“ Dear Sir—I have had the honor to receive your letter of yesterday, enclosing resolutions adopted by the Committee of Safety for the town of Wilmington, expressive of their thanks for the arms which it was in my power to furnish for their defence. In the distribution of the arms, &c., at my disposal, it has afforded me pleasure to provide, as far as possible, for the defence, not only of my own State, but of all the Confederate States, engaged as we are in a common cause for the maintenance of rights and institutions dear to us all. ”

“ But of our cool, gallant, noble brigade commander, it may not be out of place to speak. Never had the brigade been better handled, and never has it done better service on the field of battle.
There was scarcely an officer or man in the command whose attention was not attracted by the cool and handsome bearing of General Garnett, who, totally devoid of excitement or rashness, rode immediately in rear of his advancing line, endeavoring by his personal efforts and by the aid of his staff to keep his line well closed and dressed. ”

“ General Lee reached the part of the field where Hill was about the close of the action. Upon ascertaining the facts, and seeing a brilliant and decisive victory within his grasp, as all of us thought, he determined to give battle at that point. To have withdrawn without fighting would have been exceedingly dispiriting to the troops that had been engaged; and I venture to affirm that not a man of the entire force present lay down that night with any other expectation than that the next day would witness a crushing defeat of Meade's army. ”

“ But the question forces itself upon us why have these sufferings been so long continued? Why have not the prisoners of war been exchanged, and thus some of the darkest pages of history spared to the world? In the answer to this question must be found the test of responsibility for all the sufferings, sickness and heart-broken sorrow that have visited more than eighty thousand prisoners within the past two years. On this question, your committee can only say that the Confederate authorities have always desired a prompt and fair exchange of prisoners. ”

“ The future historian, to do justice to our cause and conduct, will require the material which can only be furnished by contemporaneous witnesses, and a great debt is due to the Society, and especially to you, for what you have done and are doing to save, while there is yet time, the scattered records and unwritten recollections of the events of the war against the Southern States. ”

“ In a word, we desire to make our Papers indispensable to all who would know the truth concerning our great struggle for constitutional freedom.
But we earnestly beg that our friends will help us by sending papers of interest on any thing concerning the war, and by securing for us subscribers to our Monthly.
The Burning of Twenty-seven Boxes of Confederate Documents in North Carolina the other day, which those in charge of them had intended to send to our Archives, is but another sad illustration of the danger of allowing valuable material to remain in private hands. ”

“ CRUELTY TO CONFEDERATE PRISONERS AT THE NORTH.
In reviewing the charges of cruelty, harshness and starvation to prisoners, made by the North, your committee have taken testimony as to the treatment of our own officers and soldiers in the hands of the enemy. It gives us no pleasure to be compelled to speak of suffering inflicted upon our gallant men; but the self-laudatory style in which the "Sanitary Commission" have spoken of their prisons, makes it proper that the truth should be presented. ”

“ Davis was in a distant prison and in ignorance of what was going on, the effort utterly failed. Equally futile was every other effort to connect Mr. Davis with the responsibility for the sufferings at Andersonville, until, in despair of any other evidence, an attempt was made to bribe poor Wirz by offerring him, a short time before his execution, a reprieve if he would implicate Mr. Davis. He indignantly replied: "Mr. Davis had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else, even to save my life." ”

“ My reasons for this recommendation are that no colonel in the brigade has been as deserving. He is a gallant soldier, a daring and skilful officer, and is throughly identified with the brigade as its leader. As a partizan he has no superior. While others not in the brigade might command a higher tribute for ability and military genius, yet when I consider the claims of the Colonel for this promotion, and the gallant service he has rendered, I am constrained to ask that he receive this merited reward. ”

“ The cavalry followed the rear of the army to Leesburg, and crossing the Potomac on the afternoon of the 5th, Lee's brigade in advance, moved to Poolesville. He encountered at that point a body of the enemy's cavalry, which he attacked, capturing the greater portion. The reception of our troops in Maryland was attended with the greatest demonstrations of joy, and the hope of enabling the inhabitants to throw off the tyrant's yoke stirred every Southern heart with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. ”

“ The Confederate Government had no military organization, and, save the patriotic hearts of gallant men, had little on which to rely for the defence of their country. The experience and special knowledge of General Cooper was, under these circumstances, of incalculable value. If he would consent, while his juniors led armies in the field, to devote himself to the little attractive labors of the Adjutant-General's office—if he would consent? ”

“ To such a man, a life spent in the army could not fail to have had its antagonisms and its friendships; yet when officers were to be selected for special duties, to be appointed in staff corps, or to be promoted into new regiments, where qualifications were alone to be regarded, I never, in four years of constant consultation, saw Cooper manifest prejudice, or knew him to seek favors for a friend, or to withhold what was just from one to whom he bore reverse relations. ”

“ On the contrary, the whole of these papers go to show that the prison hospital at Andersonville was on the same footing precisely with every hospital for sick or wounded Confederates, and that the scarcity of medicines and hospital stores, of which there was such constant complaint, proceeded from causes which our authorities could not control.
But we can make the case still stronger. Whose fault was it that the Confederacy was utterly unable to supply medicines for the hospitals of either friend or foe? Most unquestionably the responsibility rests with the Federal authorities. ”

“ At the beginning of the war I occupied the position of chief of staff to General Ewell, and bear too much love for his heroic memory to say more than that I believe a little more marching, perhaps a little more fighting, would have given us the coveted position, and that in such an event the battle of Gettysburg would have had another name, and possibly another result—who knows? ”

“ My Dear Sir—I am gratified to know that you have undertaken to make a record of the services and virtues of a man than whom none has higher claims upon the regard of all who loved the Confederacy. No one presents an example more worthy of the emulation of the youth of his country. My personal acquaintance with General Cooper began at the time when he was associated with Mr. Poinsett in the War Office, where his professional knowledge was made available to the Secretary, in those army details of which a civilian was necessarily but little informed. ”

“ Could a piece of ordnance be made to sweep a battle field in a moment of time, there soon would be no battle field, or could a blast of wind loaded with deadly mephitic malaria in one night, sent like the destroying angel in Sanacherib's army, or the earth be made to open in a thousand places with the fire of death for destruction, as in the days of Korah, Dothan and Abiram, to which this system tends, then and then only may we beat the sword into the ploughshare, the spear into the pruning-hook, and nations learn wars no more. ”

“ And we are exceedingly fortunate in having at the South an artist whose busts of Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Maury, Johnston, and others of our great leaders, display genius of the highest order, whose recumbent figure of Lee has scarcely an equal and no superior in any work of art in this country, and whose studio has become a Mecca for all true Confederates. ”

“ To set down and content ourselves with a mere defensive policy, would be to await an inevitable collapse of our cause, sooner or later, by the gradual process of attrition and exhaustion. The only hope for us, then, was to strike such a blow as would alarm the North and shake its faith in the financial credit of the Federal government, and its ability to conduct the war to a successful issue. ”

“ The military genius implanted by nature in a Cæsar, a Hannibal, a Wellington, or a Napoleon, might never have burst forth with such overpowering light as to dazzle with its rays a wondering world, had not the human tools with which they worked been so formed, so fashioned, as to be perfectly flexible when placed in their hands by some almost hidden but powerful agent, who, grasping the subject with a master's mind, adapted the various departments of war in such a way as to work harmoniously together, and to be most effective. ”

“ When in 1861 a part of the Southern States, in the exercise of their sovereignty, passed ordinances of secession from the Union, and organized a separate Confederacy, General Cooper was at the head of the corps, in which a large part of his life had been passed. This office was one for which he was peculiarly qualified, and which was best suited to his taste. He was a native of a Northern State; his sole personal relation with the South was that he was the husband of a granddaughter of George Mason, of Virginia—Virginia, not yet belonging to the Confederate States. ”

“ And what shall we say of General Grant and his splendid army of two hundred thousand hale, hearty, well equipped men, who, in the campaign of 1864, were beaten on every field by forty thousand of these "emaciated and reduced" creatures, until, after losing over a third of their men, they were compelled to skulk behind their fortifications at Petersburg, and absolutely refused "the open field and fair fight," which Lee and his "ragamuffins" offered them at every point from the Wilderness to Petersburg? ”

“ Soon after this cartel was established, the policy of the enemy in seducing negro slaves from their masters, arming them and putting white officers over them to lead them against us, gave rise to a few cases in which questions of crime under the internal laws of the Southern States appeared. Whether men who encouraged insurrection and murder could be held entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war under the cartel, was a grave question. But these cases were few in number, and ought never to have interrupted the general exchange. ”

“ Not only has the press been warm in its commendation of the interest and value of our work, but we have also received private assurances from leading Confederates, from friends in Europe, and from prominent Northern soldiers, that our publications have been of great historic value. We have rarely alluded to this in our Papers, and do it now only because we feel that we ought to let our readers see the following letter from ex-President Davis, whose opinions in reference to anything pertaining to Confederate history ought to have (and do have) the highest consideration with our people. ”

“ I am satisfied that any military man, reading the sworn testimony of the leading Federal participants in that battle, before the Committee of Congress on the Conduct of the War, would agree in the conclusion I have reached, that an attack made upon the Federal position at Gettysburg any time before 12 o'clock on the morning of July 2d, 1863, would have embraced many elements of success ”

“ Possibly some ingenious casuist may defend this policy; but who will defend at the bar of history the refusal of the Federal authorities to accept Judge Ould's several propositions to allow surgeons from either side to visit and minister to their own men in prison—to allow each to furnish medicines, &c., to their prisoners in the hands of the other—and finally to purchase in the North, for gold, cotton, or tobacco, medicines for the exclusive use of Federal prisoners in the South? ”

“ I know of no way of ensuring the re-enlistment of our regiments, except by the passage of a law for drafting them "for the war," unless they volunteer for that period. The great object of the Confederate States is to bring the war to a successful issue. Every consideration should yield to that; for without it we can hope to enjoy nothing that we possess, and nothing that we do possess will be worth enjoying without it. ”

“ It will be a source of double joy to admirers of genius, virtue and patriotism everywhere to learn that we will soon have the story of this noble life from the facile pen of his accomplished son, and that Valentine's plastic, skillful touch has so perfectly delineated his noble features in plaster, and will soon make them seem to breathe and speak in the pure marble. ”

“ The brigade went into action with 1,287 men and about 140 officers, as shown by the report of the previous evening, and sustained a loss, as the list of casualties will show, of 941 killed, wounded and missing, and it is feared from all the information received that the majority of those reported missing are either killed or wounded.
It is needless, perhaps, to speak of conspicuous gallantry where all behaved so well. Each and every regimental commander displayed a cool bravery and daring that not only encouraged their own commands, but won the highest admiration from all those who saw them. ”

“ The many who measure the value of an officer's service by the conspicuous part he played upon the fields of battle, may not properly estimate the worth of Cooper's services in the war between the States, but those who like yourself were in a position to know what he did, what he prevented, what he directed, will not fail to place him among those who contributed most to whatever was achieved. ”

“ The Nation also finds it convenient to ignore the testimony we adduced from Federal soldiers, officers, surgeons and citizens which traced the cruel treatment which our men received directly to E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War. On the other hand, we defy proof of an order, letter or intimation of any sort whatever from Mr. Davis, or any member of his cabinet, directing, permitting or in any way conniving at cruelty to prisoners. There are other points to which we have not space even to allude. ”

“ I am willing to accord to him great merit as a fighter, but I think his efficiency on such an occasion as that at Gettysburg was materially impaired by a constitutional inertia, mental and physical, that very often delayed his readiness to fight. When once ready, and in the fight, he always fought well, sometimes most brilliantly.
You may ask, if I am right in my view of the causes of our failure at Gettysburg, why it was that General Lee did not speak out and place the responsibility where it properly belonged? ”

“ The Confederate authorities felt able to meet and repulse Dahlgren and his raiders, if they could prevent the escape of the prisoners.
The real object was to save their lives as well as those of our citizens. The guard force at the prisons was small, and all the local troops in and around Richmond were needed to meet the threatened attack. Had the prisoners escaped, the women and children of the city, as well as their homes, would have been at the mercy of five thousand outlaws. Humanity required that the most summary measures should be used to deter them from any attempt at escape. ”

“ Amid the passions and outraged feelings yet surviving our terrible struggle, it may be hard still to have justice awarded to the true merits and noble qualities of your father, but in future and happier times I doubt not all mists of error obscuring his name and fame will be swept away under the light of impartial investigation, and he will be honored and revered, as he ought to be, among the most faithful patriots and gallant soldiers of the Southern Confederacy. ”

“ This series of papers will do more to give to the world the true story of Gettysburg than anything that has yet been written, and with the full series of reports on the great battle which have already appeared, they will afford invaluable material to the historian who sincerely seeks after the truth. ”

“ The new Confederacy of States, in the act of breathing life into its corporal substance, and staggering at the amount of organization to be performed to perpetuate national existence, warmly welcomed Adjutant-General Cooper's offer of services, because they found in such a proposal the master mind, the perfect knowledge and vast experience, necessary to put the intricate machinery into successful operation. ”

“ The assaults of the enemy were in heavy force, and made with the utmost impetuosity, but were met with a cool, steady fire, which each time mowed down their ranks, and drove them back, leaving the ground thickly covered in places with their dead. When Brown's brigade had nearly exhausted their ammunition, I caused it to be relieved by Reynolds' brigade, upon which assaults were also made and repulsed with the same success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All that the South asks is a fair hearing at the bar of history; that our motives, acts, resources and achievements may be impartially set forth, and if this is done we will cheerfully abide the result.
The publication of your letter to us would be gratifying to many of our people, but we shall not, of course, venture to publish it without having first obtained your consent. ”