Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/223

 this report during the Wirz trial, and yet, notwithstanding the fact that he had at his beck and call a band of trained perjurers, and Mr. Davis was in a distant prison and in ignorance of what was going on, the effort utterly failed. Equally futile was every other effort to connect Mr. Davis with the responsibility for the sufferings at Andersonville, until, in despair of any other evidence, an attempt was made to bribe poor Wirz by offerringoffering [sic] him, a short time before his execution, a reprieve if he would implicate Mr. Davis. He indignantly replied: "Mr. Davis had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else, even to save my life." We brought out the proofs of all these facts. Moreover we published the letter of Chief-Justice George Shea, to the New York Tribune, giving an account of his investigation of this question in behalf of Mr. Horace Greeley and other gentlemen who were unwilling to go on Mr. Davis' bail bond until the charge against him of cruelty to prisoners was cleared up. Judge Shea went to Canada and had access to certain Confederate archives which had escaped capture, and he investigated all of the "evidence" which the "Bureau of Military Justice" had at Washington. The result was that he was not only convinced himself, but succeeded in convincing such men as Governor Andrew, Horace Greeley, Gerritt Smith, Vice-President Wilson and Thaddeus Stevens, that the charge against Mr. Davis of even connivance at cruelty to prisoners was utterly without foundation.

The United States authorities did not dare to bring Mr. Davis to trial on this or on any other charge, simply because, after the most industrious efforts, they could find no testimony which created even a reasonable presumption of guilt. But these "judicial" gentlemen of The Nation undertake to convict where the "Bureau of Military Justice" hesitated, and affect to regard Mr. Davis' letter in reference to General Winder (a garbled clause of which they give and pervert) as settling his complicity with the "crime of Andersonville."

The Nation has not thought proper to meet our argument, which proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that for the suspension of the cartel and the stoppage of exchange, the United States authorities alone were responsible. We traced the history of the exchange question, and gave the most indubitable proofs that the Confederates were always ready to exchange, but that so soon as Gettysburg and Vicksburg gave the United State Government a large excess of