During the Civil War, over 13,000 Union soldiers died at Andersonville Prison. After the war, the prison keeper, Captain Henry Wirz, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Later, the Georgia Division of the "United Daughters of the Confederacy" challenged the facts as they were recorded in the trial of Wirz, proclaiming him a martyr and erecting a monument in his honor.
These events precipitated a written request from the National Association of Union Prisoners of War to General Chipman to publish the evidence reported at the trial of Captain Wirz. The inquest was so comprehensive and the evidence so indisputable that the author concludes that the faithful historian need never hesitate in portraying the suffering of Union soldiers, or of affixing the responsibility where it rightly belongs.