Set against the backdrop of the Civil War and its aftermath, War
Criminals's Son by Civil War scholar Jane Singer brings to life
hidden aspects of the conflict through the sweeping sage of the
infamous Confederate Winder family and it's first born son, who
shattered family ties to stand with the Union. General John H.
Winder was the hard-handed provost martial of Richmond and
subsequent commander of all prisons in the Confederate capital
--including the prisoner of war death camp, Andersonville
Prison--who had a reputation of being a cruel tyrant who brutalized
his prisoners, even his own people. When he gives his son, William
Andrew Winder, the order to come south and fight, or desert or
commit suicide rather than ally with the Union, William goes to the
White House, swearing his alligiance to President Lincoln, and is
sent to command Alcatraz, a fortess-turned-Civil War prison. As the
war dragged on and men were dying daily in his father's keep,
William treated his prisoners humanely in spite of being repeatedly
accused of disloyalty and treason. Though General John Winder died
before he could be brought to justice, his subordinate, Henry Wirz,
was charged with war crimes and executed after his trial, the first
war crime trial by military commission in American history. Haunted
by his father's villainy, William is sent into a lifelong exile, on
a mission to do good at all costs. We meet the politicians,
pioneers, traitors, and generals who blazed through William's life
until he stops at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, where
alone, old, and ailing, he vowed to better the lot of the Native
Americans. In War Criminal's Son, Jane Singer reexamines the
horrors of Andersonville Prison and the command of Alcatraz with
new, unpublished research and family materials, bringing to life a
family and a country at war, with the universal themes of loyalty,
family shame, and reclamation of lost honor in the face of
unspeakable cruelty.
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