At Point San Jose there would be no telegraphic dispatch rushed by messenger to inform William A. of his father’s sudden and abrupt end. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin reported a major telegraphic service outage on February 9, 1865, thus depriving the city and all military posts throughout the state of news via the modern and already indispensable communication technology. William A. would not find out about his father’s demise either by letter from the East—which generally took three weeks—or from the local press.1
Although the Richmond Examiner had received a dispatch from the Confederate War Department and noted on February 9 the “sudden death of General John H. Winder” down in Dixie, those who had access to the Wilmington Journal from North Carolina could have read this eulogy: “In every position in which he [Winder] has been placed his official conduct has been marked by strict probity, energy and promptness,” and his “noble and genial nature” was cherished by friends and family.2
Readers throughout the Union would not read of Winder’s noble and genial nature. The Providence Evening Press of Rhode Island instead reported on “this monster[,] whose death” would be welcomed by “our brave soldiers and loyal people everywhere.”3
After word spread that John H. Winder had died of natural causes, there was an article printed in the Beverly Citizen of Massachusetts via the New York Herald, and many newspapers printed variations on it and other biographical sketches of the monster Winder, “the rough from Baltimore” who “like the devil’s own had blighted and buried thousands. . . . It would be only just and proper . . . to know that he fell by the hands of some one or more of the prisoners whom he has so inhumanely treated. The grave is supposed to bury the faults of most men with them, but it cannot hide the crimes of such a monster as John H. Winder.”4
“He was called ‘Hog Winder,’ owing to his brutal habits and avarice. . . . His name is synonymous with all that is cruel and vindictive,” the Milwaukee Sentinel opined.5
On March 19 the Daily Alta California reported Winder’s death “by apoplexy . . . John H. or ‘Hog’ Winder as he was familiarly called . . . had charge of the prisoners confined in the Libby, Belle Island, and Andersonville and Florence prisons.” The article further described the origin of “the epithet of ‘Hog’ Winder given him at West Point, as expressive of his avarice. His selfishness made him notorious in the United States Army while his inhumanity to our prisoners captured in this war have made him hated by his own people and despised by the civilized of all races.” Furthermore, the newspaper reported, “no officer to which the rebellion has given prominence sinks into his grave more generally hated than does this . . . inhuman monster Winder . . . He was about sixty-five.”6
Absent any previous communication from anyone in the East, it is probable that William A. read of the death of his father during the daylong, much-heralded “Grand Military Review.” He was spared any last-minute squibs identifying him as the son of “Hog” Winder. Or perhaps out of kindness to a man so many in San Francisco’s rumor mill had once deemed disloyal, surely by now most if not all readers knew and even admired this son born to such a demon and who remained loyal to the Union.
Appearing in the same Daily Alta California issue of March 19, on the same page as the notice of General Winder’s death, is a mention that William A. is part of a great celebration, the spectacle at the Presidio known as the Grand Military Review. Major General McDowell and staff reviewed the troops, and “over three thousand of . . . the State’s stalwart sons . . . were paraded,” the article stated. “Captain Winder of Black Point was observed” among officers and privates posted at the forts guarding the bay within the “immense crowd in attendance.”7
The March 23 edition of the Marysville Daily Appeal reported that “the notorious rebel General Winder will never be able to repeat his evil deeds.”8
And this from the Sacramento Daily Union: “When Winder the jailer of Libby Prison, Belle Isle,” and of course Andersonville, was a sure “instrument of rebel barbarity . . . his apoplexy cheated the gibbet of a fitting victim.”9
No matter his shock, grief, or relief, William A. must find a way forward—for himself, for his wife who’d endured so much by his side, for his son Willie, who was nearly an adolescent.
A friend once again tried to assist William A. in advancing his career. Shortly after the death of William A.’s father, Gov. John Goodwin of Arizona wrote Secretary of War Stanton from San Francisco:
Sir,
I would respectfully suggest the name of Capt. William A. Winder 3rd Artillery for a brevet.
Captain Winder has been true to the flag, and has rendered important and valuable service during the present war.
I earnestly hope that his services will be recognized. Your obt. servt,
John N. Goodwin, Governor of Arizona10
Perhaps Governor Goodwin doesn’t realize that Stanton will not then, not ever recognize William A.’s service, no matter how many vouch for his loyalty. And William A. must forever view the events at Andersonville through a jagged prism, a glass distorted and endlessly reported. He cannot escape the taint of Andersonville or, in nightmares, hear the cries of the sufferers, and though he has longed from his teen years to be a healer, what could he have done to stop the deaths that mounted daily in faraway Georgia? Only in his mind could his troops, their artillery, cannons, and hot shots have bombarded, invaded, and liberated the caged and starving Union men. He is bound to his post; dutiful, surely wearied, and permanently estranged from what remained of his Confederate family.
At least William A. is now on the mainland north of the city, a small advantage as on occasion he travels a relatively short distance by carriage, or on horseback to visit the office of the merchandise and mining suppliers Breed & Chase. Talking of the mines and to Ephraim Morse and that he will pay the drafts owed for mining supplies must all somehow put him on a path forward.
“Capt. Winder was into the store yesterday,” Breed and Chase wrote to Morse. “He said he believed Gen. McDowell was going down that way [Southern California] next week. If he visits San Diego, you must give him a proper reception and impress upon him the advantages of S. Diego as a military point, and the necessity of fortifications in case of a foreign war.”11
There will be no war, foreign or domestic, for William A. or General McDowell to fight. By April 2 Richmond has fallen and hundreds of Union troops pour into that city. Amid the chaos of thousands of residents fleeing in panic—by horseback, in carriages, on foot—as the fleeing troops ignite massive conflagrations so as to leave nothing of use for the invaders and thousands of Confederate documents are pitched burning into the streets, Jefferson Davis and his entire government are in flight. Throughout the night trains leave the depot, the last carrying Davis and his cabinet to Danville, Virginia.
Sidney Winder was tasked with guarding a treasure train carrying Confederate specie—gold. The cars rumbled through the night, leaving behind a ruined city, the charred leavings of a self-declared nation that had warred with the United States for four long years. Although Sidney Winder received a portion of the gold, which he and his comrades had divided, making sure a portion of the money was earmarked for the Davis family, he fled toward North Carolina. Arrested and paroled, he returned to Baltimore. Grieving for his father and their lost cause and in a perpetual state of depression, he tried to resume his law practice.
Richard Bayley Winder made his way to his home in Accomack, Virginia. William A.’s uncles, Charles H. and William H., mourned and fumed as they witnessed the end of all they believed in. Now they must try and try again to defend their family, efface all excoriations, all shame.
With grief shading sunlight for the remaining rebel Winders, at least for William A. the war is over. On April 9 Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. When the news quickly reached San Francisco by telegraph—which was up and running again—there were celebrations in the streets and the cannons of Alcatraz were fired over the water. When news of Lincoln’s assassination reached the celebrants on April 15, the cheering stopped. Violence erupted in the streets as “crowds of Unionists sacked pro-Confederate newspaper offices in the city.” The military ordered artillerymen from Fort Alcatraz into the city to maintain order. Confederate sympathizers throughout California who celebrated Lincoln’s death were arrested and imprisoned on Alcatraz.
Again the island’s guns sent out a “half-hourly cannon shot over the bay as a symbol of the nation’s grief.”12 Winder’s cannons at Point San Jose did the same. Would that he could tear into the streets, blast away all traces of the Confederacy, and find an elusive peace in a time of undeniable turmoil.
With all hope that he might soon leave the war far behind for a way forward with mining, he wrote to Morse, “I am striking for a big thing” and asked for a loan of $1,500 to own “a good sized tract.”13
Perhaps peace will come to William A., perhaps in San Diego:
San Francisco, Apr 29, 1865
Friend Morse:
. . . Had quite a talk with Capt. Winder about San Diego. He is urging the Government to remove the depot to San Diego, and feels quite encouraged that it will be done. If the gov’t depot were at S.D. & fortifications commenced there, you would see lively times. Hope it may be so soon. Breed & Chase14
*
While William A. may be entertaining fervent hopes that better times lie before him, the opposite is true for the defeated Confederates. Imagine his late father’s horror if he had learned of the capture of his president, Jefferson Davis, in the vicinity of Irwinsville, Georgia, on May 10, 1865. Davis was taken to Fortress Monroe to be charged as an accomplice in the Lincoln assassination, and if that could be proven with the zealous efforts of the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt—bent on punishing to the fullest extent any and all former Confederates—Davis would be tried for treason. And if it could be proven that he helmed and abetted the Andersonville disaster as well, that would be added to his catalog of crimes. On May 7, 1865, John H. Winder’s subordinate, Capt. Henry H. Wirz, was arrested at Andersonville Prison by a detachment of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry. He was taken to Macon, Georgia, then to the Old Capitol Prison to await trial for war crimes. On May 25, 1865, while at Annapolis, Maryland, Walt Whitman saw “the released prisoners of war . . . coming up from the southern prisons.” Out of “several hundreds” unloaded from a large boat, he saw “only three individuals were able to walk. . . . Can those be men—those little livid brown, ash-streak’d, monkey-looking dwarfs? Are they really not mummified, dwindled corpses? . . . There are deeds, crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is not among them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation.”15
Lurid accounts of Andersonville spread unchecked throughout the country, as did news of a shipwreck and the death of a man who had sprung to William A.’s defense amid the accusations of disloyalty. No doubt reviving old demons of death at sea for William A., his former commander, Gen. George Wright, drowned in the wreck of the steamer Brother Jonathan. On July 19 the schooner hurtled into sharp rocks near Crescent City, California, while carrying the general, his wife, and two hundred passengers to his new command, the Department of Columbia. Wright was widely mourned. California governor Frederick F. Low eulogized the general “to whose loyalty, fidelity and military ability the people of this state are so much indebted for the peace and good order.”16
As part of the “good order” of a country now experiencing some semblance of peace, William A. and his artillerymen left Point San Jose for San Diego to assume command of the San Diego Barracks. Used as an “army supply depot for Southern California . . . it was in a lonely spot called New Town, hardly a town but a failed thirty two block venture of developer William H. Davis. After few want to live in Davis’ Folly, as it came to be known,” Davis donated the land to the U.S. government for an army post and the barracks.17
William A. and his family find themselves living just a few miles from Old Town, then “occupying but a few blocks of 45,557 acres of pueblo lands . . . donated by the King of Spain.” Located along the San Diego River, the community had “not more than sixty-five structures . . . the population . . . evenly divided between Americans and those of Spanish and Mexican descent.”18
Ephraim Morse’s future wife, a Massachusetts schoolteacher named Mary Chase Walker, penned an account of her first visit to Old Town in July 1865, just at the time William A., Abby, and Willie arrived.
Eagerly awaited, this proper New England young woman was hired as the first schoolteacher at the community’s first schoolhouse, just constructed on Mason Street. Promised a salary of sixty-five dollars a month, Mary arrived in the Bay of San Diego on July 5. “It was a most desolate looking landscape,” she wrote. “The hills were brown and barren; not a tree or green thing was to be seen.” She said of Old Town, “Of all the dilapidated, miserable looking places I had ever seen, this was the worst. The buildings were nearly all of adobe, one story in height, with no chimneys. Some of the roofs were covered with tile and some with earth.”19
Mary wrote that on her first night at the local hotel
a donkey came under my window and saluted me with an unearthly bray. The fleas were plentiful and hungry. Mosquitoes were also in attendance. An Indian man did the cooking and an Irish boy waited on me at the table, and also gave me the news of the town. . . . I rented two rooms in the Robinson House for $2.00 a month. My school was composed mostly of Spanish and half-breed children, with a few English and several Americans. I aimed to teach [that] which was most meaningful to them; namely reading, spelling, arithmetic, and how to write letters. At recess the Spanish girls smoked cigaritas and the boys amused themselves by lassoing pigs, hens, etc. The Spanish children were very irregular in their attendance at school on account of so many fiestas and amusements of various kinds. For a week before a bull fight the boys were more or less absent, watching preparations, such as fencing up the streets leading to the plaza. . . . Through two glass doors that opened on a veranda . . . wild Indians, nude with the exception of a cloth about the loins, stalked majestically across the plaza, their long hair plastered up with paste made of grease and ashes.20
Mary’s truant boys, too busy with bullfight preparations to go to school, didn’t bother the townspeople, but some residents did take exception to her invitation to a female mulatto ship stewardess who’d helped her when she was ailing on the long ocean crossing. Some months after she began teaching, Mary saw the young woman eating alone and asked her to dine with her—in public, in a restaurant. According to Ephraim Morse’s diary, “there seems to be quite a combination against the school teacher . . . none of the Californians will . . . send their children [to school] . . . the whole affair is a Secesh move. . . . A resolution was passed unanimously that Miss Walker be dismissed for the reason that a majority of the heads of families refuse to send their children to her any longer . . . the trustees agreed [with the exception of Morse and Robert Israel] . . . but admitted it was a Secesh move.” Morse’s well-known disgust at all things rebel is prominent in his diary entries. Mary was replaced by another teacher. Morse wed Mary later that year. It was a long and happy marriage.21
Another resident of Old Town at the time William A. arrived was the newly elected San Diego district attorney, Godfrey Adolphus Benzen. With a persistent cough that presaged a fatal illness, he was elected to replace the former San Diego district attorney and had fled the chill of San Francisco with his wife, Harriet, hoping the drier, milder climate of San Diego would cure his condition. At first he praised the “delightful, even temperature and climate. I feel I have to stay here or die,” he wrote to a friend, San Francisco attorney Wellington Cleveland Burnett. But even though he was breathing warm air and basking in the sunshine, the sad little town was to him land’s end. Old Town was a “lonely, hard and miserable place.” He reported that the U.S. mail arrived once a week, “wind and weather and the state of rivers permitting,” and that “the steamer comes here once a month, but she carries only Wells Fargo & Co. Express.” Despite his own physical condition, he states that “sickness is hardly known here.” Benzen, a wry observer, notes that “the favorite and uniform way of severing the relations that bind men . . . is generally an ounce or two of lead, or the insertion of a black or white handled bowie knife into the party.” Benzen laments the terrible conditions at the Exchange Hotel, the “laziness and recklessness of the population, a mixture of Indians and Cholos from Mexico, and refugees from justice from everywhere else. We have even no barber, no tailor, no shoemaker, nothing but whiskey shops and Fandango houses.” He sees “hundreds of cows running around most of the time but not a drop of milk . . . nothing here but beef, fresh and dried, beef in the morning, beef at dinner and beef for supper.” And he notes that “if a man is arrested for murder or some other trifle as robbery, etc., he is placed in the county jail by the sheriff, who calls on him three times a day” and drinks with him at a saloon at night. The misery and isolation of Benzen’s wife haunts him just as they do William A.’s Abby, though she is living at the barracks with her husband and Willie. Who, Abby might have thought, could ever live in a place like this? Her husband saw a life there. She did not, could not. Like Harriet Benzen, she wanted to go home. Godfrey A. Benzen died at the age of thirty-one in San Diego. His wife transported his body to San Francisco, where he was buried on August 17.22
*
On August 23, 1865, a military tribunal convened at the U.S. Court of Claims Hall in Washington DC for the trial of Henry Wirz, by order of the president. Norton Parker Chipman, judge advocate general, served as chief prosecutor and helmed the proceedings. Orrin Smith Baker and Louis Schade served as Wirz’s defense counsel. Originally it was decided—and it was the fervent wish of Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, who one month earlier had concluded the trial of the conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination—that Jefferson Davis, confined at Fortress Monroe, be included in Wirz’s trial as a co-conspirator in the Andersonville case.” Much to the anger and disappointment of Holt and Chipman, “his [Davis’s] complicity and that of some of his cabinet officers in the crime of Andersonville” was dismissed as it was “undesirable for many reasons to furnish any pretext for bringing the ex-president to the capital,” wrote Chipman.23 After much debate, the trial began in earnest.
The case against Wirz amounted to thirteen charges, including “murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war,” customs that had been codified by Francis Lieber in General Orders No. 100. Article 71 of the orders states that “who ever intentionally inflicts additional wounds upon an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death, if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the Army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.”24
John H. Winder was posthumously charged with “maliciously, willfully and traitorously . . . between March, 1864 to April 10, 1865, conspiring with Richard B. Winder, Joseph White, W. S. Winder . . . and others unknown to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers[,] . . . starving the prisoners, [and] providing insufficient shelter to over thirty thousand men.” Although prisoners and witnesses testified to John H. Winder’s reputed cruelty and indifference throughout the trial, his death placed him beyond punishment, so it was Wirz—“who did permit to remain in said prison, among the emaciated sick and languishing living, the bodies of the dead”—who was blamed for “malicious intent” and murder.25
Among the 160 witnesses called were former Confederate personnel, doctors, Union officials, and surviving prisoners. The repeated claims of the ailing and belligerent Wirz that he was just following Winder’s orders did little to convince the court. Henry Wirz was the only soldier from the Civil War tried as a war criminal for failing to adhere to the standards in General Orders No. 100, according to the historian Lawrence P. Rockwood. Judge Advocate Chipman “argued a theory of command responsibility,” Rockwood writes.26
According to the prosecutor in the case, “a superior officer cannot order a subordinate to do an illegal act, and if a subordinate [does] obey such an order and disastrous consequences result, the superior and subordinate must answer for it. General Winder could no more command the prisoner to violate the laws of war than could the prisoner do so without orders . . . both are guilty.”27
When Sidney Winder learned that the military tribunal had charged him with war crimes, he fled to Canada. Unable to escape the dragnet, Richard B. Winder was arrested, confined in the Old Capitol Prison, and eventually taken to Richmond, Virginia, to face more charges.
*
The Andersonville trial lumbered on, with avid coverage by newspapers from New York to California. William A. meanwhile relinquished command of San Diego Barracks, per orders of July 22 from Washington, and on October 6 he left for New York City via San Francisco, with Abby and Willie accompanying him. While he was at sea there was constant coverage of the tribunal for Wirz and the trial-in-absentia of his own father. The New York Times reported that John H. Winder “was chief among the conspirators and the actual participators in the crime.” One witness testified that well before Andersonville, “his role as Provost-Marshal was . . . a reign of terror” and that he had “unlimited control of the prison.”28
“Another chapter of horrors!” the Weekly Alta California exclaimed as the daily testimony continued to be reported and excerpted in the press.29
William A., traveling at sea during the trial, would eventually hear that Wirz was found guilty of the most serious charges and hanged on November 10, 1865, at the Old Capitol Prison.
Ten days later, on November 20, William A. and his family arrived in New York City on the Henry Chauncey. Also aboard the ship was someone who had the potential to be his salvation: Maj. Gen. William Starke Rosecrans. Although it is not known how these two officers first met—one being the son of an infamous rebel and the other a flawed and controversial Union general fleeing a contorted and painful career, likely there was a shipboard conversation, some glad-handing, an invitation, an offer to make a fortune. Copper fever was spreading to so many, and although Winder was already deep in the game, he still needed an investor, a partner, despite the general having a tarnished reputation. During the war Rosecrans was initially extolled as the commander of the Army of the Cumberland, with victory after victory making him seemingly invincible. When he blundered in the execution of an order, however, shame and excoriation followed. His mistake allowed Gen. Braxton Bragg’s rebel forces to outnumber Union troops at Chickamauga Creek. Rosecrans was blamed for the Union defeat and ultimately fired by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Rosecrans needed a new victory.
William A. Winder was overdue for a victory as well. The two men needed each other. But first William A. faced an unwelcome interruption when he was posted to Newburgh, New York, to engage in recruiting for Company D, a job with little to no reward. With so many men having been lost in the war and so many disabled, the job of recruiting men who had little reason to rejoin the army, even in peacetime, was a difficult task. Bounties were offered in an attempt to lure literally old and often disabled veterans, as well as new recruits. And there was corruption involved, as “substitute or bounty brokers positioned themselves as indispensable assistants to drafted men,” fanning out across the Northeast to fill quotas. The whole enterprise created a “market in men.” In January 1865, according to the historian Brian P. Luskey, agent George Northrup wrote to the New York firm of Fay & Dalton, saying, “Men is cheep here to Day. 3 years Sub[stitutes] 700 to 800 dollars.” While there is no evidence to suggest that William A. was involved in such shady practices, a new life was calling so that he could remove himself from the recruiting effort.30
On December 12, 1865, William A. was ready to vault into that new life from his post in Newburgh. Perhaps Adj. Gen. Lorenzo Thomas would allow it:
General [Thomas]:
I have the honor to apply for a leave of absence for twelve months to enable me to attend to urgent private business.
I would respectfully state for the information of the Commander in Chief that I have had three months leave since 1848.
Yr. obt. Servt,
W.A. Winder, Captain 3rd Artillery31
The urgent private business was of course to firmly fix his mining interests. A leave of twelve months, though not nearly enough (considering the length of time it would take him to get to California, let alone start anew), might bring William A. a small measure of peace, perhaps even some reward, for this was for him at least a chance to leave the world of war and his blighted family behind. His urgent private business plea is a plea for freedom at the end of a furious, frenzied war that has left the president and at least 620,000 others dead. The former Confederacy lay in ruins; even the Wirz trial, ending with the hanging of John H. Winder’s subordinate, has not silenced cries for vengeance and has not silenced William A.’s uncle, who has vowed to spend his remaining days attempting to clear his brother John H.’s name. Toward that end he has written to Secretary of War Stanton.
“The long continued and atrocious efforts to cast obloquy upon the memory of Gen. John H. Winder has been . . . persistently carried on, . . . suppressing truth and suggesting falsehoods & much of this under official authority,” W. H. Winder wrote, suggesting that he himself be tried for his dead brother’s crimes, with some conditions, for example, that such a trial would be conducted in a court “that shall consist of those members to be named and appointed by you” and that Robert E. Lee should be on the jury. “The court [should] appoint a judge advocate,” as the trial would surely prove the Confederacy was unable to prevent the crimes at Andersonville because the Union government forbid exchanges. This position omitted the fact that the Confederacy had refused to consider black POWs to be legitimate prisoners of war. In addition, W. H. Winder wrote, the same Lincoln government was just as guilty of crimes against their Confederate prisoners. General Winder’s efforts, he continued, “were first wholly to avert suffering . . . to protect them [the prisoners] from wanton injury or injustice.” In offering to stand trial in his late brother’s stead, W. H. Winder claimed, “I am perfectly willing that my life shall be at stake.” He promised his nephew W. S. Winder would return from Canada if such a trial were permitted.32
There is no response. W. S. Winder does not return from Canada until well into the next year. To W. H. Winder, to his brother Charles H., to his aunt and grandmother, William A. will always be the phantasm in blue, the unforgiven enemy, the traitor, the symbol of the Union’s great injustices, and the final fatal wounding of the family name.
As for the much-desired twelve-month leave William A. requested, it was denied by Ulysses S. Grant. “Application not approved,” he wrote.33
In desperation, on December 28, 1865, from Newburgh, New York, knowing he cannot have the twelve months’ leave he really wants, William A. writes to Grant’s assistant adjutant general, Col. Theodore S. Bowers. “I have the honor to apply for a leave of absence for six months, to attend to urgent personal business.” William A. goes on to use the same wording of his previous request for twelve months, writing that he has had “three-months leave since 1848.”34
Ichabod Goodwin made a final attempt to ask for his son-in-law’s leave. Goodwin wrote to Secretary of War Stanton, telling him that William A.’s “interests in California . . . demand his presence in such a situation that his presence on the spot is required for successful development. If this leave is granted,” Goodwin wrote, “I shall consider it as a personal favor to myself.”35
Although Goodwin does not specify the length of the leave he is requesting for his son-in-law, he has tried time and again to help William A., always unsuccessfully. There are two days left before a year riddled with tragedies, victories, and vengeance ends. William A.’s future and his family’s future must, he fervently hoped, be in faraway California, far from the wreckage of war.