gation should result in ascertaining that these charges (or any of them) were true, the committeee desired, as far as might be in their power and as far as they could influence the Congress, to remove the evills complained of and to conform to the most humane spirit of civilization; and if these charges were unfounded and false, they deemed it a sacred duty, without delay, to present to the Confederate Congress and people and to the public eye of the enlightened world, a vindication of their coutry, and to relieve her authorities from the injurious slanders brought against her by her enemies. With these views we have taken a considerable amount of testimony bearing on the subject. We have sought to obtain witnesses whose position or duties made them familiar with the facts testified to, and whose characters entitled them to full credit. We have not hesitated to examine Northern prisoners of war upon points and experience specially within their knowledge. We now present the testimony taken by us, and submit a report of facts and inference fairly deducible from the evidence, from the admissions of our enemies, and from public records of undoubted authority.

FACTS AS TO SICK AND WOUNDED PRISONERS.

First in order, your committee will notice the charge, contained both in "Report Numbers 67" and in the 'sanitary" publicatiion, founded on the appearance and condition of the sick prisoners sent from Richmond to Annapolis and Baltimore about the last of April, 1864. These are the men, some of whom form the subjects of the photographs with which the U. S. Congressional committee have adorned their report. The disingenuous attempt is made in both these publications to produce the impression that these sick and emaciated men were fair representatives of the general state of the prisoners held by the South, and that all their prisoners were being rapidly reduced to the same state, by starvation and cruelty, and by neglect, ill-treatment, and denial of proper food, stimulants, and medicines in the Confederate hospitals. Your committee take pleasure in saying that not only is this charge proved to be wholly false, but the evidence ascertains facts as to the Confederate hospitals, in which Northern prisoners of war are treated, highly creditab;e to the authorities which established them, and to the surgeons and their aids who have so humanely conducted them. The facts are simply these:

The Federal authorities, in violation of the cartel, having for a long time refused exchange of prisoners, finaly consented to a partial exchange of the sick and wounded on both sides. Accordingly, a number of such prisoners were sent from the hospitals in Richmond. General directions had been given that none should be sent except those who might be expected to endure the removal and passage with safety to their lives; but in some cases the surgeons were induced to depart from this rule by the entreaties of some officers and men in the last stages of emaciation, suffering not only with excessive debility, but with "nostalgia," or homesickness, whose cases were regarded as desperate, and who could not live if they remained, and might possbly improve if carried home. Thus it happened that some very sick and emaciated men were carried to Annapolis, but theirillness was not the result of ill-treatment or neglect. Such cases might be found in any large hospital, North or South. They might even be found in private families, where the sufferer would be surrounded by every comfort that love could bestow. Yet these are the cases which, with hideous vilation of decency, the Northern committee have paraded in pictures and photographs. They have taken their own sick and enfeebled soldiers;