that before the next Centennial the people of the South will have the vindication which the records of the Confederacy afford. The strongest proof of the charges made against the Confederate Government which has yet been produced from those records is the
REPORT OF COLONEL D. T. CHANDLER,
which was introduced at the Wirz trial, and upon which the Radical press has been ringing the charges ever since. It has been recently thus put in a malignant reply, in a partisan sheet, to Mr. Davis' letter to Mr. Lyons:
On the 5th day of August, 1864, Colonel Chandler, an officer of the Confederate army, made a report to the Rebel War Department regarding the condition of Andersonville prison. He had made one six months before, but no attention had been paid to it. In his last report he said:
"My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the officer in the command of the post, Brigadier-General J. H. Winder, and the substitution in his place of some one who unites both energy and good judgment with some feeling of humanity and consideration for the welfare and comfort (so far as it is consistent with their safe-keeping) of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control; some one who at least will not advocate deliberately and in cold blood the propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number has been sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangement suffice for their accommodation; who will not consider it a matter of self-laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade, a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and which is a disgrace to civilization, the condition of which he might, by the exercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited means at his command, have considerably improved.
"D. T. Chandler,
"Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General."
This report was forwarded to the Secretary of War with the following endorsement:
"Adjutant and Inspector-General's Office,
August 18, 1864.
"Respectfully submitted to the Secretary of War. The condition of the prison at Andersonville is a reproach to us as a nation. The Engineer and Ordnance Departments were applied to, and authorized their issue, and I so telegraphed to General Winder. Colonel Chandler's recommendations are coincided in.
"By order of General Cooper.
"R. H. Chilton,
"Assistant Adjutant and Inspector-General."
