The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1865-11-14
An Unenviable Shirt.

An OnenVlaDIe spirit.
1t is said that the leopard cannot change his
| spots or an Ethiopian his skin !; it might be
added, as an equal impossibility, that copper
head cannot conceal his malignity. In the
Argus of yesterday was small paragraph
about Wirz, the miserable man who has lust
expiated his crimes upon the scaffold and this
remark is made: - --r- az err
che had well deserved felon's DEATH but he is not
alone to blame for the horrors suffered by helpless
prisoners"
To whom does the reader suppose that pa
per alludes as the greater or at least equal
partner in the guilt of Wiz, in the Anderson
vile atrocities? Is the allusion to jeff Davis
the head of the rebel movement and power,
one word from whom would have displaced
this demon and secured humane treatment for
our suffering braves? Not at all. On the
contrary, especial pains is taken, in another
item in the same paper, to exonerate Davis, and
to prove him free from all completely in the
prison horrors of the SoIth. The Argus takes
pains to repeat the story that Mr.. Schadc, coun-
sci for Wirz communicated to him the report
that, by his implication of Davis cabinet Off
Ger had suggested he might be saved from the
scafold, but it is careful to suppress the fact
that MI Schade expressed his own lack of
confidence in such a report.
To whom then does the Argxs refer as the
great criminal in this affair, the equal, in guilt
and desert, of Wirz? Does he refer to the
rebel Secretary of War, whose orders in rela-
ton to the treatment Of prisoners were little
short of supreme! Nothing of the kind
Does he refer to Gen. Lee, the Commander-in
Chief and Lieutenant General of the rebel
armies, the nod of whose head or the
beck of whose hand would have caused the
horrors at Andersonville to disappear as do
the miasmatic vapors before the rising sun
No, not this. Then he must REFER the honest,
loyal reader will sag, to "Hog Winder," the
immediate superior Of Wirz, who differed from
him officially in that he stood between him
and the superior authority of Davis and Lee,
and was bigger and more important tool of
theirs than the poor wretch who has Just been
sent to his last account! Buthere, again, the
reader will find hlnselfat fault. 1t was no
rebel, private or official, who participated in
the guilt of Wirz, was an equal criminal with
him, equally responsible for the atrocities at
Andersonville, and like him deserving of
felon's DEATH" but the only guilty one whom
this shameless copperhead can see, looming
up so as to relieve the guilt of Wirz by his
own superior guilt, is EDWIN N. STANTON, the
fearless, incompatible and patriotic Secretary
dwarf @ ~
This shameless assailant of patriotic men,
while claiming to be the special and true
friends of President johnson, points to his
Secretary of War, one of his chosen cabinet
ministers, as the equal criminal with the
wretch who has just been executed by the
Presidents approval!
1t avails not that this viper seeks to justify
his malignant spirit by quoting mere news
paper correspondent, for he kno,us that the
statements OF that correspondent, whether
originally made in good faith or not, have been
shown to be entirely false by the official state
ments of such men as Gen. Hitchcock and
others whose special business it was to regu-
late exchanges, and to understand the ground
occupied by the Government in relation to
this matter to @'-. % -i+''''1
How are such internal attacks upon Mr..
Stanton-found in the World, the Argus and
other reasonable sheets-to be accounted for ?
Why such attacks upon this man !? Simply for
this reason: when they wanted the rebellion
70 succeed, Mr.. Stanto1--a lifelong Democrat
was found in the breach, like flaming
sword, turning every way to guard the temple
of constitutional liberty. When the Argus
was suggesting discussion, and proposing it as
the solution of our troubles, Mr.. Stanton, per-
haps more than any other man, was found in the
way of concentrating that grand scheme Of
southern traitors and northern copperheads.-
Mr.. Stanton, too, did not hesitate, in the spirit
of Andrew johnson, to lay his hand upon
traitors, and put them in places of safety, and
in doing so he had occasion to incarcerate more
than one of the argus friends and subscribers
and doubtless the immediate manager of that
concern felt the danger, and trembled in the
Knees, "That's what's the matter"