mission of inquiry appointed by "The United States Sanitary Commission."
This body is alleged to consist of Valentine Mott, M. D., Edward Delafield, M. D., Gouverneur Morris Wilkins, Esq., Ellerslie Wallace, M. D., Hon. J. J. Clarke Hare, and Rev. Treadwell Walden. Although these persons are not of sufficient public importance and weight to give authority to their publications, yet your committee have deemed it proper to notice it in connection with the "Report No. 67," before mentioned; because the Sanitary Commission has been understood to have acted, to a great extent, under the control and by the authority of the United States Government, and because their report claims to be founded on evidence taken in solemn form.
THEIR SPIRIT AND INTENT.
A candid reader of these publications will not fail to discover that, whether the statements they make be true or not, their spirit is not adapted to promote a better feeling between the hostile powers. They are not intended for the humane purpose of ameliorating the condition of the unhappy prisoners held in captivity. They are designed to inflame the evil passions of the North; to keep up the war spirit among their own people; to represent the South as acting under the dominion of a spirit of cruelty, inhumanity and interested malice, and thus to vilify her people in the eyes of all on whom these publications can work. They are justly characterized by the Hon. James M. Mason as belonging to that class of literature called the "sensational," a style of writing prevalent for many years at the North, and which, beginning with the writers of newspaper narratives and cheap fiction, has gradually extended itself, until it is now the favored mode adopted by medical professors, judges of courts and reverend clergymen, and is even chosen as the proper style for a report by a committee of their Congress.
PHOTOGRAPHS.
Nothing can better illustrate the truth of this view than the "Report No. 67," and its appendages. It is accompanied by eight pictures or photographs, alleged to represent United States prisoners of war returned from Richmond in a sad state of emaciation and suffering. Concerning these cases your committee will have other remarks, to be presently submitted. They are only alluded to now to show that this report does really belong to the "sensational" class of literature, and that, prima facie, it is open to the same criticism to which the yellow covered novels, the "narratives of noted highwaymen," and the "awful beacons" of the Northern book stalls should be subjected.
The intent and spirit of this report may be gathered from the following extract: "The evidence proves, beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of the Rebel authorities, deliberately and persistently practiced for a long time past, to subject
