At midnight on the day of the evacuation the President and his Cabinet left Richmond for Danville. He still believed that Lee might cut his way through Grant's lines and join his army with Johnston's in North Carolina. Lee had restored Johnston to command of the small army that yet survived in opposition to Sherman. He had hopes that Johnston's personal popularity with the soldiers might in a measure restore their spirits.
The President established his temporary Capital at Danville. G. W. Sutherlin placed his beautiful home at his disposal. Communications with Lee had been cut and the wildest rumors were afloat. Davis wrote his last proclamation urging his people to maintain their courage.
In this remarkable document he said:
"I announce to you, my fellow countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul. I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy."If by stress of numbers, we should be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from the limits of Virginia or any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free."Let us, then, not despair, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts."
"I announce to you, my fellow countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul. I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy.
"If by stress of numbers, we should be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from the limits of Virginia or any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.
"Let us, then, not despair, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance, and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts."
So Washington spoke to his starving, freezing little army at Valley Forge in the darkest hour of our struggle for independence against Great Britain. With the help of France Washington succeeded at last.
Davis was destined to fail. No friendly foreign power came to his aid. His courage was none the less sublime for this reason.
Lee's skeleton army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and Davis hurried to Greensboro where Johnston and Beauregard were encamped with twenty-eight thousand men. Two hundred school girls marched to the house in Danville and cheered him as he left.
Mrs. Sutherlin in the last hour of his stay asked for a moment of his time.
He ushered her into his room with grave courtesy.
"Dear Madam," he began smilingly, "you have risked your home and the safety of your husband to honor me and the South. I thank you for myself and the people. Is there anything I can do to show how much I appreciate it?"
"You have greatly honored us by accepting our hospitality," was the quick cheerful answer. "We shall always be rich in its memory. I have but one favor to ask of you—"
"Name it—"
She drew a bag from a basket and handed it to him.
"Accept this little gift we have saved. It will help you on your journey. It's only a thousand dollars in gold—I wish it were more."
The President's eyes grew dim and he shook his head.
"No—no—dear, dear Mrs. Sutherlin. Your needs will be greater than mine. Besides, I have asked all for the cause—nothing for myself—nothing!"
He left Danville with heart warmed by the smiles and cheers of two hundred beautiful girls and the offer of every dollar a patriotic woman possessed.
He had need of its memory to cheer him at Greensboro. Here he felt for the first time the results of the malignant campaign which Holden's RaleighStandardhad waged against him and his administration. So great was the panic and so bitter the feeling which Holden's sheet had roused that it was impossible for the President and his Cabinet to find accommodations in any hotel or house. He was compelled to camp in a freight car.
It remained for a brave Southern woman to resent this insult to the Chieftain. When Mrs. C. A. L'Hommedieu learned that the President was in town, housed in a freight car and shunned by the citizens, she sent him a note and begged him to make her house his home and to honor her by commanding anything in it and all that she possessed.
The leader was at this moment preparing to leave for Charlotte and had to decline her generous and brave offer. But he was deeply moved. He stopped his work to write her a beautiful letter of thanks.
His interview with Johnston and Beauregard was strained and formal. Johnston's army in its present position in the hands of a resolute and daring commander could have formed a light column of ten thousand cavalry and cut its way through all opposition to the Mississippi River. Knowing the character of his General so well he had small hopes.
After receiving the report of the condition of the army the President called his Cabinet to consider what should be done.
Johnston sat at as great a distance from Davis as the room would permit.
The President reviewed briefly the situation and turned calmly to Johnston:
"General, we should like now to hear your views."
The reply was given with brutal brevity and in tones of unconcealed defiance and hatred.
"Sir," the great retreater blurted out, "my views are that our people are tired of war, feel themselves whipped and will not fight."
A dead silence followed.
The President turned in quiet dignity to Beauregard:
"And what do you say, General Beauregard?"
"I agree with what General Johnston has said," he replied.
There was no appeal from the decision of these two commanders in such an hour. The President dictated a letter to General Sherman suggesting their surrender and outlining the advantageous terms which the Northern Commander accepted.
And then the Confederate Chieftain received a message so amazing he could not at first credit its authority.
A courier from Sherman conveyed the announcement to Johnston that Davis might leave the country on a United States vessel and take whoever and whatever he pleased with him.
The answer of Jefferson Davis was characteristic.
"Please thank General Sherman for his offer and say that I can do no act which will put me under obligations to the Federal Government."
Sherman had asked Lincoln at their last interview whether he should capture Davis or let him go.
A sunny smile overspread the rugged features of the National President:
"That reminds me," he said, "of a temperance lecturer in Illinois. Wet and cold he stopped for the night at a wayside inn. The landlord, noting his condition, asked if he would have a glass of brandy.
"'No—no—' came the quick reply. 'I am a temperance lecturer and do not drink—' he paused and his voice droppedto a whisper—'I would like some water however—and if you should ofyour ownaccord, put a little brandy in itunbeknownstto me—why, it will be all right.'"
Sherman was trying to carry out the wishes of the man with the loving heart.
At Charlotte Davis was handed a telegram announcing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. His thin fate went death white. Handing the telegram to his Secretary, he quietly said:
"I am sorry. We have lost our noblest and best friend in the court of the enemy."
He immediately telegraphed the news to his wife who had fled further south to Abbeville, South Carolina. Mrs. Davis burst into tears on reading the fatal message. Her woman's intuition saw the vision of horror which the tragedy meant to her and to her stricken people.
The President left Charlotte with an escort of a thousand cavalrymen for Abbeville. His journey was slow. The wagons were carrying all that remained of the Confederate Treasury with the money in currency from the Richmond banks which had been entrusted to the care of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Davis stopped at a little cabin on the roadside and asked the lady who stood in the doorway for a drink of water.
She turned to comply with his request.
While he was drinking a baby barely able to walk crawled down the steps and toddled to him.
The mother smiled.
"Is this not President Davis?" she asked tremblingly.
"It is, Madam," he answered with a bow.
She pointed proudly to the child:
"He's named for you!"
The President drew a gold coin from his pocket and handed it to the mother.
"Please keep it for my little namesake and tell him when he is old enough to know."
As he rode away with Reagan, his faithful Postmaster General, he said:
"The last coin I had on earth, Reagan. I wouldn't have had that but for the fact I'd never seen one like it and kept it for luck."
"I reckon the war's about finished us," the General replied.
"Yes," Davis cheerfully answered. "My home is a wreck. Benjamin's and Breckinridge's are in Federal hands. Mallory's fine residence at Pensacola has been burned by the enemy. Your home in Texas has been wrecked and burned—"
He paused and drew from his pocketbook a few Confederate bills.
"That is my estate at the present moment."
He received next day a letter from his wife which greatly cheered him:
"Abbeville, S. C., April 28, 1865."My dear old Husband:
"Your very sweet letter reached me safely by Mr. Harrison and was a great relief. I leave here in the morning at 6 o'clock for the wagon train going to Georgia. Washington will be the first place I shall unload at. From there we shall probably go on to Atlanta or thereabouts, and wait a little until we hear something of you. Let me beseech you not to calculate upon seeing me unless I happen to cross your shortest path toward your bourne, be that what it may.
"It is surely not the fate to which you invited me in thebrighterdays. But you must remember that you did not invite me to a great hero's home but to that of a plain farmer. I have shared all your triumphs, been the only beneficiary of them, now I am claiming the privilege for the first time of being all to you, since these pleasures have passed for me.
"My plans are these, subject to your approval. I think I shall be able to procure funds enough to enable me to put the two eldest to school. I shall go to Florida if possible and from thence go over to Bermuda or Nassau, from thence to England, unless a good school offers elsewhere, and put them to the best school I can find, and then with the two youngest join you in Texas—and that is the prospect which bears me up, to be once more with you if need be—but God loves those who obey Him and I know there is a future for you.
"Here they are all your friends and have the most unbounded confidence in you. Mr. Burt and his wife have urged me to live with them—offered to take the chances of the Yankees with us—begged to have little Maggie—done everything in fact that relatives could do. I shall never forget all their generous devotion to you.
"I have seen a great many men who have gone through—not one has talked fight. A stand cannot be made in this country! Do not be induced to try it. As to the trans-Mississippi, I doubt if at first things will be straight, but the spirit is there, and the daily accretions will be great when the deluded of this side are crushed between the upper and nether millstones. But you have not tried the 'strict construction' fallacy. If we are to require a Constitution, it must be much stretched during our hours of outside pressure if it covers us at all.
"Be careful how you go to Augusta. I get rumors that Brown is going to seize all Government property, and the people are averse and mean to resist with pistols. They are a set of wretches together, and I wish you were safe out of their land. God bless you, keep you. I have wrestled with Him for you. I believe He will restore us to happiness.
"Devotedly,"Your Wife.""Kindest regards to Robert, and thanks for faithful conduct. Love to Johnson and John Wood. Maggie sends you her best love."
The President and his party reached Abbeville on May first, only to find that his wife had left for Washington, Georgia.
At Abbeville, in the home of Armistead Burt, Davis called his last Cabinet meeting and council of war.
There were present five brigade commanders, General Braxton Bragg, his Chief-of-Staff, Breckinridge, Benjamin and Reagan of his Cabinet. The indomitable spirit made the last appeal for courage and the continuance of the fight until better terms could be made that might save the South from utter ruin and the shame of possible negro rule.
He faced them with firm resolution, his piercing eye undimmed by calamity.
"The South, gentlemen," he declared, "is in a panic for the moment. We have resources to continue the war. Let those who remain with arms in their hands set the example and others will rally. Let the brave men yet with me renew their determination to fight. Around you reënforcements will gather."
The replies of his discouraged commanders were given in voices that sank to whispers. Each man was called on for his individual opinion.
Slowly and painfully each gave his answer in the negative. The war was hopeless, but they would not disband their men until they had guarded the President to a place of safety.
"No!" Davis answered passionately. "I will listen to no proposition for my safety. I appeal to you for the cause of my country. Stand by it, men—stand by it!"
His appeal was received in silence. His councilors could not agree with him. The proud old man drew his slender body to its full height, lifted his hands and cried pathetically:
"The friends of the South consent to her degradation!"
He attempted to pass from the meeting, his emaciated face white with anger. His step tottered and his body swayed and would have sunk to the floor had not General Breckinridge caught him in his arms and led him from the room.
Benjamin parted from the President when they crossed the Savannah River and he had dropped the Seal of the Confederate Government in the depths of its still, beautiful waters.
"Where are you going?" Reagan asked.
"To the farthest place from the United States," was the quick reply, "if it takes me to China."
He made his way successfully to England and won fame and fortune in the old world.
On hearing that the Federal cavalry were scouring the country, Breckinridge and Reagan proposed that Davis disguise himself in a soldier's clothes, a wool hat and brogan shoes, take one man with him and go to the coast of Florida, ship to Cuba.
His reply was firm:
"I shall not leave Southern soil while a Confederate regiment is on it. Kirby Smith has an army of 25,000 men. He has not surrendered. General Hampton will cut his way across the Mississippi. We can lead an army of 60,000 men on the plains of Texas and fight until we get better terms than unconditional surrender."
Breckinridge was left at Washington to dispose of the small sum yet left in the Treasury and turn over to their agent the money of the Richmond banks.
Robert Toombs lived in Washington. General Reagan called on the distinguished leader.
He invited his guest into his library and closed the door.
"You have money, Reagan?"
"Enough to take me west of the Mississippi—"
"You are well mounted?"
"One of the best horses in the country."
"I am at home," he added generously. "I can command what I want, and if you need anything, I can supply you—"
"Thank you, General," Reagan responded heartily.
Toombs hesitated a moment, and then asked suddenly:
"Has President Davis money?"
"No, but I have enough to take us both across the Mississippi."
"Is Mr. Davis well mounted?"
"He has his fine bay, 'Kentucky,' and General Lee sent him at Greensboro by his son Robert, his gray war horse 'Traveler,' as a present. He has two first class horses."
Again Toombs was silent.
"Mr. Davis and I," he went on thoughtfully, "have had our quarrels. We have none now. I want you to say to him that my men are around me here, and if he desires it I will call them together and see him safely across the Chattahoochee River at the risk of my life—"
"I'll tell him, General Toombs," Reagan cordially responded. "And I appreciate your noble offer. It differs from others who have pretended to be his best friends. They are getting away from him as fast as they can. Some are base enough to malign him to curry favor with the enemy. I've known Jefferson Davis intimately for ten years. The past four years of war I've been with him daily under every condition of victory and defeat, and I swear to you that he's the truest, gentlest, bravest, tenderest, manliest man I have ever known—"
"Let me know," Toombs urged, "if I can serve him in any possible way."
When Reagan delivered the message to the President he responded warmly:
"That's like Toombs. He was always a whole souled man. If it were necessary I should not hesitate to accept his offer."
He was slowly reading his wife's last letters which had been delivered to him by scouts who were still faithful.
They were riding in a wagon with picked Mississippi teamsters twenty miles below Washington:
"All well, with Winnie sweet and smiling. Billy plenty of laughter and talk with the teamsters keeps quiet. Jeff is happy beyond expression. Maggie one and two quite well.
"I have $2,500, something to sell, and have heart and a hopeful one, but above all, my precious only love, a heartful of prayer. May God keep you and have His sword and buckler over you. Do not try to make a stand on this side. It is not in the people. Leave your escort and take another road often. Alabama is full of cavalry, fresh and earnest in pursuit. May God keep you and bring you safe to the arms of
"Your devoted,"Winnie."
He opened and read another:
"My own precious Banny:
"May God give us both patience against this heavy trial. The soldiers are very unruly and have taken almost all the mules and horses from the camp. Do not try to meet me. I dread the Yankees getting news of you so much. You are the country's only hope and the very best intentions do not advise a stand this side of the river. Why not cut loose from your escort? Go swiftly and alone with the exception of twoor three.
"Oh, may God in His goodness keep you safe, my own. Maggie says she has your prayer book safe. May God keep you, my old and only love, as ever, devotedly,
"Your own,"Winnie."
He had not seen his wife and babies since they left Richmond. The conduct of the soldiers determined his course. He turned to Reagan:
"This move will probably cause me to be captured or killed. You are not bound to go with me—but I must protect my family."
"I go with you, sir—" was the prompt response.
The soldiers were dismissed and the money still remaining in the Treasury divided among them. A picked guard of ten men rode with the fallen Chieftain in search of his loved ones.
They joined Mrs. Davis after a hard ride and found her camp threatened by marauders. He traveled with her two days and, apparently out of danger, she begged him to leave her and make good his escape. He finally agreed to do this and with Reagan, the members of his staff and Burton Harrison, his Secretary, started for the Florida coast.
The day was one of dismal fog and rain and the party lost the way, turning in a circle, and at sunset met Mrs. Davis and her company at the fork of the road near the Ocmulgee River.
The President and staff traveled with his wife next day and made twenty-eight miles. At Irwinsville their presence was betrayed to the Federal cavalry, his camp surrounded by Colonel Pritchard, and the Confederate President and party arrested.
The soldiers plundered his baggage, tore open his wife's trunks and scattered her dresses. In one of these trunks they found a pair of new hoopskirts which Mrs. Davis hadbought but never worn. An enterprising newspaper man immediately invented and sent broadcast the story that he had been captured trying to escape in his wife's hoopskirts. His enemies refused to hear any contradiction of this invention. It was too good not to be true. They clung to it long after Colonel Pritchard and every man present had given it the lie.
They had traveled a day's journey toward Macon, the headquarters of General Wilson, when an excited man galloped into the camp waving over his head a printed slip of paper.
"What is it?" Davis asked of his guard.
The guard seized and read the slip and turned to the Confederate Chieftain and his wife.
"Andrew Johnson's proclamation offering a reward of $100,000 for the capture of Jefferson Davis as the murderer of Abraham Lincoln!"
A cry of anguish came from the faithful wife.
The leader touched her shoulder gently.
"Hush, my dear. The miserable scoundrel who wrote that proclamation knew that it is false. He is the one man in the United States who knows that I preferred Abraham Lincoln in the White House to him or any other man the North might elect. Such an accusation must fail—"
The wife was not comforted.
"These men may assassinate you!"
The soldiers crowded about their defenseless prisoner and heaped on him the vilest curses and insults. He made no answer. The far-away look in his eagle eye told them only too plainly that he did not hear.
Colonel Pritchard in his manly way made every effort to protect him from insult. Within a short distance of Macon, the prisoners were halted and their escort drawn up in line on either side of the road. Colonel Pritchard had ridden into Macon for a brigade to escort his captives through the streets of the city.
The soldiers again cursed and jeered. The children climbed into their father's arms, kissed and hugged him tenderly and put their little hands over his ears that he should not hear what they said.
He soothed their fears and comforted them with beautiful lines from the Psalms which he quoted in tones of marvelous sweetness.
General Wilson received his distinguished prisoner with the deference due his rank and character. His guard in silence opened their lines and presented arms as Davis entered the building.
Socola hurried into Richmond three days after its fall in the desperate hope that he might be of service to Jennie.
He was two days finding her. She had offered her services to Mrs. Hopkins in the Alabama hospital. He sent in his card and she refused to see him. He asked an interview with Mrs. Hopkins and begged her to help. Her motherly heart went out to him in sympathy. His utter misery was so plainly written in his drawn face.
"You're so like my own mother, madame," he pleaded. "I'm an orphan to-day. Our army has conquered, but I have lost. I find myself repeating the old question, what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his life? She is my life—I can't—I won't give her up. Tell her she must see me. I will not leave Richmond until I see her. If she leaves, I'll follow her to the ends of the world. Tell her this."
The gentle hand pressed his.
"I'll tell her."
"And try to help me?" he begged.
"All the world loves a lover," the fine thin lips slowly repeated—"yes, I'll try."
At the end of ten minutes she returned alone. Her face gave no hope.
"I'm afraid it's useless. She positively refuses."
"You gave her my message?"
"Yes."
"I'll wait a day and try again—"
"You knew of Captain Welford's death, I suppose?"
Socola started and turned pale.
"No—"
"He died and was buried two days ago near the spot where General Stuart sleeps."
The lover was stunned for a moment. The hidden thought flashed through his mind that she might have married Welford in the reaction over her discovery of his deception. He opened his lips to ask the question and held his peace. It was impossible. She couldn't have done such a thing. He put the idea out of his heart.
"Thank you for the information, dear madame," he answered gravely, turned and left the building.
He walked quickly to his hotel, hired a negro to get him a wreath of roses and meet him at the cemetery gate. He had just placed them on Welford's grave as Jennie suddenly appeared.
She stopped, transfixed in astonishment—her eyes wide with excitement.
He walked slowly to meet her and stood looking into her soul, searching its depths.
"You here?" she gasped—
"Yes. I brought my tribute to a brave and generous foe. He hated me, perhaps—but for your sake he gave me my life—I never hated him—"
"With his last breath he told me that he no longer hated you," she answered dreamily.
"And you cannot forgive?"
"No. Our lives are far apart now. The gulf between us can never be passed."
He smiled tenderly and spoke with vibrant passion.
"I'm going to show you that it can be passed. I'm going to love you with such devotion I'll draw you at last with resistless power—"
"Never—"
She turned quickly and left him gazing wistfully at her slender figure silhouetted against the glow of the sunset.
The ship which bore the distinguished prisoner from Savannah did not proceed to Washington, but anchored in Hampton Roads at Fortress Monroe.
A little tug puffed up and drew alongside the steamer. She took off Alexander H. Stephens, General Joseph Wheeler and Burton Harrison. Stephens and Wheeler were sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
The next, day the tug returned.
Little Jeff ran to his mother trembling and sobbing:
"They say they've come for father—beg them to let us go with him!"
Davis stepped quickly forward and returned with an officer.
"It's true," he whispered. "They have come for Clay and me. Try not to weep. These people will gloat over your grief."
Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Clay stood close holding each other's hands in silent sympathy and grim determination to control their emotions. They parted with their husbands in dumb anguish.
As the tug bore the fallen Chieftain from the ship, he bared his head, drew his tall figure to its full height, and, standing between the files of soldiers, gazed on his wife and weeping children until the mists drew their curtain over the solemn scene.
Mrs. Davis' stateroom was entered now by a raiding party headed by Captain Hudson. Her trunks were again forced open and everything taken which the Captain or his men desired—among them all her children's clothes. Jeff seized his little soldier uniform of Confederate gray and ran with it. He managed to hide and save it.
Captain Hudson then demanded the shawl which Davis had thrown over his shoulders on the damp morning when he was captured.
"You have no right to steal my property," his wife replied indignantly. "Peace has been declared. The war is over. This is plain robbery."
Hudson called in another file of soldiers.
"Hand out that shawl or I'll take the last rag you have on earth. I'll pay you for it, if you wish. But I'm going to have it."
Mrs. Davis took the shawl from Mrs. Clay's shoulders and handed it to the brute.
"At least I may get rid of your odious presence," she cried, "by complying with your demand."
Hudson took the shawl with a grin and led his men away. Two of his officers returned in a few minutes and thrust their heads in the stateroom of Mrs. Davis' sister with whom Mrs. Clay was sitting.
"Gentlemen, this is a ladies' stateroom," said the Senator's wife.
One of them threw the door open violently and growled:
"There are no ladies here!"
"I am quite sure," was the sweet reply, "that there are no gentlemen present!"
With an oath they passed on. Little tugs filled with vulgar sightseers steamed around the ship and shouted a continuous stream of insults when one of the Davis party could be seen.
General Nelson A. Miles, the young officer who had been appointed jailer of Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay boarded the ship and proceeded without ceremony to give his orders to their wives.
"Will you tell me, General," Mrs. Davis asked, "where my husband is imprisoned and what his treatment is to be?"
"Not a word," was the short reply.
His manner was so abrupt and boorish she did not press for further news.
Miles ventured some on his own account.
"Jeff Davis announced the assassination of Abraham Lincoln the day before it happened. I guess he knew all about it—"
The wife bit her lips and suppressed a sharp answer. Her husband's life was now in this man's hands.
"You are forbidden to buy or read a newspaper," he added curtly, "and your ship will leave this port under sealed orders."
In vain Davis pleaded that his wife and children might be allowed to go to Washington or Richmond where they had acquaintances and friends.
"They will return to Savannah," Miles answered, "by the same ship in which they came and remain in Savannah under military guard."
Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in a casemate of Fortress Monroe, the embrasure of which was closed with a heavy iron grating. The two doors which communicated with the gunner's room were closed with heavy double shutters fastened with crossbars and padlocks. The side openings were sealed with fresh masonry.
Two sentinels with loaded muskets paced the floor without a moment's pause day or night. Two other sentinels and a commissioned officer occupied the gunner's room, the door and window of which were securely fastened. Sentinels were stationed on the parapet overhead whose steady tramp day and night made sleep impossible.
The embrasure opened on the big ditch which surrounds the fort—sixty feet wide and ten feet deep in salt water. Beyond the ditch, on the glacis, was a double line of sentinels and in the casemate rooms on either side of his prison were quartered that part of the guard which was not on post.
To render rest or comfort impossible a lighted lamp was placed within three feet of the prisoner's eyes and kept burning brightly all night. His jailer knew he had but one eye whose sight remained and that he was a chronic sufferer from neuralgia.
His escape from Fortress Monroe was a physical impossibility without one of the extraordinary precautions taken. The purpose of these arrangements could have only been to inflict pain, humiliation and possibly to take his life. He had never been robust since the breakdown of his health on the Western plains. Worn by privation and exposure, approaching sixty years of age, he was in no condition physically to resist disease.
The damp walls, the coarse food, the loss of sleep caused by the tramp of sentinels inside his room, outside and on the roof over his head and the steady blaze of a lamp in his eyes at night within forty-eight hours had completed his prostration.
But his jailers were not content.
On May twenty-third, Captain Titlow entered his cell with two blacksmiths bearing a pair of heavy leg irons coupled together by a ponderous chain.
"I am sorry to inform you, sir," the polite young officer began, "that I have been ordered to put you in irons."
"Has General Miles given that order?"
"He has."
"I wish to see him at once, please."
"General Miles has just left the fort, sir."
"You can postpone the execution of your order until I see him?"
"I have been warned against delay."
"No soldier ever gave such an order," was the stern reply; "no soldier should receive or execute it—"
"His orders are from Washington—mine are from him."
"But he can telegraph—there must be some mistake—no such outrage is on record in the history of nations—"
"My orders are peremptory."
"You shall not inflict on me and on my people through me this insult worse than death. I will not submit to it!"
"I sincerely trust, sir," the Captain urged kindly, "that you will not compel me to use force."
"I am a gentleman and a soldier, Captain Titlow," was the stern answer. "I know how to die—" he paused and pointed to the sentinel who stood ready. "Let your men shoot me at once—I will not submit to this outrage!"
The prisoner backed away with his hand on a chair and stood waiting.
The Captain turned to his blacksmiths:
"Do your duty—put them on him!"
"'Do your duty—put them on him'""'Do your duty—put them on him'"
As the workman bent with his chain Davis hurled him to the other side of the cell and lifted his chair.
The sentinel cocked and lowered his musket advancing on the prisoner who met him defiantly with bared breast.
The Captain sprang between them:
"Put down your gun. I'll give you orders to fire when necessary."
He turned to the officer at the door:
"Bring in four of your strongest men—unarmed—you understand?"
"Yes, sir—"
The men entered, sprang on their helpless victim, bore him to the floor, pinned him down with their heavy bodies and held him securely while the blacksmiths riveted the chains on one leg and fastened the clasp on the other with a heavy padlock.
He had resented this cowardly insult for himself and his people. He had resisted with the hope that he might be killed before it was accomplished. He saw now with clear vision that the purpose of his jailer was to torture him to death. His proud spirit rose in fierce rebellion. He would cheat them of their prey. They might take his life but it should be done under the forms of law in open day. He would live. His will would defy death. He would learn to sleep with the tramp of three sets of sentinels in his ears. He would eat their coarse food at whatever cost to his feelings. He would learn to bury his face in his bedding to avoid the rays of the lamp with which they were trying to blind him.
He had need of all his fierce resolution.
He had resolved to ask no favors, but his suffering had been so acute, his determination melted at the doctor's kind expressions.
The physician found him stretched on his pallet, horribly emaciated and breathing with difficulty, his whole body a mere fascine of raw and tremulous nerves, his eyes restless and fevered, his head continually shifting from side to side searching instinctively for a cool spot on the hot coarse hair pillow.
"Tell me," Dr. Craven said kindly, "what I can do to add to your comfort?"
The question was asked with such genuine sympathy it was impossible to resist it.
A smile flickered about his thin mouth, "This camp mattress, Doctor," he slowly replied, "I find a little thin. The slats beneath chafe my poor bones. I've a frail body—thoughin my youth and young manhood, while soldiering in the West, I have done some rough camping and campaigning. There was flesh then to cover my nerves and bones."
The doctor called an attendant:
"Bring this prisoner another mattress and a softer pillow."
"Thank you," Davis responded cordially.
"You are a smoker?" the doctor asked.
"I have been all my life, until General Miles took my pipe and tobacco."
The doctor wrote to the Adjutant General and asked that his patient be given the use of his pipe.
On his visit two days later the doctor said:
"You must spend as little time in bed as possible. Exercise will be your best medicine."
The prisoner drew back the cover and showed the lacerated ankles.
"Impossible you see—the pain is so intense I can't stand erect. These shackles are very heavy. If I stand, the weight of them cuts into my flesh—they have already torn broad patches of skin from the places they touch. If you can pad a cushion there, I will gladly try to drag them about—"
Dr. Craven sought the jailer:
"General Miles," he began respectfully, "in my opinion the condition of state-prisoner Davis requires the removal of those shackles until such time as his health shall be established on a firmer basis. Exercise he must have."
"You believe that is a medical necessity?"
"I do, most earnestly."
About the same time General Miles had heard from the country. The incident had already aroused sharp criticism of the Government. Stanton had come down to Fortress Monroe and peeped through the bars at the victim he wastorturing, and had extracted all the comfort possible from the incident. The shackles were removed.
His jailer persisted in denying him the most innocent books to read. He asked the doctor to get for him if possible the geology or the botany of the South. General Miles thought them dangerous subjects. At least the names sounded treasonable. He denied the request.
The prisoner asked for his trunk and clothes. Miles decided to keep them in his own office and dole out the linen by his own standards of need.
Davis turned to his physician with a flash of anger.
"It's contemptible that they should thus dole out my clothes as if I were a convict in some penitentiary. They mean to degrade me. It can't be done. No man can be degraded by unmerited insult heaped upon the helpless. Such acts can only degrade their perpetrators. The day will come when the people will blush at the memory of such treatment—"
At last the loss of sleep proved beyond his endurance. He had tried to fight it out but gave up in a burst of passionate protest to Dr. Craven. The sight of his eye was failing. The horror of blindness chilled his soul.
"My treatment here," he began with an effort at restraint, "is killing me by inches. Let them make shorter work of it. I can't sleep. No man can live without sleep. My jailers know this. I am never alone a moment—always the eye of a guard staring at me day and night. If I doze a feverish moment the noise of the relieving guard each two hours wakes me and the blazing lamp pours its glare into my aching throbbing eyes. There must be a change or I shall go mad or blind or both."
He paused a moment and lifted his hollow face to the physician pathetically.
"Have you ever been conscious of being watched? Of having an eye fixed on you every moment, scrutinizing your smallest act, the change of the muscles of your face or the pose of your body? To have a human eye riveted on you every moment, waking, sleeping, sitting, walking, is a refinement of torture never dreamed of by a Comanche Indian—it is the eye of a spy or an enemy gloating over the pain and humiliation which it creates. The lamp burning in my eyes is a form of torment devised by someone who knew my habit of life never to sleep except in total darkness. When I took old Black Hawk the Indian Chief a captive to our barracks at St. Louis I shielded him from the vulgar gaze of the curious. I have lived too long in the woods to be frightened by an owl and I've seen Death too often to flinch at any form of pain—but this torture of being forever watched is beginning to prey on my reason."
The doctor's report that day was written in plain English:
"I find Mr. Davis in a very critical state, his nervous debility extreme, his mind despondent, his appetite gone, complexion livid, and pulse denoting deep prostration of all vital energies. I am alarmed and anxious over the responsibility of my position. If he should die in prison without trial, subject to such severities as have been inflicted on his attenuated frame the world will form conclusions and with enough color to pass them into history."
Dr. Craven was getting too troublesome. General Miles dismissed him, and called in Dr. George Cooper, a physician whose political opinions were supposed to be sounder.
Socola read the story of the chaining of the Confederate Chieftain with indignation. His intimate association with Jefferson Davis had convinced him of his singular purity of character and loftiness of soul. That he was capable of conspiring to murder Abraham Lincoln was inconceivable. That the charge should be made and pressed seriously by the National Government was a disgrace to the country.
Charles O'Connor, the greatest lawyer in America, indignant at the outrage, had offered his services to the prisoner. Socola hastened to a conference with O'Connor and placed himself at his command.
The lawyer sent him to Washington to find out the master mind at the bottom of these remarkable proceedings.
"Johnson the President," he warned, "is only a tool in the hands of astrongerman. Find that man. Stanton, the Secretary of War, is vindictive enough, but he lacks the cunning. Stevens, the leader of the House, is the real ruler of the Nation at this moment. Yet I have the most positive information that Stevens sneers at the attempt to accuse Davis of the assassination of Lincoln. Stevens hated Lincoln only a degree less than he hates Davis. He is blunt, outspoken, brutal in his views. There can be no question of the honesty of his position. Sumner, the leader of the Senate, is incapable of such low intrigue. Find the man and report to me."
Socola found him within six hours after his arrival in Washington. He was morally sure of him from the moment he left O'Connor's office.
Immediately on his arrival at the Capital he sought an interview with Joseph Holt, now the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army. He was therefore in charge of the prosecution of the cases of Clay and Davis.
For five minutes he watched the crooked poisonous mouth of the ex-Secretary of War and knew the truth. This vindictive venomous old man, ambitious, avaricious, implacable in his hatreds, had organized a Board of Assassination, which he called "The Bureau of Military Justice." This remarkable Bureau had already murdered Mrs. Surratt on perjured testimony.
Socola had given his ex-Chief no intimation of his personal feelings and no hint of his association with O'Connor.
"I've a little favor to ask of you, young man," Holt said suavely.
Socola bowed.
"At your service, Chief—"
"I need a man of intelligence and skill to convey a proposition to Wirz, the keeper of Andersonville prison. He has been sentenced to death by the Bureau of Military Justice. I'm going to offer him his life on one condition—"
"And that is?"
"If he will confess under oath that Davis ordered the starving and torturing of prisoners at Andersonville I'll commute his sentence—"
"I see—"
"I'll give you an order to interview Wirz. He has never seen you. Report to me his answer."
When Socola explained to Wirz in sympathetic tones the offer of the Government to spare his life for the implication of Davis in direct orders from Richmond commanding cruelties at Andersonville, the condemned man lifted his wounded body and stared at his visitor.
His answer closed the interview.
"Tell the scoundrel who sent you that I am a soldier. I was a soldier in Germany before I cast my fortunes with the South. I bear in my body the wounds of honorable warfare. If I hadn't time to learn the meaning of honor from my friends in the South, my mother taught me in the old world. You ask me to save my life from these assassins by swearing away the life of another. Tell my executioner that I never saw the President of the Confederacy. I never received an order of any kind from him. I did the best I could for the men in my charge at Andersonville and tried honestly to improve their conditions. I am not a perjurer, even to save my own life. A soldier's business is to die. I am ready."
Socola extended his hand through the bars and grasped the prisoner's.
The deeper he dived into the seething mass of corruption and blind passion which had engulfed Washington the more desperate he saw the situation of Davis at Fortress Monroe. After two weeks of careful work he hurried to New York and reported the situation to O'Connor.
"The master mind," he began slowly, "I found at once. His name is Holt—"
"The Judge Advocate General?"
"Yes."
"That accounts for my inability to obtain a copy of the charges against Davis. Holt drew those charges. They are in his hands and he has determined to press his prisoner to trial before his Board of Assassins without allowing me to know the substance of his accusations. It's infamous."
"There are complications which may increase our dangers or suddenly lift them—"
"Complications—what do you mean?"
"The President, who has been intensely hostile to Davis, realizes that his own term of office and possibly his life are now at stake. He has broken with the Radicals who control Congress, old Thaddeus Stevens's at their head. Stevens lives in Washington in brazen defiance of conventionalities with a negro woman whom he separated from her husband thirty odd years ago. Under the influence of this negress he has introduced a bill into the House of Representatives to confiscate the remaining property of the white people of the South and give it to the negroes—dividing the land into plots of forty acres each. He proposes also to disfranchise the whites of the Southern States, enfranchise the negroes, destroy the State lines and erect on their ruins territories ruled by negroes whom his faction can control.
"Johnson the President, a Southern born white man, has already informed the Radicals that he will fight this programme to the last ditch. Stevens' answer was characteristic of the imperious old leader. 'Let him dare! I'll impeach Andrew Johnson, remove him from office and hang him from the balcony of the White House.'
"The President realizes that the Bureau of Military Justice which he allowed Holt to create may be used as the engine of his own destruction. They have already taken the first steps to impeach him—"
"Then he'll never dare allow another case to be tried before that Bureau—" O'Connor interrupted.
"It remains to be seen. He is afraid of both Stanton and Holt. The Bureau of Military Justice is their hobby."
O'Connor sprang to his feet.
"We must smash it by an appeal to the people. Their sense of justice is yet the salt that will save the Nation. The key to the situation is in the character of the remarkable witnesses whom Holt has produced before this tribunal of assassination. In my judgment they are a gang of hired perjurers. Their leader is a fellow named Conover. There are five men associated with him. They used these witnesses against Mrs. Surratt. They used them against Wirz. They are preparing to use them against Davis. It is inconceivable that these plugs from the gutters of New York could have really stumbled on the facts to which they have sworn. Find who these men are. Get their records to the last hour of the day you track them—and report to me."
Socola organized a force of detectives and set them to work. The task was a difficult one. He found that Conover and his pals were protected by the unlimited power of the National Government.
While the prisoner fought to save his reason in the dungeon at Fortress Monroe, his wife was denied the right to lift her hand in his defense. No communication was allowed between them except through his jailer.
On arrival in Savannah Mrs. Davis and her children were compelled to walk through the blazing heat the long distance from the wharf uptown, the whole party trudging immigrant fashion through the streets. Her sister carried the baby. Mrs. Davis and the two little boys and Maggie followed with parcels, and Robert, her faithful black man, brought up the rear with the baggage.
The people of Savannah, on learning of their arrival, treated their prisoners with the utmost kindness. Every home in the city was thrown open to them. Her children had been robbed of all their clothing except what they wore. The neighbors hurried in with clothes.
The newspaper of Savannah of the new régime,The Republican, published and republished with gleeful comments the most sensational accounts of the brutal scene of the shackling of Davis. Maggie composed a prayer and taught her little brothers to repeat it in concert for their grace at the table morning, noon and night:
"Dear Lord, give our father something he can eat, and keep him strong, and bring him back to us with eyes that can see and in his good senses, to his little children, for Jesus' sake."
Nearly every day the child who composed the prayer was so moved by its recital she would run from the table and dry her tears in the next room before she could eat.
Hourly scenes of violence increased between the whites and the inflamed blacks. A negro sentinel leveled his gun at little Jeff and threatened to shoot him for calling him "Uncle." With prayers and tears the mother sent her children away to the home of a friend in Montreal.
A year passed before President Johnson in answer to the wife's desperate pleading permitted her to visit her husband in prison. She arrived from Montreal on the cold raw morning of May 10, 1866, at four o'clock before day. There was no hotel at the fort at that time and the mother was compelled to sit in the desolate little waiting room with her baby without a fire until ten o'clock.
General Miles called. His references to her husband were made in a manner which brutally expressed his hatred and contempt. She had been informed that his health was in so dangerous a condition that physicians had despaired of his life.
Miles hastened to say:
"'Davis' is in good health—"
"I can see him at once?" she begged.
"Yes. You understand the terms of your parole that you are to take no deadly weapons into the prison?"
Suppressing a smile at the unique use of the language which a man of the rank of Miles could make she replied quickly:
"I understand. Please arrange that I can see him at once."
Without answering the jailer turned and left the room. In a few minutes an officer appeared who conducted her to the room in Carroll Hall to which Dr. Cooper had forced Miles to remove the prisoner. Dr. Cooper proved astroublesome to the General as Dr. Craven. In fact a little more so. He had a way of swearing when angered which made the General nervous. American physicians don't make good politicians when the life of a patient is involved.
They were challenged by three lines of sentries, each requiring a password, ascended a stairway, turned to the right and entered a guard room where three young officers were sitting. Through the bars of the inner room the wife gazed at her husband with streaming eyes.
His body had shrunk to a skeleton, his eyes set and glassy, his cheek bones pressing against the shining skin. He rose and tottered across the room, his breath coming in short gasps, his voice scarcely audible.
Mrs. Davis was locked in with him. She sent the baby back to her quarters by Frederick, another faithful negro servant who had followed their fortunes through good report and evil.
His room had a horse bucket for water, a basin and pitcher on an old chair whose back had been sawed off, a little iron bedstead with hard mattress, one pillow, a wooden table, and a wooden chair with one leg shorter than the others which might be used as an improvised rocker. His bed was so thick with bugs the room was filled with their odor. He was so innocent of such things he couldn't imagine what distressed him so at night—insisting that he had contracted some sort of skin disease.
His dinner was brought slopped from one dish to another and covered by a gray hospital towel sogged with the liquids. The man of fastidious taste glanced at the platter and saw that the good doctor's wife had added oysters to his menu that day and ate one. His vitality was so low even this gave him intense pain.
He was not bitter, but expressed his quiet contempt for the systematic petty insults which his jailer was now heaping on him daily. His physician had demanded that he take exercise in the open air. Miles always walked with him and never permitted an occasion of this kind to pass without directing at his helpless prisoner personal insults so offensive that Davis always cut his walks short to be rid of his tormentor. On one occasion the general was so brutal in his conversation after he had locked his prisoner in his room that he suddenly sprang at the bars, grasped them with his trembling, skeleton hands and cried:
"But for these you should answer to me—here and now!"
A favorite pastime of his jailer was to admit crowds of vulgar sightseers and permit them to gaze at his prisoner.
A woman inquired of Frederick, who was on his way to his room:
"Where's Jeff?"
The negro bowed gravely and drew his stalwart figure erect:
"I am sorry, madame, not to be able to tell you. I do not know any such person."
"Yes, you do—aren't you his servant?"
"No, madame, you are mistaken. I have the honor to serve ex-President Davis."
Only a great soul can command the love and respect of servants as did this quiet grave statesman of the old régime.
Never during the long hours of these weeks and months of torture did he lose his dignity or his lofty bearing quail before his tormentor. He was too refined and dignified to be abusive, and too proud in General Miles' delicate phraseology to "beg."
The loving wife began now her desperate fight to nurse him back into life again.
The new Commandant of the fort, General Burton, who replaced Miles, proved himself a gentleman and a soldier of the old school. He immediately gave to the prisoner every courtesy possible and to his wife sympathy and help.
The Bishop of Montreal sent him a case of green chartreuse from his own stores. This powerful digestive stimulant helped his feeble appetite to take the nourishment needed to sustain life and slowly build his strength.
He could sleep only when read to, and many a day dawned on the worn figure of his wife still droning her voice into his sensitive ears, with one hand on his pulse praying God it might still beat. At times it stopped, and then she roused the sleeper, gave him the stimulant and made him eat something which she always kept ready. Dr. Cooper had warned that the walls of his heart were so weak even a sound sleep might prove his death if too long continued.