to
where the chances of attaining a ripe old age were better than in front
of the Army of the Potomac's muskets. We shall hear of Davis again.

Encountering Captain Wirz was one of the terrors of an abortive attempt
to escape. When recaptured prisoners were brought before him he would
frequently give way to paroxysms of screaming rage, so violent as to
closely verge on insanity. Brandishing the fearful and wonderful
revolver--of which I have spoken in such a manner as to threaten the
luckless captives with instant death, he would shriek out imprecations,
curses; and foul epithets in French, German and English, until he fairly
frothed at the mouth. There were plenty of stories current in camp of his
having several times given away to his rage so far as to actually shoot
men down in these interviews, and still more of his knocking boys down
and jumping upon them, until he inflicted injuries that soon resulted in
death. How true these rumors were I am unable to say of my own personal
knowledge, since I never saw him kill any one, nor have I talked with any
one who did. There were a number of cases of this kind testified to upon
his trial, but they all happened among "paroles" outside the Stockade,
or among the prisoners inside after we left, so I knew nothing of them.

One of the Old Switzer's favorite ways of ending these seances was to
inform the boys that he would have them shot in an hour or so, and bid
them prepare for death. After keeping them in fearful suspense for hours
he would order them to be punished with the stocks, the ball-and-chain,
the chain-gang, or--if his fierce mood had burned itself entirely out
--as was quite likely with a man of his shallop' brain and vacillating
temper--to be simply returned to the stockade.

Nothing, I am sure, since the days of the Inquisition--or still later,
since the terrible punishments visited upon the insurgents of 1848 by the
Austrian aristocrats--has been so diabolical as the stocks and
chain-gangs, as used by Wirz. At one time seven men, sitting in the
stocks near the Star Fort--in plain view of the camp--became objects of
interest to everybody inside. They were never relieved from their
painful position, but were kept there until all of them died. I think
it was nearly two weeks before the last one succumbed. What they
endured in that time even imagination cannot conceive--I do not think
that an Indian tribe ever devised keener torture for its captives.