HDQRS. MILITARY DISTRICT OF FORT MONROE, VA.,
June 27, 1866.

General E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General:

GENERAL: I have the honor to forward the report of Surgeon Cooper regarding health of state prisoner Jefferson Davis.

Most respectfully, your obedient servant,

NELSON A. MILES,

Major-General, U. S. Volunteers.

[Inclosure.]

FORT MONROE, VA., June 27, 1866.

Commanding OFFICE MIL. DIST. OF FORT MONROE,

Fort Monroe, Va.:

SIR: I have to report the general health of state prisoner Jefferson Davis as improving slowly but surely. He gives indications of increasing muscular strength in his walk, which is now beginning to be more firm than heretofore. His appetite he states is better and he is evidently mending.

Your obedient servant,

GEO. E. COOPER,

Surgeon, U. S. Army.

WAR DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF MILITARY JUSTICE,

July 3, 1866.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

SIR: Referring to the reports made to yourself by this Bureau in the case of Clement C. Clay on the 6th of December, 1865, in the case of Jefferson Davis on the 18th of January, 1866, and in the cases of the said Clay and Davis jointly on the 20th of March, 1866, I have the honor to submit for your consideration the following statements:

It will be remembered that on the trial of the assassins of the late President it was alleged it the charges and specifications that this crime had been committed under the incitement and encouragement of the said Jefferson Davis, Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, and other conspirators named, as combining and confederating together for that purpose; and this declaration the court found to be true, and the opinion has been heretofore expresed by me that this finding was justified by the evidence adduced. Strong, however, as was the proof that led the court to the conclusion which they thus reached, I had reason to believe, from the knowledge of its details acquired in the course of the trial, that yet more conclusive testimony bearing upon the complicity of the rebel leaders, named in the murder of the President, existed, and hence as the head of the Bureau of Military Justice I felt in my duty to pursue the investigation further. The first opportunity enabling me to do so presented itself under the following circumstances:

Among the witnesses examined on behalf of the Government before the military commission which tried the assassins was a man calling himself Sanford Conover. Under this name he gave important testimony on that trial; testimony, however, I may remark, which did not bear on the question of the guilt of the parties on trial as actually concerned in the perpetration of the murder of the President and the attempted murder of the Secretary of State, but related only to the