The press to the rescue.
The New York World of May 24, 1866, in an editorial under that head, says:It is no longer a matter of newspaper rumor that the treatment which Jefferson Davis has received during his incarceration in Fortress Monroe, has been such as to break down his constitution and to put him, after twelve months of protracted suffering, in imminent peril of death. Upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury the President of the United States recently ordered the post surgeon to make a careful and thorough examination of Mr. Davis' health. That report has been made and is now published. It cannot be read by any honorable and right-minded American, no matter what his sectional feelings or his political opinions may be, without a sickening sensation of shame for his country and a burning flush of indignation against the persons who have prostituted their official [343] position to inflict upon the American name an ineffaceable brand of disgrace by the wanton and wicked torture of an invalid lying a helpless prisoner in the strongest fortress of the Union. The report of Post Surgeon Cooper is all the more damning that it is perfectly calm and formal in tone, and that it deals only with the strictly medical aspect of the investigation, which its author was ordered to make. We hear nothing, for example, from Surgeon Cooper of the stories which have been repeated over and over again, in all varieties of tone, but with singular consistency in the main details, by correspondence of all shades of opinion in regard to the petty insults heaped upon Jefferson Davis in the routine of his daily life.
