"Pursuant to his orders, Dr. Jones, as he tells us, proceeded to Andersonville, and on September 17th received the following pass:
"'Captain—You will permit Surgeon Joseph Jones, who has orders from the Surgeon-General, to visit the sick within the stockade that are under medical treatment. Surgeon Jones is ordered to make certain investigations which may prove useful to his profession.
"'By order of General Winder.
"'Very respectfully,
"'Captain H. Wirz, Commanding Prison.'
"When we remember that the Surgeon-General had been apprised of the wants of that prison, and that he had overlooked the real necessities of the prison, shifting the responsibility upon Dr. White, whom he must have known was totally incompetent, it is hard to conceive with what devilish malice, or criminal devotion to his profession, or reckless disregard of the high duties imposed upon him—I scarcely know which—he could sit down and deliberately pen such a letter of instructions as that given to Dr. Jones. Was it not enough to have cruelly starved and murdered our soldiers? Was it not enough to have tried to wipe out their very memories by burying them in nameless graves? Was it not enough to have instituted a system of medical treatment, the very embodiment of charlatanism? Was it not enough, without adding to the many other diabolical motives, which must have governed the perpetrators of these acts, this scientific object, as deliberate and cold-blooded as one can conceive? The Surgeon-General could quiet his conscience when the matter was laid before him, through Colonel Chandler, by endorsing that it was impossible to send medical officers to take the place of the contract physicians on duty at Andersonville; yet could select at the same time a distinguished gentleman of the medical profession and send him to Andersonville, directing the whole force of surgeons there to render him every assistance, leaving their multiplied duties for that purpose. Why? Not to alleviate the sufferings of the prisoners; not to convey to them one ounce more of nutritious food; to make no suggestions for the improvement of their sanitary condition; for no purpose of this kind, but, as the letter of instruction itself shows, for no other purpose than 'that this great field of pathological investigation may be explored for the benefit of the Medical Department of the Confederate armies!' The Andersonville prison, so far as the Surgeon-General was concerned, was a mere dissecting-room, a clinic institute, to be made tributary to the Medical Department of the Confederate armies."
The denunciations of the Judge-Advocate were leveled not merely against a defenceless prisoner of war, whose papers had been seized and himself dragged as a witness to this crucifixion of his native
