Wirtz, Captain H., of Andersonville Prison.—For many years after the Civil War, Andersonville Prison served as the outstanding symbol of the atrocities practiced upon Union prisoners by the Southern Confederacy. The prison was commanded by Captain Wirtz, who was subsequently tried by a court martial at Washington and hanged. General Lee’s nephew, and his biographer, has stated that General Lee used his influence to save him by showing that Wirtz was not primarily responsible for the sufferings of Union prisoners under his care, but that these were in a large measure due to the blockade against Southern ports, which prevented the landing of medicines and supplies. Because of his name, Wirtz has been cited by Prof. John D.Lawson, of Columbia, Mo., and others, as a typical personal embodiment of German brutality. Mr.Louis Benecke, a prominent attorney, of Brunswick, Mo., who himself was for seven months a Union prisoner in a Confederate prison, and who afterwards became the historian of the Association of Ex-Union Prisoners of War, has shown that Wirtz was not a native of Germany. Mr.Benecke says: “As the record shows, his grandfather was a French wine merchant at Bonnerville, France, and his name was there spelled with a‘V’ instead of a‘W.’ The father of Wirtz located in Switzerland, near Geneva, and while there changed his name to Wirtz, conforming to the phonetic of the French‘V.’ It is further shown that the mother of Captain H.Wirtz was a French Italian. A prisoner of German descent, believing Wirtz to be a German, applied to him for a favor, and insinuated that his nationality entitled him to some consideration, to which Wirtz replied, ‘Je ne suis allemagne; je suis Suis.’ Wirtz at no time or place ever claimed to be anything but a Swiss or French descent.”