Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/355

 Prison Life of Jefferson Dans. 343

position to inflict upon the American name an ineffaceable brand of disgrace by the wanton and wicked torture of an invalid lying a helpless prisoner in the strongest fortress of the Union. The re- port of Post Surgeon Cooper is all the more damning that it is per- fectly calm and formal in tone, and that it deals only with the strictly medical aspect of the investigation, which its author was ordered to make. We hear nothing, for example, from Surgeon Cooper of the stories which have been repeated over and over again, in all varieties of tone, but with singular consistency in the main details, by correspondence of all shades of opinion in regard to the petty insults heaped upon Jefferson Davis in the routine of his daily life.

MILITARY ORDERS CONDEMNED.

" The refusal by express military orders of the common courtesies and simplest decencies of life to a man who for four years wielded the resources of eleven belligerent States against the whole power of the Union, while it would be unspeakably disgraceful to the authorities perpetrating it, might be of very little consequence to the health or the spirits of the captive at whom it was aimed. A man of strong and self-sustained character might be annoyed, in- deed, at finding himself in the hands of persecutors so paltry, but they would scarcely be able to disturb his digestion or his sleep. The American people, should the stories prove to be true, will have a serious account to settle with the functionaries who could thus mis- represent and belittle them in the eyes of Christendom and of history. But the crying result of Surgeon Cooper's report, the result of which demands the most prompt and emphatic expression possible of the popular indignation, if we are not to be written down all of us as accomplices in the vile transactions which it reveals, is this, that the health of Jefferson Davis, which was notoriously poor at the time of his capture, has been systematically broken down by a cruel and deliberate perseverance in applying to him one of the worst tortures known to humanity. Here are the fatal words in which the truth is told." Then quoting a part of Surgeon Cooper's report, which we have given above, the editor goes on to say: " In a very minute and horrible treatise on the tortures practiced by the Inquisition, an Italian writer tells us that a certain grand Inquisition at Rome, famous for skill at jangling God's work in the human body, pronounced this special form of torment to be ' the most ex- quisite and victorious of all he had ever essayed.' No picture in all the dread gallery of imperial madness and misery which Suetonius