THE NATION’S PRISONERS
On the twenty-first of January, 1866, a few days after my last
conversation with President Johnson, I found myself a second time within
the ramparts of America’s most formidable military prison. This time,
unhindered, I was led directly to my husband’s gloomy room. In this and
the several succeeding visits I paid Mr. Clay in prison, I learned to
comprehend, where before I had but imagined, the terrible sufferings my
husband had undergone for now eight months. When I parted from General
Miles on May 24th, of the preceding year, he gave me his promise that
Mr. Clay should have every comfort he could allow him.
I found, upon my admission to Fortress Monroe, in January, 1866, that
his prisoner, for three or more months, had been confined within a
narrow cell, grated and barred like a cage in a menagerie, into which
the meagre daylight crept through the long, thin opening in the thick
walls. An unwholesome sweat had oozed through the bare walls which
surrounded him, at times, it was said, increasing until it flowed in
streams. For weeks after entering the prison (I now learned) Mr. Clay
had been denied not only the use of his clothing, but his toilet brushes
and comb, and every item calculated to preserve his health and
self-esteem had been taken from him. His only food for weeks had been a
soldier’s rations, until Dr. Craven, at last, felt obliged to order a
hospital diet. These rations had been passed through the prison bars in
tin cup or plate, unaccompanied by knife, fork or spoon.
For forty days at a stretch he had not been permitted to look upon the
sun; for months, though debarred from communication with or visits from
his own family, he was exhibited to strangers, civilian or military, who
from time to time were brought into his cell, conversing among
themselves, or to the gratings to stare at him with curious gaze. “I
have been treated as if already convicted of an infamous crime,” wrote
my husband in a paper sent out by one who proved trustworthy. “Indeed,
one of my warders told me that the orders from Washington required I
should be subjected to the same prison discipline that the assassins of
Abraham Lincoln underwent. While the Third Pennsylvania Artillery
(volunteers) were on duty (till October 31st), I scarcely ever walked
out without being greeted with ‘Shoot him! Hang him! Bring a rope! The
damned rascal!’ But since the regulars came in nothing like this has
occurred.... Mr. Davis and I are not allowed to communicate with each
other. We have met but a few times, in walking contrary to the intention
of officers and orders, but only saluted each other and asked of
health.”
Once, my husband told me, upon thus meeting, Mr. Davis and he greeted
each other in French, whereupon the soldiers, scenting some further
“treason,” rushed at them, pointing their bayonets.
“I have been subjected,” continued my husband’s statement, “to the most
refined but severe torture of body and soul; my health considered in
order to preserve the sensibility of the body to pain.... I have been
allowed irregularly some newspapers, but never one alluding to any
evidence against me, or mentioning me, unless in terms of reproach. I am
cut off from the world, except its reproaches!”
During none of my visits to the Fort was I permitted to speak with Mr.
Davis, between whom and my husband, as I have said, even an occasional
word, for a long time, was interdicted; but, when sending to him a tray
of good things from among gifts to my husband or brought with me from
Washington, I managed often to send, with an extra segar or two, a
twisted paper lighter on which I had scribbled “Mrs. Davis and children
are well,” or some (as I hoped) equally cheering greeting.
In later days, when a fuller liberty of walking about the Fort was
granted the prisoners, they were occasionally able to pass to each other
some brief message, written, it might be, on the inch-wide margin of a
bit of newspaper or wrapping. Two or three times a scrap of
writing-paper, written all over in the finest possible hand, was passed
from one to the other. Two such messages, uttered under the impression
that Mr. Clay was soon to be liberated, are expressive of the
unflinching spirit which Mr. Davis at all times showed, even under
torments as humiliating, and, in one instance, even more cruel, than
those endured by my husband. The first would seem to have reached Mr.
Clay shortly after my first visit to the Fort. A lengthy note, in finest
script and compressed within the dimensions of a single six-by-eight
sheet of paper, it read as if it had been written sentence by sentence,
as mood dictated or opportunity offered.
A second note, in even more diminutive script,[70] was passed to my
husband in the early winter of ’6, when at last it seemed assured that
Mr. Clay would be liberated. It was written in this belief, and gave my
husband directions as to friends whose influence might be awakened on
our late President’s behalf. Mr. Davis reiterated his loyalty to the
cause for which he was now suffering, but declared his anxiety for his
wife’s and children’s fates. He felt that there was a bloodthirsty hate
against him, the strong motive being to degrade the lost cause in his
person.
In all of his communications, however short, Mr. Davis wrote with
dignity and conviction, as became a man who had been the Chief
Magistrate of a people. Once only, and that during my first stay in the
Fort, I saw the tall figure of our late Chief. “I saw Mr. Davis walking
on the ramparts,” I wrote to ex-Governor Clay. “His beard and hair are
white, and he is thin to emaciation, but walked like a President still.”
Upon my arrival at the Fortress early in ’6, I found Mr. Clay
established in Carroll Hall, in what, in view of his earlier
surroundings, was a comfortable room. It was perhaps sixteen feet
square, and was lighted by two fairly large windows which opened toward
the front of the building, but were heavily barred with iron, as was
also the entrance. The cot upon which my husband slept was much too
short for his comfort, and a stool was the only seat at his disposal.
After a survey of Mr. Clay’s quarters, I at once called the attention of
General Miles to the shortcomings of the cot and the absence of a chair,
and in a few hours a mattress sufficiently long and two chairs were
brought in. I also requested that a drugget be placed upon the floor of
Mr. Davis’s room, in order that the noise caused by the change of guard
might be diminished; for, in his nervous state, it was said, he suffered
greatly by reason of it. This, I believe, was also conceded. My husband
had converted the window-sills of his room into a buffet and book-shelf,
respectively, on one of which were kept his medicines and such tidbits
and delicacies as were now from time to time sent to him by Dr. Withers,
our cousin, or which I carried in with me from Washington friends. On
the other, his meagre supply of books, the Bible and Jay’s Prayers being
the principal volumes.
But for his own scrupulous cleanliness, Mr. Clay’s life must long ago
have succumbed to his unparalleled deprivations in that cruel
imprisonment. So neatly had he kept his cell and room, however, that
they were the wonder of all his attendants. It was his custom, when he
took his morning bath (he told me), to stand the basin first in one and
then another position in the room, splashing the water about as far as
he could, after which he would take the broom with which he was provided
and brush the wet portions clean! To such depths of cruelty did the
agents of Mr. Stanton and Mr. Holt condemn a delicate scholar—a former
friend, recently a United States Senator, whose name throughout the land
was the synonym for unfailing integrity, against whom the United States
as yet seemingly had not found a single charge on which he might be
brought to trial!
I learned of many instances of insult offered to Mr. Clay by his rude
first custodians. Upon one occasion, reminded of it by the sound of the
dull-splashing waters without the walls of his cell, my husband
conceived the idea that a salt bath would assist in strengthening him.
He therefore asked the attendant for the day if, instead of the fresh
water usually supplied to him, he would bring him some salt water. The
man’s reply was emphatic.
“You damned Rebel!” he said. “You may thank God you get any water. You
don’t deserve to have any!”
My husband, whose nature was of the tenderest and most patient,
especially with the ignorant, answered very quietly, “I _am_ thankful
for any water!” His reply illustrated anew the magic of the soft answer,
for the soldier, looking very much ashamed, spoke in a moment in a very
different manner.
“Forgive me, Mr. Clay,” he said, “I don’t know why I did it. I’ve got
nothing against you. Guess it’s a kind of habit of damning Johnny Rebs!
I’ll get you the water. I believe you’re a Christian gentleman!”
On the evening of the first day of my second visit to the Fortress, I
encountered Dr. Cooper, against whom, it will be recalled, Dr. Craven
had warned me. To the prisoner he had always revealed himself as a man
of strictly unsocial manner, not to say an austere and pitiless one.
During the first day of my visit to the Fort, I saw nothing of him. It
was dark when I left my husband’s cell and set out, escorted by
Lieutenant Stone, for the little hotel outside the ramparts. Once
outside of the prison, the air was chill, and so silent, save for a
strong wind, that I was conscious of no sound save it and the swashing
of the waters against the stone walls of the Fort. Its cadence was weird
and full of melancholy. As the doors of the prison closed behind us, I
saw in the shadows a curious figure coming directly toward us. It was
clad in a long, loose, flapping dressing-gown, and in its mouth was a
pipe in which glowed a live spark of tobacco. I observed my guard
looking straight ahead and apparently unobservant; but he said, under
his breath and in a tone only audible to me, “Here comes Dr. Cooper!”
Another moment and the figure was beside us.
“Stone,” said a gruff voice, “present me to Mrs. Clay!”
My escort complied promptly, and then, to my alarm, hastened away at
once, leaving me dismayed and apprehensive, in the care of the “blackest
of Black Republicans” and one who would “show me no mercy!”
“Madam!” said the Doctor, whose features I could scarcely discern in the
dusk, “my wife wishes you to accept the hospitality of our house
to-night!”
Had the man turned suddenly and clasped manacles about my wrists, I
could scarcely have been more startled.
“I beg your pardon!” I stammered. “I am on my way to General Miles’s
headquarters for my passport with which to leave the Fort. I have not
the privilege of remaining within the ramparts over night.”
[Illustration:
DR. GEORGE COOPER
Fortress Monroe, 1866
]
“Nonsense, Madam!” replied the Doctor, almost rudely. “My wife expects
you! We soldiers have no luxuries and but few comforts, but we can give
you shelter and save General Miles some trouble in sending you to and
fro!” And he started rapidly across the stone walk. I followed him in
silence for some distance, hardly knowing why I did so, my mind busy
conjuring up the possible significance of his conduct, and alert to meet
the unknown perils into which it was possible I was being led. Presently
the Doctor, between puffs of tobacco, asked, “Ever been here before?”
“Yes!” I answered, sorrowfully enough, but with some pride, too, unless
at that moment I proved untrue to myself, which I know I did not. “Yes!
I was here during President Pierce’s administration, when my husband was
an honoured Senator, and I, beside Secretary Dobbin, looked on the
brilliant rockets that wrote the names of Pierce and Davis across the
night sky!” I was sad at the thought of that joyful occasion and the
contrast the present afforded me. Suddenly the Doctor, who had been
chewing most ostentatiously at his pipe, edged up to me and said, in a
low voice:
“Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer up! Madam!” He spoke so rapidly that I hardly
realised the significance of his words. They sounded exactly like
“chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, Madam.” “My wife,” he added, still in that
low-guarded voice, “is the damnedest Rebel out, except yourself, Madam!”
I was dumbfounded! He, Dr. Cooper, the blackest of Black Republicans,
etc., against whom I had been warned so emphatically? A flood of
gratitude rushed over me. Half crying, I turned to grasp his hand and
thank him, but seeing my intention, he drew away, saying sharply, “None
of that, Madam! None o’ that!” and, increasing his gait suddenly, almost
flew before me, his long gown rising in his wake most ludicrously, as he
made for a dark cottage that now began to shape itself out of the gloom.
It was so small that until we were almost upon it I had not perceived
it. Every window it boasted was mysteriously dark.
My guide pushed open the door, however, and entered, I following him
mechanically. The door closed behind me, and it seemed automatically, as
the Doctor disappeared from view; but, in a moment, I found myself in
the friendly embrace of the Doctor’s wife, one of the loveliest of
women, Elva Cooper.
“Be of good cheer, my sweet sister!” she said, as her tears flowed in
sympathy with mine. “You are in the right place. There is nothing under
heaven you would do for Mr. Davis or Mr. Clay that I will not do. I am
an Old Point Comfort woman, born here. My mother is a Virginian,” she
continued, “and is with me; and you must know my little Georgette. We
are all Rebels of the first water!” and this I found to be true.
This strangely God-given friend, Elva Jones Cooper, with whom I remained
four days and nights, never flagged in her devotion to me and the
prisoners. I saw her many times in my several visits to the Fort, and on
numberless occasions had reason to note the womanly expression of her
sympathy. Quite frequently she would prepare with her own hands a dainty
breakfast, write on a card, “By order of Dr. C——,” and send to one or
the other of the prisoners.
I once saw her gather from a box of growing violets a small bunch of
flowers, tie them with a strand of her shining hair, and drop them into
her husband’s hat, saying, “Put that hat where Mr. Clay can see it. He
shall smell violets, even though he is a prisoner!”
Mrs. Cooper was young, not thirty; beautiful in form and face; snowy
skin and raven hair and eyes; tall, commanding, and graceful. My
husband, on seeing her, exclaimed, “Maid of Saragossa!” And very
appropriately did he transfer to her this poetic title.
Outwardly, Dr. Cooper’s deportment to me was barely civil, and so
continued. I dared not ask one favour, so stern and seemingly implacably
did he deport himself toward my husband and me, toward our section and
the cause for which we were suffering; yet, in the months to come, as on
that memorable night of January 21, 1866, many an occasion arose to
convince me that Dr. Craven’s successor, after all, was actuated by a
genuine feeling of humanity toward the State prisoners, and I soon grew
to recognise in him a lamb in wolf’s clothing.