PRESIDENT JOHNSON INTERPOSES
Mr. Johnson kept his word. Late in December I found myself on my way to
Baltimore with the President’s autographed permit in hand, that would
admit me to my husband’s prison. I left Washington on the afternoon of
the 27th of December, going by train to Baltimore. Here, crossing the
city in an omnibus with other passengers, to the wharf of the “New Line
Steamers,” I was soon on board the boat, the _George Leary_, bound for
Norfolk and Fortress Monroe. I was so keenly alive to my own lonely
condition that I could not bring myself even to register my name among
the list of happier passengers. Everywhere about me gaily dressed people
thronged. I saw among them General Granger and wife, his staff, and
ladies of the party. As the _George Leary_ pulled out from her moorings,
the brass band of a company of soldiers bound for Norfolk began to play
sweet, old-time airs. I had no desire to linger among the care-free
throng, and, calling the stewardess, handed her a gold-piece, saying,
“Can you sign for me or get me a stateroom? I only go to Fortress
Monroe.”
In a few moments she returned, regarding me inquiringly.
“Lady!” she asked, “ain’t you the wife of one of those gentlemen down at
the Fort?”
“Yes!” I answered. “I am the wife of Mr. Clay, the prisoner!”
Thereupon she opened her hand, displaying my gold-piece, saying, “The
captain says he can’t take any fare from you. He’ll be here in a little
while!” And she moved away.
In a few moments the tall, gaunt Captain Blakeman stood before me.
“Are you Mrs. Clay?” he asked. “Wife of the prisoner at Fortress
Monroe?”
Upon receiving my affirmative answer, the Captain spoke earnestly.
“Mrs. Clay, you have my deep sympathy. I’m a regular Down-Easter
myself—a Maine man; but for forty years I’ve plied a boat between
Northern and Southern cities; and I know the Southern people well. I
think it is a damned shame the way the Government is behaving toward you
and Mrs. Davis!”
For a moment the tears blinded me, seeing which the Captain at once
withdrew, comprehending the thanks he saw I could not utter. However,
when the gong sounded for supper, he returned, and with kindly tact led
me to a place beside him at the table, though I assured him I wanted
nothing. At my obvious lack of appetite he showed a very woman’s
thoughtfulness, himself preparing the viands before me while he urged me
“to drink my coffee. You _must_ take something,” he said from time to
time, whenever he perceived a lagging interest in the dishes before me.
Nor did this complete his kindnesses, for on the following morning, as I
left the boat, Captain Blakeman handed me a slip of paper on which was
written:
“NEW LINE STEAMERS, BALTIMORE, December 27, 1865.
“Will please pass free Mrs. C. C. Clay, rooms and meals included, to
all points as she wishes, and oblige,
“S. BLAKEMAN,
“Commanding Steamer _George Leary_.”
“I hope you will use this pass as often as you need it,” he said.
We arrived at Fortress Monroe at four o’clock the next morning. As I
stepped from the gang-plank, the scene about me was black and bleak, the
air wintry. Save for a few dozing stevedores here and there, whom I soon
perceived, the wharf was quite deserted. It had been my intention, upon
my arrival, to go directly to the little Hygeia Hotel just outside the
Fort, but upon the advice of Captain Blakeman I accepted the shelter
offered me by the clerk in charge of the wharf, and rested until
daylight in his snug little room just off from the office.
Just before leaving Washington I had written to Dr. Craven, telling him
of my intended visit to the prison, and asking him to meet me at the
little hotel. I now, at the first streak of dawn, still acting upon the
suggestions of the kind captain, found a messenger and sent him with a
note to General Miles, telling him of my arrival with the President’s
permit to see my husband, and asking that an ambulance be sent to convey
me to the Fort; and I despatched a second to Dr. Craven to tell him my
whereabouts. Unknown to me, that friendly physician, whose humane
treatment of Mr. Davis and my husband had brought upon him the
disapproval of the War Department, had already been removed from his
station at the Fort. My messenger found him, nevertheless, and upon
receipt of my message he came and made himself known to me. His words
were few, and not of a character to cheer one in my forlorn condition.
“Look for no kindness, Mrs. Clay,” he said, “at the hands of my
successor, Dr. Cooper. He is the blackest of Black Republicans, and may
be relied upon to show the prisoners little mercy.”
Our interview was brief, and, as the Fort ambulance was seen
approaching, the Doctor left me hurriedly. “For,” said he, “it will do
neither you nor the prisoners any good if you are seen talking with me.”
He had scarcely disappeared in the grey morning when the escort from the
Fort arrived. The vehicle was manned by two handsome Union soldiers,
one, Major Hitchcock of General Miles’s staff, and the other Lieutenant
Muhlenberg, a grandson, as I afterward learned, of the author of “I
would not live alway.” Months afterward, when Mr. Clay left the
Fortress, he carried with him the little volume containing Bishop
Muhlenberg’s verses, a gift from the young lieutenant.
Arrived at the Fort, I was taken at once to the headquarters of General
Miles, and conducted to a room commodiously and even luxuriously
furnished. In a short time the General made his appearance. He was
polite and even courteous in the examination of my passport, which he
scanned carefully; but his manner was non-committal as he politely asked
me to “be seated.” I seated myself and waited. The General withdrew.
After the lapse of a few moments, an orderly appeared, bearing upon a
salver a tempting breakfast; but I, who had spent months in seeking the
privilege I had now come to claim, could touch nothing. I declined the
food, saying I would wait and breakfast with my husband. The orderly
looked perplexed, but removed the tray; and now a dreary and
inexplicable wait began, interbroken with first a nervous, then an
indignant, and at last a tearful inquiry. During the morning I affected
a nonchalance wholly at variance with my real feelings. Picking up a
book that lay at my elbow on the table, I was surprised to see a
familiar name upon the fly-leaf. I commented upon the luxury of the
apartment when next General Miles entered, and added, “These books seem
to have been Governor Wise’s property.” The General was quick to defend
himself from any suggestion that might lie in my words. He replied at
once. “These headquarters were furnished by General Butler before I was
sent here!”
[Illustration:
DR. HENRY C. VOGELL
Fortress Monroe, 1866
]
Midday came and still the President’s autographed permit, which to me
had seemed so powerful a document, was not honoured. A savoury luncheon
was now brought in, but a nausea of nervousness had seized me and I
could not eat a morsel. My excitement increased momentarily, until the
distress of mind and apprehension were wholly beyond my control. I now
implored General Miles to let me see my husband, if only for a moment;
to explain this delay in the face of the President’s order. I begged him
to allow me to telegraph to Washington; but to all my pleadings his only
reply was to urge me to “be calm.” He assured me he regretted the delay,
but that “his orders” were such that he could neither admit me to my
husband’s room, nor allow me to use the Government wires at present.
By the middle of the afternoon, faint with pleadings and worn with
indignation and fears at the unknown powers which dared thus to obstruct
the carrying out of the President’s orders, not knowing what might yet
be before me, my self-possession entirely deserted me. I remember,
during my hysterical weeping, crying out to General Miles, “If you are
ever married, I pray God your wife may never know an hour like this!”
In the midst of an uncontrollable paroxysm which seized me at last, Dr.
Vogell, who has been variously designated as the private secretary and
instructor of General Miles, entered. During the day General Miles had
presented the Doctor to me, and, in his subsequent passing and repassing
through the room, we had from time to time exchanged a remark. He was a
tall, picturesque man, of possibly sixty years. At the sight of my
culminating misery, Dr. Vogell could bear the distressful scene no
longer. He cried out impulsively, “Miles, for God’s sake, let the woman
go to her husband!”
Unhappily, this manly outburst, though it had its own message of
sympathy for me, failed as utterly to move the commanding General Miles
as had my previous urgings. In the months that followed, Dr. Vogell
often called upon me clandestinely in Washington (announced as “Mr.
Brown”), to say that “a friend of yours was quite well this morning, and
desired his love given you!” The recollection of his kindnesses lives
imperishable in my memory, but especially vivid is that first upwelling
sympathy during the painful waiting at the Fort.
General Miles seemed not untouched by my pleadings, but, it was evident,
he felt himself subject to a superior power which forced him to refuse
them. His manner throughout, in fact, was courteous and apologetic.
Despite my agony of mind, it was late in the afternoon ere the
President’s order was honoured. Then General Miles entered, and, with an
appearance of completest relief, consigned me, tear-stained and ill, to
the care of Lieutenant Stone, who conducted me to Mr. Clay’s prison.
All day my husband, to whom there had penetrated a rumour of my coming,
had been waiting for me, himself tortured by fears for my safety and by
the mystery of my delay. The gloomy corridors, in which soldiers
patrolled night and day, guarding the two delicate prisoners of State,
were already darkening with the early evening shadows when, at last, I
saw my husband, martyr to his faith in the honour of the Government,
standing within the grating, awaiting me. The sight of his tall, slender
form, his pale face and whitened hair, awaiting me behind those dungeon
bars, affected me terribly. My pen is too feeble to convey the weakness
that overcame me as Lieutenant Stone inserted and turned the key in the
massive creaking lock and admitted me; nor shall I attempt to revive
here the brief hours that followed, with their tumultuous telling over
of the happenings of the past months and our hurried planning for the
future.
I returned to the capital full of sorrow and indignation. My adventure
at Fortress Monroe had revealed to me, far more fully than I previously
had suspected was possible, the struggle for power that was now going on
between the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, on the one side, and on the
other, President Johnson, by whose courtesy or timidity this official
still retained his portfolio. I resolved to relate my entire experience
at Fortress Monroe to the President at the first opportunity.
In the meantime, my husband, with whom I had left a digest of Holt’s
report, upon a careful perusal of it, had been greatly aroused. By the
courtesy of a secret friend, he hastened to send me a list of persons
who could, if called upon, readily testify to his whereabouts during
certain periods described in the charges against him. He urged me to see
the President, and not to cease in my efforts to obtain his release on
parole. His condition of mind as expressed in this communication was, it
was evident, one of intense excitement.
“You must not get discouraged!” he wrote. “_My life depends upon it, I
fear!_ Since the days of Cain and Judas, men may take life for money or
some other selfish end. As innocent men as I am have been judicially
murdered, and I do not feel secure from it, although God knows I feel
innocent of crime against the United States or any citizen thereof. As
to my declaring my purpose to surrender to meet the charge of
assassination, my unwillingness to fly from such charge, my preferring
death to living with that brand on me, my desire to exculpate Mr. Davis,
myself and the South from it, you know as well as I do.
“Judge Holt is determined to sacrifice me _for reasons given you_.[68]
He may do it if I am not allowed liberty to seek witnesses and prepare
my defense; or, if I am subjected to the mockery of trial by Military
Court, when all the charges he can make may be brought against me in a
great drag-net.”
As a step toward securing an early interview, and also because the
President’s daughters, Mrs. Stover and Mrs. Patterson, now presiding at
the White House, had been courteous to me, I resolved, as a stroke of
policy, to attend the Presidential reception to take place on the ninth
of January. Naturally, since my arrival in Washington, I had not
participated in the social life about me. In acknowledgment of Mr.
Johnson’s concessions, and, with my husband’s life at stake, with a
desire further to win the President’s good offices, I now prepared to
attend his levee. My toilette was complete save for the drawing on of my
gloves, when, while awaiting the call of my hostess Mrs. Parker and her
daughter Mrs. Bouligny, whose preparations were somewhat more elaborate
than my own, I broke the seal of some letters from home. The news they
contained was of a nature well calculated to divert me from the thought
of appearing at a public gathering, even at the Executive Mansion.
The first told me, in hurried lines, of the illness of my husband’s
mother; the second, posted a few hours later, announced her death. “I
write beside mother’s dead body,” began my sister, Mrs. J. Withers Clay.
“Her constant theme was brother Clement, and the last thing I remember
hearing her say was ‘What of my son?’ in so distressed a tone that her
heart appeared broken.... I trust you have seen your dear husband ere
this. I hope he will be released before poor father leaves us. He is
very distressed, very gentle and subdued in his trouble.... I can never
forget mother’s heart-thrilling question ‘What of my son?’ She was very
unhappy about your last letter—it was rather low-spirited—and said, ‘I
have no hope; I shall never see my son!’”
Within the next day I called upon Mr. Johnson. He received me with his
usual urbane manner, quite in contrast with my own indignant mood.
“Mr. Johnson,” I began, “Who _is_ the President of the United States?”
He smiled rather satirically and shrugged his shoulders.
“I am supposed to be!” he said.
“But you are _not_!” I answered. “Your autographed letter was of little
more use to me when I reached Fortress Monroe than blank paper would
have been! For hours it was not honoured, during which time your
Secretary of War held the wires and refused to allow me either to see my
husband or to communicate with you!” Then, in as few words as possible,
I related the circumstances of my visit to the Fort. Mr. Johnson, though
constrained to preserve his official reserve, was unable to repress or
disguise his anger at my recital.
“When you go there again you’ll have no difficulty, I assure you!” he
said.
“When may I?” I asked eagerly.
“When you wish,” he answered.
I now pictured to him my husband’s position; I related the sad news I
had just received, and which, under present conditions, I knew I dared
not tell Mr. Clay. I implored the President, by every argument at my
command, to exercise his Executive power and release Mr. Clay on his
parole. Every moment of his incarceration under the discipline invented
by the unscrupulous military authorities, I felt his life to be
imperilled. As our interview proceeded, however, I perceived the old
indecision of manner returning. The President’s replies were all to one
effect; viz.: that the Secretary of War must decide upon the case. He
freely made out another permit to the prison, this time to cover a
longer stay, but about a parole for Mr. Clay, or the naming of a day for
an early trial, he could promise nothing. He would consult his Cabinet;
he would see Mr. Stanton. At last, my importunities for an authoritative
action growing greater, the President burst out with every evidence of
deep feeling:
“Go home, woman, and write what you have to say, and I’ll read it to my
Cabinet at the next meeting!”
“You will not!” I answered hotly.
“Why?” he asked, cynically.
“Because,” I replied, “you are afraid of Mr. Stanton! He would not allow
it! But, let _me_ come to the Cabinet meeting, and _I_ will read it,” I
said. “For, with my husband’s life and liberty at stake, I do not fear
Mr. Stanton or any one else.”
The President assured me I need have no misgivings; if I would write my
plea and send it directly to him, he would, he promised me, have it read
at the next Cabinet meeting (on the morrow). Actuated by the hope,
however meagre, of gaining a possible sympathy from the President’s
Governmental associates, even though the dictator Stanton was so
coercing a personality in that body, I prepared my letter. I afterward
secured an official copy of it. It ran as follows:
“WASHINGTON CITY, January 11, 1866.
“_To His Excellency, President of the United States_:
“... How true it is that all conditions of life, however seemingly
extreme, are capable of augmentation! I have thought and so told
you, that for eight months past I have been, and God knows with what
cause, at the Nadir of despair; that my cup, bitterer than the
waters of Marah, was brimming, my heart breaking. A letter received
two evenings ago announces the death of my husband’s beloved mother,
wife of ex-Governor Clay. Deeply distressing to me; oh! Mr. Johnson,
what a blow to my husband, your unhappy prisoner! He was her
idolised son, her first-born; bears the name of her lover-husband,
and upon whose lineaments she had not rested her longing eyes for
three long, weary, desolate years.
“On the morning of the first she swooned, and expired on the second,
inquiring, ‘What of my son?’ Oh, Mr. President, what an agonising
reflection to my husband! How can I summon nerve to tell him the
news? I cannot write so great a grief, nor can I tell it and leave
him in his gloomy prison to struggle with it alone! Will you not
pour in the oil of healing? I beg of you, permit me to bear with me,
along with my ‘weight of woe,’ the antidote. Issue the order for my
husband’s release on his _parole d’honneur_, with bail if desired,
and let him once more see our father, who lies (now) on a bed of
illness. My sister writes, ‘Father cannot long survive.[69] God
grant that he may see dear brother Clement ere he goes. Cannot he
come?’—I repeat, cannot he come?
“Mr. President, you hold many noble prisoners in your forts, but Mr.
Clay’s case is _sui generis_. General Grant, the whole-souled
soldier, in his letter to you in his behalf, says, ‘His manly
surrender is to me a full and sufficient guarantee that he will be
forthcoming at any time the civil authorities of the land may call
for him.’ Even Mr. Stanton, who is not considered partial to
so-called ‘Rebels,’ told me, in my only interview, that ‘he was not
my husband’s judge,’ as if he, Pilate-like, were willing to wash his
hands of innocent blood. I replied tremblingly, ‘I would fain not
have you for his accuser, Sir.’ To which he rejoined, not unkindly,
‘I am not his accuser, Madam.’ I thanked God for even that cold
comfort as harbinger of better days.
“And now, Sir, may I ask you who are those opposed to my husband’s
release on parole? I have yet to find the first man, Federal or
other, who does not express admiration at the high sense of honour
and chivalric faith, in the prompt and manly surrender; and
astonishment at the detention. To-day we might have been far away in
some peaceful spot, united at least, and happy, but for that sense
of unsullied honour, which ‘feeling a stain like a wound,’ remained
to wipe it out. Can you longer refuse him the privilege?
“The law supposes all men innocent till proven guilty, and if it
will allow me, I, alone, can disprove, _in toto_, the testimony of
the conspiracy case, implicating him. Mr. Clay, always delicate, is
dying daily. He told me he was resigned to God’s will and perfectly
willing to perish in those four walls if his country would be
benefited thereby. Mr. President, my husband is my world, my all,
and ‘dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit this sad heart.’
Give him to me for a little while, at least long enough to glad the
dim eyes of the eager and aged watcher at home and close them; and
he shall return to you, on his honour and my life, at any moment
called for by the Government. Let me bring him to you to prove to
you the truth of my statement in point of health, and to afford him
the right of personal appeal.... That God may incline you to grant
my prayer and soften ‘the hearts of our enemies,’ restore Peace
indeed to the land, and bless and guide and guard you in public and
private life to your journey’s end, is the prayer of her who
hopefully, trustfully, and truthfully subscribes herself,
“Your friend,
(Signed.) “V. C. CLAY.”
I sent this epistle to Mr. Johnson, but, despite the haste in which I
had written and despatched it, I was too late for the promised reading,
which fact I learned from the following message, that reached me the
next day. It was written on the back of the President’s card in his (by
this time) familiar, scrawling hand.
“Your letter,” it read, “was too late yesterday. It does your heart and
head credit. It is a most powerful appeal. You have excelled yourself in
its production!”
At the next Cabinet meeting Mr. Johnson made his promise good. The
letter was then read, by Mr. Evarts, too late, however, even had it
produced immediate results, to enable me to carry the parole I had hoped
for to my husband. I was again with Mr. Clay at the Fortress when this
meeting took place, but, having no balm to soothe the wound, I could not
tell him of the blow that had befallen him, nor did he hear of it until,
nearly four months later, he left the prison. In the interim, in order
that my husband should not remark upon the sombreness of my attire, I
wore a red rose in my bonnet and red ribbon at my throat whenever I
visited the Fort.
I learned the particulars of that (to me) eventful Cabinet reading from
Mr. Johnson later. Upon the conclusion of the letter Mr. Stanton asked
for it. He scanned it closely and put it into his pocket without
comment. Nor was the missive again returned to Mr. Johnson until weeks
had elapsed and several requests had been made for it.