Military orders Condemned.
“The refusal by express military orders of the common courtesies and simplest decencies of life to a man who for four years wielded the resources of eleven belligerent States against the whole power of the Union, while it would be unspeakably disgraceful to the authorities perpetrating it, might be of very little consequence to the health or the spirits of the captive at whom it was aimed. A man of strong and self-sustained character might be annoyed, indeed, at finding himself in the hands of persecutors so paltry, but they would scarcely be able to disturb his digestion or his sleep. The American people, should the stories prove to be true, will have a serious account to settle with the functionaries who could thus misrepresent and belittle the men the eyes of Christendom and of history. But the crying result of Surgeon Cooper's report, the result of which demands the most prompt and emphatic expression possible of the popular indignation, if we are not to be written down all of us as accomplices in the vile transactions which it reveals, is this, that the health of Jefferson Davis, which was notoriously poor at the time of his capture, has been systematically broken down by a cruel and deliberate perseverance in applying to him one of the worst tortures known to humanity. Here are the fatal words in which the truth is told.” Then quoting a part of Surgeon Cooper's report, which we have given above, the editor goes on to say:In a very minute and horrible treatise on the tortures practiced by the Inquisition, an Italian writer tells us that a certain grand Inquisition at Rome, famous for skill at jangling God's work in the human body, pronounced this special form of torment to be “the most exquisite and victorious of all he had ever essayed.” No picture in all the dread gallery of imperial madness and misery which Suetonius [344] has bequeathed to us is so fearful as his portraiture of Caligula roaming through the vast halls of the palace of the Caesars night after night with bloodshot eyes, sleepless, and driven on by sleeplessness to insanity. And in what light are we, this triumphant American people of the nineteenth century, to appear before posterity weighted with the damning image of our most conspicuous enemy thus tied by us to the stake and tortured by us with worse than Indian tortures? We make and seek to make no party issues with any man or men on this matter. It is the honor, the humanity, the Christianity, the civilization of the American republic which are involved.
