happen on american soil. schoolkids would have been very familiar with the executions in england during the english revolution. they would have been familiar with the execution of charles the first and later, charles the second. oliver cromwell is already dead. cromwellp the body of and hangs the long dead body from tyburn, a famous site in london.

they would have already known of this tradition of hanging the lead rebel. they wanted secretary of war .tanton and judge holt they want to get the lead rebel, who is jefferson davis. wirz was a very good person to go after. there he is depicted. as you see, he is holding his becausem this way supposedly the right arm was not healthy. there are different accounts as to why that is. it is claimed by his daughter he thought in combat for the confederacy. arm gothen that his

injured. this is one of the controversies. or wasin fact injured, this just a ploy to get sympathy when he was put on trial? he was because of his looks, which is sort of a trapped the right man to put on and after he way, was hanged, his body is autopsied. interested, you can go. the body is autopsied, and the arm is cut off to see just how injured it was. the vertebrae were taken because doctors were issued -- interested in this issue of what does hanging due to a person.

doesn't break their arm, or do they die of suffocation. were in ford's theater. now it is part of a larger museum in silver springs, maryland. -- let methere today see if i can get this working. you can see the bone -- the arm bone on display. vertebrae is not on display, but the museum holds it. i suppose if you ask nicely they will let you take it back. the curator was happy to explain. they have another piece of his body. is part of thes why hanging and

execution can be a problem. what do you do with the body? this became a huge issue with a osama bin laden. you dispose of the body? who gets the body? are you burn it? this is one of the issues. when appomattox occurs, april 9, the surrender, the prison at andersonville is still going strong. then comes the surrender of joe johnson to sherman that was already discussed later in april. wirz believes because that covers georgia that he has amnesty. he never think for a second he is going to be arrested or executed. why he doesn't try to

make a run for it. home.ply goes on may 5, 1865, the union captain knocks at his home near the stockade, and there he is living with his wife and two daughters. pick up the scene as described in 1955 by the , whoset, mckinley kantor novel won the pool it surprise. this is what i mean by not being able to. i don't think it's read much anymore. arrest andribed the wirz saying -- he thinks he has amnesty. told, you don't have amnesty.

he goes to change. his wife kindly offers a piece of cornbread. he kisses his daughters and ?ays, what should they do to me he responds, if they are satisfied you have been doing your duty and acting in accordance, you will probably be he said, that is what i do all the time. i carry out orders. i do my duty. you are a soldier. that you should know. when an accused war criminal, defending his action in a german accent, saying, i was simply carrying out my superiors orders, how could you not read

this and not think about nuremberg trials 10 years before ? you cannot. that continues still today. -- in paul'shich talk, the evoke a show in of the concentration camps in world war ii is perfectly natural. i am not meaning to condemn that, but it makes it a fools errand to think we can get at the truth of this because we have to see it in those lenses. it was very important to do this trial in a way that led to a and ideally being able to nail jefferson davis. they needed someone like wirtz going back to 1865, someone who

was nefarious for what he had done, someone who could not garner any sympathy in the public, and that was important, because you have to remember this trial occurs on the heels of the lincoln trial. during that trial, one assassin in particular gained tremendous public sympathy, public sympathy that is well and alive, not only across parts of for genia -- of virginia but also across hollywood, where i don't think a lot of people thought -- the conspirator -- played up mary 's potentialerat innocence and a sympathetic figure. the last thing you wanted is another trial that has a

sympathetic figure. he was the perfect man for trial. one of the people that boards him. one person defined him -- wirz has a small head, a retreating for head with the head very thin. noise -- pointed nose. mixedes are large and of blue and gray, very restless, reminding you continually of a cat when the animal is excited by the scent of prey.

the man who writes this was the thatdent of the commission tries henry wirz. he writes this before the committee has begun. some might say there is a prejudice in the mind of the presiding officer. had already tried on the commission to try lincoln conspirators. that is one reason he was picked up for this duty. wallace is a really important figure in the end of the american civil war for all sorts of reasons. he did not want to be in this commission. to be in mexico. he had this notion you could if thea piece -- peace union could join with the confederates and say, let's put the war aside and have a joint

venture into mexico where napoleon iii had installed maximillian as emperor, and there was a war going on. the idea was, we will liberate mexico together, and we will be able to annex parts of mexico. like many people who have in peace he has the next war in mind. he goes to texas where he was when the years before a soldier in the mexican-american war. he was at that time having dreams of fearlessness and had read the great work on the conquest of mexico and was imbued with romance at the time. some described him as a short, pudgy man.

this chance. the mexican plan doesn't work out. he comes back. he serves on the commission that tried lincoln conspirators, and he serves on the wirz commission. he never gives up the idea of mexico. heing the proceedings, while is sitting there, he is engaged in correspondence with a great scheme to funnel troops in a very subtle way across the border to help the rebels against maximillian, and in will get paid. they will get land. americans will get mexican territory. he takes one of these letters where, from texas, someone says, we have almost got the deal in hand. he is so happy with it he circulates it among his fellow

commissioners. they are sitting at the table while wirz -- while witnesses are being questioned, and said -- instead of being questioned they are reading this like a love note. not only do the judges read it, reads it,dge advocate and each write a little note is great.is and he writes, i see once again the american eagle soaring. when we talk about procedural irregularities, this is what we are talking about. wallace was a romantic. the end of the trial was predetermined. walt whitman, the great lover of humanity, said before the trial should suffer endless damnation.

if that is with men you have got to believe most people think this man is going down. -- i couldtself spend a lot of time with. i don't want to spend too much time on it. there were many witnesses that spoke of the horrors. the horrors they spoke of reduced this thing to a horror show. itself, one of the things they learn from the trial of the lincoln assassins, which had been a close trial to some extent. members of the press were there, but it was not open to the public. they decided to invite the public. a bigger venue. they held it in a robe of the capitol building. this gave it the look of a civil trial, even though it was a military tribunal. that meant there were people -- wallace's wife attended and wrote twice about it. there was a woman every day sobbing as she heard the

stories. the horrors there were about the water, the food, but the things that came up most often were about the dogs. to chasef bloodhounds , and this use of stories of bloodhounds was clearly meant to evoke bleeding. one witness is asked about the bloodhounds and says, i helped. i own the dogs, and i used to raise these dogs when i used to chase negroes in virginia. used tonect these dogs chase escaped slaves with those used to chase escaped prisoners. everyone knew about these dogs already because of harriet beecher stowe's "uncle tom's cabin. , inough they don't show up

the stage reduction so many people thought, dogs became a regular feature. they would have live dogs chasing the actors around the stage. often they would get in the audience and create havoc. knew about this slavery they knew about these dogs. these witnesses were like, i didn't see any dogs. there is a great story of a witness that says, i was trying to escape once. hereof his nose against mine -- he rubbed his nose against mine and moved on. that is not to mitigate how terrifying these dogs were under slavery and at andersonville. we're not talking about the hound of "the andy griffith show." weaponize talks. they are trained to hunt and mingle people. the stories told are not just about hunting people but of

mangling and eating people. the other stories told are about whoping the black smugglers escaped. were black people with but white people escaped. only the white people who put on blackface to pretend to be slaves of the way to mingle with the population outside -- they are brought back and for the crime of pretending to be black, they are whipped. this comes out in the trial, too. all of this i mention because what is being judged here. his activities in the camp, absolutely, but what is being put on trial was something that never was put on trial -- the crime of slavery. only time in american history you get close the war crime tribunal for

war crime of slavery. a crime against humanity identified as such in the 1700s forward. that has another perpetrator. it's the only way there is an actual perpetrator they can point to. he is hanged. while this presides, this makes it a fairly morally to seetforward affair, it in the way we describe it so far. moral complexity begins to enter the story after world war ii, afternuremberg, jerusalem. when people begin to see the moral complexity that attend these sorts of trials.

in 1959, saul levitt, a playwright writes a play called "the andersonville trial." informed is very much by nuremberg. it is very much about superior orders. the prosecutor at nuremberg came up with that, i was only following orders -- that defense. that is the defense when that is not what wirz says at all. they wanted him to say that, but he never says that. he says things like, the confederacy was out of money and food, so that is why i had to treat prisoners this way. play it was very popular on broadway for at least a year. then the producers did something remarkable.

the show to berlin. the press coverage was rather remarkable. the audience appeared touched by the analogy of the not see past. when the curtain closed -- of the nazi past. when the curtain closed the audience stood up to applaud this play about anderson. 10 years later that was put on tv on pbs at a live drama. it had a cast of fairly well-known people. was in theott -- who 1959 production. he helped produce it. william shatner played shipman. shatner is the glue that holds this whole story together. plays shipman.

10 years later he played the aid to the chief judge at "judgment of nuremberg." so he is the perfect person to play this role. the press on this, now the context has changed. when you read the reviews of this, which is broadcast just a few weeks after the events have become public, the trial had not happened, and it was just after kent state. the review says, "here years ago,of 105 but the question is the kent state campus. how far is andersonville from vietnam?" thehey cannot divorce events from the content.

now, the person involved in this really i think is the most interesting but has not been looked at in this way, who has trouble untangling fact from fiction is lew wallace. wallace will go on to have an illustrious career, and i will talk more about that in a second, but during the trial he writes to his wife as the trial is going on and he is hearing this testimony described about his dream. he says, "i have the first draft of a picture." painter.so an amateur what he describes, they were called a deadline. areou go over them, you dead. if you are wondering if there is any connection between that and newspapers, newspaper writers use of the deadline, there is.

that is exactly where the term comes from. lifellace in his later finally turns this draft of a sketch into a painting, which i show you here, over the deadline. is ayou see here depicted dead union soldier, nearly naked, cup falling out of hand. in the background, henry wirz, which we can tell because his right hand is held. but he has a toga on. which is a little odd. or something like a toga. and what is this? is he henry wirz? -- is heius pilate pontius pilate? the genre he is calling on is the one of christ. the famous limitation of christ. the differences in the classic

andntation, mary magdalene mary mother of god attend, but over the deadline there is no sympathy for the soldiers. there is an absence of sympathy, the absence of the woman caring is what makes this so poignant. fame.e get to wallace's wallace is the author of the best-selling novel in american history. i'm still struck by the fact one ask people, what is the best-selling novel in american not "birth of the nation," it is "ben hurr." in 1880, it was the best-selling novel for many years. it then got outpaced by "gone with the wind." but then with the rise of "orn-again movements, "ben hur

comes back because it is the tale of the christ. you may not know the novel. i forced myself to read it. it was really quite interesting. really probably know as the 1959 movie. you you think "ben hur," are thinking the chariot race and charlton heston and his biceps. and that is "then her." -- and that is "ben hur." it's a small part of the novel. wallace did not identify himself as a christian or a follower of any religion. this becomes foundational for christian. world inovel about the which jesus lives, focusing on the character of ben hur. at a crucial moment, the cup of water plays a crucial role. in one moment, ben hur as prisoner is being marched towards rome and the prisoners

are stopped and they take a soldier putsbut a them aside and does not allow him near the water. never see his face, only his hair in his back -- in the movie, that is -- offers them a couple of water. and the soldiers are mesmerized by this man, so much so they do not interfere. the man is jesus, of course. then, that is charlton heston getting a couple of water from jesus christ. then when jesus is being marched to calvary, he gets to repay the favor. nobody is supposed to go near jesus as he is being marched, maken her -- but ben hur the bold move of stepping to jesus and giving him the much-needed cup of water. again, i rely on the movie, not the book. you cannot i think go back to this, these scenes -- and they are in the book -- and think

they are somehow not related to the deadline. because the idea of a couple of stuck inen or denied lew wallace's mind so much, so long, he had a painting of it and put it into the novel. my last couple comments and then i will take questions. what is wallace in his later life thinking? is he still thinking that wirz was a criminal and he is glad for what he has done? i want to say that i don't think so. i think that lew wallace and his later life had become disenchanted with the united states in many ways. mainly because they kind of screwed him over. he had become known as a coward for behavior at shiloh, which i can go into in more detail. that hadh the story wallace come to shiloh when he was supposed to, the union would

firston cleanly on the day, but that did not happen, so there was a standoff. wallace never got the acclaim that he wanted. he ended up in a remote part of the west. and he came to see the united republic a kind of overly bureaucratized that was on the precipice of its fall. rds, it wasods exactly like rome at the time of jesus. you canead "ben hur," see it. you can see it in the descriptions of rome and the u.s., and you can see it in the person who condemns ben hur and his mother to prison, where they will contract leprosy. this little function areas the whatnal of the book, and

he says he is doing is he is simply carrying out the rule of law. "romans, ites, should be remembered, were at no time such lovers of the law and its forms thqan in the ages of its decay." i think when wallace is revisiting the wirz trial in his who as he writes "ben hur," is the evil here? but it is also, the commission, because the commission was behaving in this way of trying to end the war when it could not be ended. during the charges against wirz, it was said by the defense of wirz you cannot do this because the war is over, the whole military commission cannot be allowed to exist. and this is my final, final point.

that defense sounds weird in november of '65. people say, wait, the war is still going on. the prosecution says the spirit of rebellion still exists, even though the war is over. table,t puts on the well, how do you crush the spirit of rebellion? how do you and insurgency? how do you end a war? requires the destruction of a spirit in the process. the wirz commission is like a similar acquisition. it was hardly a venue for truth telling. it exacerbated rather than heal the damage of the war, like many tribunals are meant to do, and it suggested the war was not finished, if it ever would be. adbide now, war would've

no deadline. thank you. [applause] i sucked taken up -- up all of my question time. i don't know if i'm allowed any questions. ok, i can take some questions. there is a microphone coming around. what did the u.s. government hope to get on jefferson davis from wirz? >> that davis knew what was going on in andersonville and either directly or indirectly authorized him or commanded him to behave in this way, starving soldiers, dying water. and we could charge davis with murder and crimes against the laws and customs of war. two brief questions. one is, has anybody ever tried a top-down approach, how the confederate government functioned and who the

commanders of pow camps reported to end a match papers, if any, from sadie secretary of war or jefferson davis' war? a second point is you said wallace died in an obscure part of the west, but my memory is he was the territorial governor of new mexico. he cannot conquer mexico -- >> yes, he got to mexico. hur."re he finished "ben >> at college to anyone for calling data secure. that was not the -- i apologize to anyone for calling data secure. that is not what i intended. can wefirst question, find a paper trail? they very much wanted to find a paper trail. of course, the confederates had done some paper destroying, but a lot had been destroyed. that is why it is not a france's labor, already discussed by paul

finkelman, very interested in military justice and the code of war is also the person in charge of collecting the confederate papers. he wants to do precisely this. for months he is the head of what he called the confederate archives. the confederate papers we have, most of them we can thank francis lieber for that. part of that is to do precisely this. he won at the paper trail to find out who are the traders and who is not. and whore the traitors is not. a lot of that can be done, but a lot cannot be done because the paper trail is gone. >> how long was wirz in command of andersonville? >> thank you for asking back, because that is not something i had a chance to mention. briefly, this is one of the other problems. if i wanted to take the side of wirz, and there are people who do, you could say, look him he was not in charge there very long. at andersonville

most of the time was general john winder. wirz was his subordinate. winder had a heart attack and died in 1865. while the u.s. would go to certain extents, i don't think they would dig up wandering charge them. in february 1865, the camp does not dissolve in april. it is a long and slow process of prisoner transfers, which include some of the prisoners going on the terribly horrific story of the ship sinking. when he leaves and goes home, there are still prisoners there. he knows there is a union army nearby and he expects them to take care of them. happened much of what was really the responsibility of -- >> how much of what happened at andersonville can we pin on this one man, henry wirz? i'm glad we are at the end of my

time. [laughter] no, because this question is so excellent. it is one of the few, but really a crucial one, at the heart of any war crimes tribunal, of any postwar tribunal, which is how -- ok, we acknowledge there have been atrocities. how much have these -- how much of these atrocities can we pin on one person, two people, every one? this is the nuremberg moment. it's much easier to parse this out. nuremberg defined -- there is no definition. they talk about war crimes, crime against peace and crimes against war. i'm sorry, crimes against humanity. so i don't want to try to answer that. guilty, butwirz was i guess i would go back to what paul finkelman said, many others were guilty, too. but if you started hanging

people, i'm not exactly sure when you would be legitimately right to stop all . is not in charge, he is the number two guy. it seems from the evidence that he is running the show a lot. winder does not seem to be doing much of anything. these are, by the way, people who are pro wirz, saying that winder is utterly incompetent. was competent. isthat is the point, wirz running the show because he is competent. the question is if you are the number two person then you are doing this -- >> i agree, there is no question that wirz was more the manager of operations come even though he was second-in-command. i don't think the argument that he was second-in-command works for a well if i was trying to

defend wirz, which i am not because he was very much involved. but he was not in command until february. >> for those who have not heard, there was a timely announcement this last week, they are going to remake "ben hur." >> yes, i heard the announcement a little earlier, like mgm -- there have been two major onductions of "ben hur" film. 1959 was the second one. mgm has announced they will bring on a new production of "ben hur." to see thisl get whole story played out again and people will say, who wrote that book, who was lew wallace, what else did you do, and you will be able to tell them what he was. i see no other hands. so i guess i will thank you all. wait, do we have time? ok, one more question. >> the humanity films form

broadcast the andersonville trial. two commenters were cannot stamp in your teacher, david donald. stamp said he should not have been hung, david thought he should have. but you might be interested. >> that is fantastic. no, i wish i knew the argument as to why he should not have been hung. tube andactually you it's very poor quality, but the production of the andersonville trial. there are some stars that you will recognize. not just william shatner's, but others. or you can just simply find out. thank you all very much. [applause] with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span2, here on

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