of Union soldiers having been
wounded by such barbarous missiles as these from the Confederate side.

I have very carefully examined those valuable quarto volumes issued by
the United States Medical Department and entitled "The Medical and
Surgical History of the Rebellion," and as yet have failed to find any
case of wound or death reported as having occurred by an explosive or
poisoned musket ball, excepting that on page 91 of volume II of said
work there is a table of four thousand and two (4,002) cases of gunshot
wounds of the scalp, _two_ (2) of which occurred by _explosive musket
balls_. To which army these two belonged does not appear.

A letter addressed to the Surgeon-General of the United States by the
writer on this subject, has elicited the reply that the Medical
Department is without any information as to wounds by such missiles. I
do not find such projectiles noticed as preserved in the museum of the
Surgeon-General's Department, where rifle projectiles taken from wounds
are usually deposited.

In the _second_ place, the manufacture, purchase, issue or use of such
projectiles for firearms by the Confederate States, is positively denied
by the Confederate authorities, as the following correspondence will
show:

BEAUVOIR, MISS., 28th June, 1879.

My Dear Sir-- ... In reply to your inquiries as to the use of
explosive or poisoned balls by the troops of the Confederate States,
I state as positively as one may in such a case that the charge has
no foundation in truth. Our Government certainly did not manufacture
or import such balls, and if any were captured from the enemy, they
could probably only have been used in the captured arms for which
they were suited. I heard occasionally that the enemy did use
explosive balls, and others prepared so as to leave a copper ring in
the wound, but it was always spoken of as an atrocity beneath
knighthood and abhorrent to civilization. The slander is only one of
many instances in which our enemy have committed or attempted crimes
of which our people and their Government were incapable, and then
magnified the guilt by accusing us of the offences they had
committed....

Believe me, ever faithfully yours,
JEFFERSON DAVIS.

General Josiah Gorgas, the Chief of Ordnance of the Confederate
States--now of the U