hoping that this meeting will be more largely attended than any preceding one, I desire to remain, with best wishes and kind. regards,

Very truly and sincerely yours,

DEERING J. ROBERTS, M. D., Secretary.

208 Sixth Ave., North, Nashville, Tenn.

The Eighth Reunion of the Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederacy will be held in the Scottish Rite Cathedral, NW Corner 6th and Walnut Streets, Louisville, Ky., June 14, 15, and 16, 1905.

Medical Committee: Frank C. Wilson, M. D., Chairman; Frank T. Fort, M. D., Secretary.

Committee of Arrangements: R. Alexander Bate, M. D., Chairman; W. O. Green, M. D., Secretary; Irvin Abell, M. D.; Turner Anderson, M. D.; Jas. B. Bullitt, M. D.; John G. Cecil, M. D.; S. G. Dabney, M. D.; T. C. Evans, M. D.; T. A. Hays, M. D.; J. B. Marvin, M. D.; S. J. Meyers, M. D.; Wm. B. Pusey, M. D.; W. O. Roberts, M. D.; Vernon Robins, M. D.; P. C. Simpson, M. D.; R. T. Yoe, M. D.

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS DURING THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES 1861 1865.*

BY C. H. TEBAULT, M. D., SURGEON-GENERAL, U. C. V.,

NEW ORLEANS, LA.

To the President and Members of the Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederacy, Nashville Reunion, June 15, 16, and 17, 1904.

COMRADES: We have met in Tennessee-brave and patriotic Tennessee, and this time at her great, prosperous, and beau

*Read at the seventh annual meeting of the Association of Medical Officers of the Army and Navy of the Confederacy, June, 1904.

tiful Capital City, Nashville, to make our contributions as Confederate surgeons and assistant surgeons, to history.

For this Reunion I submit the following historical report, and at its very threshold, it is my great pleasure to state, that I have in all my investigations discovered no instance in which a Federal surgeon or assistant surgeon was responsible for any of the unfortunate facts here immediately ensuing, but on the contrary always they were found doing their best endeavors in the cause of humanity. I now proceed with my historical contribution for this occasion.

The following instructive and historical correspondence relates to the treatment of prisoners of war, in the war between the States, 1861-65, a subject imperfectly understood and frequently misrepresented. It is taken from "The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason, Confederate States Commissioner to England, By His Daughter, 1903," and is just from the press:

"To the Editor of the London Times:

"As part of the political history of the times, the correspondence I transmit herewith may have sufficient significance to call for its publication. I submit it to you accordingly for a place in your columns. J. M. MASON, "24 Upper Seymour Street, Portman Square, London.

I am, sir, etc.,

666

BOSTON, December 15th, 1864.

"MR. J. M. MASON, London.

66 6

SIR: I take the liberty of sending you a pamphlet published by the United States Sanitary Commission on the treatment of Northern prisoners at the South. I beg you will look through it.

"I send it to you, sir, believing that you yourself are not aware of this state of things, and that you occupy a position which may enable you indirectly to ameliorate this appalling suffering.

"I am, sir, very respectfully,

"Your obedient servant,

"65 Marlborough Street, Boston, Mass.'

"A. COOLIDGE.

"A. COOLIDGE, Esq.,

46

"LONDON, January 25th, 1865.

Boston, Massachusetts.

SIR: I have your letter of December 15th, with the volume accompanying it, entitled a 'Narrative of Privation and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities. Being a Report of a Commission of Inquiry Appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission.'

"In your letter you 'beg' that I will look through it,' and say that you sent it to me, believing that I am not aware of this state of things,' and may have it in my power indirectly to ameliorate this appalling suffering.' I am thus to infer from your letter that you think the contents of the volume are entitled to my credence. I have looked through it, and have looked also at the pictures that adorn it, which are alleged to be photographic illustrations of the emaciated forms of certain of the prisoners returned from the Confederate States. This form of pictorial literature would seem almost peculiar to the country to which you belong, and, as would appear, is known alike to its humanitarians and statesmen; for it so happens that about the time the volume of the Sanitary Commission came from you I received from another quarter another volume of like grade, and prepared for a like purpose, entitled 'Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War-Fort Pillow Massacre - Returned Prisoners,' a document issued by the Congress of the United States; and this volume, too, is adorned with like pictorial illustrations. As I understand, in the vocabulary of your country, the class of literature to which both of these volumes belong, is called the 'sensation style,' and is adapted to that class of readers whose convictions are to be reached by fraudulent practicings on their intellect. As noted examples of similar productions, I will recall to you'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' by Mrs. Stowe, one of your countrywomen, and a book, the title of which I have forgotten, but familiarly known in the circles of your country as 'Helper's Book," both illustrated by pictorial sketchings. But I am to deal now

with the volume of the 'Sanitary Commission,' the others, having each done the dirty work of their day, are laid by to serve with the volume in hand as authentic materials for future history by some New England historian.

"None can read the work of the Sanitary Commission without seeing that it was written for a very different purpose than that of ameliorating by its labors the suffering and privation ascribed in it to prisoners of war in the Confederate States; nor will the character of the gentlemen, whatever that may be, who give it their sanction as a committee, with the long array of titles annexed to their respective names, rescue it from such imputation. Its true character is that of a political work, and of the lowest type, intended to excite and inflame the popular mind at the North by false and exaggerated pictures of the privations and sufferings of Northern soldiers held as prisoners at the South. The narrative carries with it intrinsic evidence that it is from a pen long practiced in the unscrupulous school to which it belongs; indeed, the writer seems to have considered it necessary to account in some way for the peculiar style of a work professedly of pure humanity. He calls it, at page 24, the dramatic development of the inquiry' of the Sanitary Commission — in which all the salient points of the evidence,' with the results of their own observations are incorporated together. In other words, the evidence and the so-styled results of observation were to be grouped and colored for political effect.

"Now, on the subject of the treatment of prisoners, either at the North or South, I have no information but that which comes to us through the public prints; but I am fully aware that the condition of prisoners of war, wherever they may be, must of necessity be attended with privation and suffering, and necessarily more so in the South, whatsoever care can be extended to them, from the atrocious manner in which the war is waged by those who conduct your armies in my country.

"Your Sanitary Commission complains that they are stinted in food; that it is bad in quality; are not sufficiently clothed, and, when sick, they are not treated with sufficient and proper medicine; and this in the face of the notorious fact that wherever your

armies penetrate they are ordered to burn and destroy everything that contributes to the food and raiment of man an order most relentlessly obeyed; and, as if to add to the infamy of such practices, all medicines, surgical instruments, and whatever could minister to the sick or wounded in the hospitals, your Government has declared and treated as contraband of war, with orders that they be destroyed wherever found orders that are invariably obeyed. Whole regions of the Southern country have thus been ruthlessly laid waste. As a single example let me recall the recent instances in the Valley of Shenandoah, a country teeming with population and of unrivaled fertility.

"In its late retreat your army devastated the entire country through which it passed, its General boasting in his official report that he had burned in his progress TWO THOUSAND BARNS filled with the harvesting of the year; that he had burned all the mills in that whole tract of country, destroyed all the factories of cloth, and killed or driven off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute to human sustenance, in an extent of country some sixty miles long and from thirty to forty wide. Cut off to a great extent by your blockade from the importation of foreign salt, it is the boast of your generals that military parties are organized to destroy our salt factories wherever found, either on the seaboard or in the interior; and very recently we have accounts exultantly presented, of destruction done at Saltville, in Southwestern Virginia, extending to the breaking up of the kettles used in its manufacture, and despoiling the salt wells. There is but one step of greater infamy against your fellow-men - I should not say greater, for it is the equal only — and that would be to poison the water in the streams. In the face of such notorious facts your Sanitary Commission' has the effrontery to complain to the world that the prisoners of war in the South are stinted in food, badly clothed, their health impaired from want of salt, and death frequent in the hospitals from the failure to supply the proper medicines.

"I desire to say to you, then, that I can give no credit to the report of your Sanitary Commission. Little as partisan testimony is proverbially entitled to belief, it is still less so in the hands