difficult to get any one at all familiar with the high character of General Howell Cobb to believe the assertion that he refused to do anything to mitigate the condition of things at Andersonville "in the face of outspoken reports from the surgeons in charge." We gave the famous Chandler report, and accompanied it with letters from Hon. R. G. H. Kean, former Chief Clerk of the Confederate War Department, and ex-Secretary Seddon, showing conclusively that so far from failing to notice the statements in reference to Andersonville which Colonel Chandler made, not only did the Adjutant-General and the Assistant Secretary of War put the strong endorsements upon the report which we quoted, but the Secretary (Mr. Seddon) at once demanded of General Winder an explanation, which he gave, emphatically denying Colonel Chandler's charges—and that Colonel Chandler's request for a court of inquiry would have resulted in the fullest investigation, but that the active campaign then in progress rendered it utterly impracticable to hold the court until the matter was, unfortunately, ended by the death of General Winder. We showed, moreover, that Mr. Seddon at once, on the reception of the Chandler report, sent Judge Ould down the rive, under flag of truce, to say to the Federal authorities, in substance: You have broken the cartel—you refuse now to stand by your own proposition to disregard all former paroles, and exchange man for man of prisoners actually in hand—you have refused my proposition that surgeons from each side be allowed to visit and provide for the prisoners—you refuse to exchange even the sick and wounded—you have declined my proposition to allow us to purchase hospital stores and medicines for the use of your own prisoners, paying you for them in cotton, tobacco or gold, and allowing you to send your own agents to distribute them, and now I tell you again that your men in our prisons are dying by the hundred from causes which are utterly beyond our control, and I am authorized by my Government to propose that if you will send transportation to Savannah we will at once deliver into your hands, without equivalent, from ten to fifteen thousand of your suffering soldiers. We affirmed, moreover (what we are prepared to prove), that so far from Mr. Davis' making the Chandler report the ground of the promotion of General Winder, he did not see the report at the time, and never even heard of its existence (he was in a casemate at Fortress Monroe when it was produced at the Wirz trial), until some one told him of it in 1875.
Judge Advocate Chipman labored to connect Mr. Davis with
