It's a very strange web of little threads that wind their way through the South in the days before, during and after that war. It's just passing strange that the ones who were hung were not very large players in the game (so to speak). We know Wirtz was just an offering and probably a trade off for Davis or Lee. He was reaping the wrath because he was the commandant at a post he had not really been at very long. The condition at that post could not have been improved. They tried.
Simple reason should have spared him. Of course there was no accounting held for those who were commanding the post at the northern prisons.
Mary Surratt was a victim of circumstance too. She had to have known something but do we know just how much? I haven't seen the movie yet. I hadn't heard a review from anyone with an opinion I'd trust. Now, I'll watch it. What little I've read on her was inconclusive on her real knowldege of the planned event that wreaked havoc on us because of misguided loyalty.

I hope the soldier was not just tossing his cookies because of the heat but because hanging a woman was just wrong. No one looked into the women workers from the mill at Roswell did they? It was not spoken of. The blood soaked land wasn't enough for them either. They had to have bodies to place blame to so they could appease the masses. Sort of like the French. I hope Madame LaFrarge wasn't in the observation gallery at the hanging and doing her knitting to kill the time.
I'm also that big ol blade wasn't used. Nasty piece of work that thing was. Someone actually had one here in town but it was never used.

We have the other parts to the puzzles that made up the commanders and such of the Armies. We know because WE were taught at least basic American History and because we are here, I'd guess we still find it interesting. Those who survived the war and did not get out of the Army went on to other duties. Some of those were to orchestrate another holocaust. It had been put on hold because the South would not be allowed to remove itself from a union it was no longer wishing to be part of. Guess they didn't understand that history would not look on their actions with the Indians as kindly as they did their actions toward the South. Sadly, we are the last of the 'information' highway on things like that. Those coming behind us are not interested and they will be the downfall of a nation that could have survived in harmony with another had the 'another' been allowed to leave in peace.

Pam