The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1906-08-24
Commander Tanner on
WirZ Monument Scheme.
PROTESTS AGAINST THE PLAN
They Want to Erect a Handsome
Memorial on Land Near Where
andersonviIie Prison Stood.
From Fridays Daily.

I
erect a monument to Butcher Wirz i'll the
following language;
In the course of the last few months
| have received quite a number OF com
munications concerning this proposition
to erect at or near Andersonville mon
ument in honor of Captain Wirz, who
was in charge of Andersonville prison.
Most of these communications were
appeals addressed to me as commander
in-chief, imploring me to take steps to
prevent the erection of such Il monument
and urging me, if necessary to that end,
to Law the matter before congress, OF to
bring it to the attention of the presi-
dent
Needless to say, the comrades thus
appealing to me had given very little
consideration to the question of the pow
er of the commander in-c chief in this
matter, or the courts, or congress, or the
president of the United States himself.
The slightest research as to authority
would have shown them that no such
power exists in either of the quarters
named.
'Andersonville is the property of the
Woman's Relief corps, and, of course, on
that property no monument to Wirz will
ever be permitted, but on the other
hand, there is no legal power in the ma
ton to prevent anyone so disposed from
purchasing a plot of ground contiguous
to Andersonville, and erecting thereon
any monument they may desire to con-
struct.
THE veterans of the confederate army
are not, to any appreciable degree, in
terested in this movement. 1t has its
impetus and its force among the women
of the south. l first learned of the
movement early in the year and quietly
and earnestly canvassed the matter with
quite II number of prominent ex-confed-
crates, for / recognized on the first men
ton thereof that such matter carried
out would do more to interrupt the flow
of good feeling between the north and
the south, and would roll back more eff
fectively the waves of reconciliation
than any other one matter which the
mind of man could conceive
AT first number of confederates
whom | talked with about the matter
secuted the idea of there being any prob
ability of any such thing being DONE
My answer to that was that | consider
ed it a serious movement because their
women were interesting themselves in it
and | had noticed that men generally
danced to the music set by women.
"A good many of them had no hesita-
ton in privately telling me that they
agreed with me that the erection of the
memorial to such a character could have
no practical result except to smirch to a
greater or less degree every memorial
erected throughout the south to the real
representatives of vaIor in the confeder-
ate army.
AS one who welcomes with Joy every
movement to assuage the lingering pains
OF that mighty conflict, l deprecate to
the last degree any movement of the
kind proposed, and | think that it is due
to ourselves, to our great organization,
and to the truth of history, that this
encampment should place on record be-
fore the public at large most forcible
but dignified protest against any such
impious shaft being permitted to raise
its head toward heaven.
Some of my correspondents of the
gentler sex in the south have undertake
en- to Justify the movement on the as
serted ground that more southern pris
oners of war died in northern prisons
than there were of our comrades who
died In southern prisons. | am not pre-
pared to dispute the truth of that state
ment, but if it be true statement, the
natural inquiry arises 'Why?' And the
intelligent, complete and truthful answer
Is found i'll the fact that the men of the
south whom we took prisoners were, to
a large extent, i'm an emaciated condi-
ton when captured; they were poorly
clad and shOd IL is fact most fully
proclaimed in every article written from
the southern standpoint regarding the
cost of the war, that their men frequent
ly suffered from great scarcity or total
absence of rations Almost every south.
ern writer has dealt more or less with
the story of a meal made from a roasted
ear of corn
these prisoners of war coming to us
thus poorly nourished, came from the
sunny climate of the south to be of ne
cesslty exposed to the greater rigor OF
the seyerer climate of the north. an(
they sunk, many of them, into death un
der physical conditions which nothins
could prevent. Our men. ON the con
trary, who went to their death in south