“And that the said Select Committee also inquire into the
fact, whether Indian savages have been employed by the
Rebels in their military service against the Government of
the United States, and how such warfare has been conducted
by said savages, and to report the same to the Senate, with
power to send for persons and papers.”
The resolution as amended was adopted.
* * * * *
April 30, Mr. Wade, Chairman of the Committee, reported
particularly on that part of the resolution moved by Mr.
Sumner, and the next day the Senate ordered fifty thousand
extra copies of the report. Its conclusions appear in the
following painful passage.
“The outrages upon the dead will revive the recollections
of the cruelties to which savage tribes subject their
prisoners. They were buried, in many cases, naked, with
their faces downward; they were left to decay in the open
air; their bones were carried off as trophies, sometimes,
as the testimony proves, to be used as personal adornments;
and one witness deliberately avers that the head of one of
our most gallant officers was cut off by a Secessionist,
to be turned into a drinking-cup on the occasion of his
marriage. Monstrous as this revelation may appear to
be, your Committee have been informed, that, during the
last two weeks, the skull of a Union soldier has been
exhibited in the office of the sergeant-at-arms of the
House of Representatives, which had been converted to such
a purpose, and which had been found on the person of one of
the Rebel prisoners taken in a recent conflict.”[275]
The report sustained the allegations of Mr. Sumner, when he
moved the inquiry, besides giving new force to the term “The
Barbarism of Slavery.”