wide-eyed terror said that some one had told her that "Old Lincoln was
coming to kill everybody." Mr. Davis, taking her upon his knees, said
soothingly: "You are wrong, my dear, Mr. Lincoln is not a bad man. He
would not willingly harm any one, and he dearly loves little girls like
you." These incidents, trivial enough in themselves, are nevertheless
interesting as indices of Jefferson Davis' opinion of Mr. Lincoln.
XXIX. The Capture of Davis
Proceeding to Charlotte, Mr. Davis there learned of the surrender of
General Johnston. Determining to make his way to Texas he decided to take
a southerly route which he hoped to find free from Federal troops. A
cavalry force of about two thousand accompanied him as far as the Savannah
River, but there discovering General Wilson's brigade to be in the country
in front it was deemed advisable for the force to disband and Mr. Davis,
with Burton Harrison, his secretary, and a few others to go forward in the
hope of escaping discovery.
At Irwinsville, Ga., he learned that his family, which was also proceeding
westward, was but a few miles away and he was advised that the country was
filled with marauders who were rifling and robbing all strangers whose
appearance indicated the possession of valuables. This information,
coupled with the story that Mrs. Davis' party was believed to possess a
valuable treasure, so alarmed Mr. Davis for the safety of his family that
he resolved to join it at all hazards. This resolution cost him his
liberty.
Perhaps no event of history has ever been so grossly and malignantly
misrepresented as the capture of Jefferson Davis. At the time an absurd
story was published along with a cartoon in even so respectable a paper as
_Harper's Weekly_, which represented Mr. Davis at the time of his capture
arrayed in shawl, bonnet and hoop-skirts, and, strange as it may seem,
this ridiculous screed is still accepted by thousands of intelligent
people as correct history. The true facts of the case, as learned from Mr.
Davis and corroborated by both General Wilson and Mr. Burton Harrison, are
as follows:
[Illustration: Richmond as Gen. Weitzel Entered It]
The Confederate President reached the spot where his wife's party had
pitched its tent after nightfall. During the evening it was decided that,
to avoid discovery, he would leave the party on the following day and
thenceforward would proceed westward alone. About daylight the travelers
were awakened by firing across a nearby stream, and Mr. Davis thinking it
an attack from marauders remarked to his wife that he hoped he still had
enough influence with the Southern people to prevent her robbery and
stepped out of the tent. Almost immediately he returned saying it was not
marauders but Federal soldiers. Mrs. Davis, frantic with fright, begged
him to fly. In the darkness of the tent he picked up a light rain coat,
which he supposed to be his own but which belonged to his wife, and she
threw a shawl around his shoulders. His horse stood saddled by the
roadside and he ran toward it, but before he could reach it a trooper
interposed and with leveled carbine bade him surrender. Intending to place
his hand under the foot of the soldier and topple him out of the saddle he
gave a defiant answer and rushed forward. Mrs. Davis, however, now
interposed and Mr. Davis seeing the opportunity lost walked back to the
tent, where a few moments later he surrendered to Colonel Pritchard of the
Fifth Michigan Cavalry.
No soldier who took part in the capture of Mr. Davis ever supposed that he
attempted to disguise himself, and the story of the bonnet and the
hoop-skirts is, of course, pure fiction. The picture of the illustrious
captive, presented in this edition, represents him exactly as he appeared
at the time of his capture, when divested of the shawl and raglan, which
in no way served to conceal his identity, much less his sex.
Despite the efforts of Colonel Pritchard to spare Mr. Davis all
indignities, many insults were heaped upon him enroute to Macon. Once
arrived at that point he was furnished with a comfortable suite of rooms
and after a time General Wilson sought an interview, during the course of
which Mr. Davis first learned that he was accused of complicity in the
assassination of President Lincoln, and of Andrew Johnson's proclamation
offering $100,000 reward for his apprehension.
Those who knew Mr. Davis will remember him best by his habitual expression
of calm dignity and benign gentleness. One would imagine that scorn or
contempt could never disturb that face, but General Wilson says that when
he imparted the above information that his lips curved in contempt, that
his brows were knitted and that there was a deep gleam of anger in his
eyes which, however, soon softened away as he remarked, with a half rueful
smile, that there was at least one man in the United States who knew that
charge to be false. General Wilson, of course, asked who it was, and Mr.
Davis replied, "The author of the proclamation himself, for he, at least,
knows that of the two I would have preferred Lincoln as president."
From Macon Mr. Davis was sent under guard to Augusta, and from thence on a
river tug in company with Clement C. Clay and Alexander H. Stephens, to
Port Royal, where they were transferred to a steamer which conveyed them
to Fortress Monroe. During the time they were anchored off shore crafts of
all descriptions swarmed around, and the insults and gibes of the morbid
sight seekers keenly annoyed the illustrious prisoner, and it was a relief
when a file of soldiers came to escort him ashore. He requested permission
from General Miles for his family to proceed to Washington or Richmond,
but this was curtly refused and they were sent back to Savannah.
XXX. A Nation's Shame
In fortress Monroe, Mr. Davis was confined in a gun room of a casement
which was heavily barricaded with iron bars. Two sentries with loaded
muskets and fixed bayonets were posted in the room, while two others paced
up and down in front of his cell.
Escape would have been impossible for any one, however strong and
vigorous, and he, now an old man, was weak, feeble and emaciated.
Yet on the third day after his incarceration, while the victorious troops
of the republic were passing in solemn review before the President and
generals of a great nation, there was enacted in that little cell at
Fortress Monroe a scene which must forever cause the blush of shame to
mantle the brow of every American at its mere mention. A file of soldiers
entered the cell and Captain Jerome Titlow, with evident pain and
reluctance informed Mr. Davis that he had a most unpleasant duty to
perform, which was to place manacles upon him. Mr. Davis demanded who had
given such an order, and upon being informed that it was General Miles,
asked to see him. This was refused by Captain Titlow, who sought to induce
him to submit peaceably to the inevitable. "It is an order which no
soldier would give and which none should obey. Shoot me now and end at
once this miserable persecution!" At the same time the fallen chieftain
drew himself up to his full height and faced the soldiers, his hands
clenching in convulsive grasps and his eyes gleaming like those of a
hunted tiger driven to bay. A word from Captain Titlow and a soldier with
the shackles in hand advanced, but before he could touch the captive he
dealt him a blow which felled him upon the floor. Necessarily the struggle
was a short one and in a few moments heavy irons were riveted upon his
ankles and one of the foremost of living statesmen lay upon a miserable
straw mattress chained as though he had been the vilest of desperate
criminals.
Had Garibaldi or Napoleon after Sedan been subjected to the crowning
indignity inflicted upon Jefferson Davis all Europe would have rung with
the infamy of the brutal act, and yet the whirlwind of sectional strife
had so fanned the fires of prejudice and hatred that the act was generally
applauded at the North, and the officer responsible for this crime against
civilization for many years exhibited the shackles as though they had been
a trophy of honorable victory.
Let us as Americans be thankful that such perverted sentiment was short
lived, and that a day came when the infamous act was repudiated as
wantonly cruel and brutal, and its perpetrators were more anxious to avoid
the responsibility for it than formerly they had been to assume it. There
is now no longer any doubt as to the person who is responsible for placing
Jefferson Davis in irons, but it is only fair to General Miles to say that
he was very young at the time. The grave charges against Mr. Davis, no
doubt, served to mislead his immature judgment, and from the fact that
Louis Napoleon had recently escaped from a fortification in France he, no
doubt, believed that the extreme and cruel measure was necessary.
In justice it should be further stated that as soon as General Miles
believed the danger of escape no longer great he gave orders for the
removal of the shackles, and thereafter treated Mr. Davis with much
kindness. The story of Mr. Davis' two years' imprisonment at Fortress
Monroe is too well known from Dr. Craven's impartial, if somewhat
fragmentary, account to need further repetition here.
XXXI. Efforts to Execute Mr. Davis
It is a difficult matter at this distance of time to realize the attitude
of public sentiment against Jefferson Davis the state prisoner of Fortress
Monroe. As the chief executive of the late Confederacy, he was, in popular
estimation, the incarnation, if not the proximate cause, of all the sins
and suffering of Rebellion, but worse than all the administration which in
feverish, puerile haste had declared him an accessory to the assassination
of Mr. Lincoln and upon that score had paid out of the public treasury
$100,000 for his capture, could not, or rather dared not reverse its
attitude and speak the truth. The result was, of course, that the vast
majority of the people at the North believed Mr. Davis to be as guilty of
murder as he was of treason, and consequently there was a mighty clamor
for his summary execution.
Had there been a scintilla of evidence, nay, had there been any fact which
human ingenuity could have tortured into a plausible resemblance to guilty
knowledge of Mr. Lincoln's death, no one will now doubt that Jefferson
Davis would have been murdered as was Mrs. Serrat.
Andrew Johnston within ninety days after he had issued his ridiculously
false proclamation admitted it to be without foundation--a fact which all
along was fully realized by every member of the government who had
personally known the accused. And yet a coterie of radicals, headed by a
conspicuous member of the Cabinet, continued to search by such
questionable means for incriminating evidence that it disgusted the just,
conservative men of all parties, and they demanded that the senseless
accusation be dropped for all time.
However, a chance yet remained to dispose of the fallen chieftain without
incurring any of the trouble and risk that must arise from a trial
according to the laws of the land.
Thousands of Federal prisoners had starved and died at Andersonville and
throughout the North this tale of suffering had inspired such horror and
indignation that there was a general demand for the punishment of those
who were supposed to be responsible for it. Captain Wirz, the commandant
of Andersonville, was accordingly haled before a drum-head court martial
and, despite the fact that he conclusively demonstrated that conditions
responsible for the horrors of that pest hole were beyond his own control,
or that of any man or number of men in the Confederacy, he was promptly
convicted and was sentenced to death.
Then a serviceable, if not honorable, idea seized the hysterical radicals,
which was nothing less than the feasibility of holding Jefferson Davis
responsible for the horrors of Andersonville. But there again the
ingenuity of malice failed to discover any evidence except that which was
highly creditable to the intended victim.
All that followed in the nefarious plot is not and never will be fully
known, but from the declaration of the priest, who was Captain Wirz's
spiritual adviser, as well as from other authentic information, there is
no room whatever to doubt that the condemned man was offered his life and
liberty if he would swear that in the management of the prison he had
acted under the direction of Jefferson Davis. Captain Wirz, however, was a
brave and honorable man and scorning to purchase his life with such a lie,
he met his fate like a soldier. This left but one other course open. If
Mr. Davis were to be punished at all, it must be for treason. The idea
appealed to the radicals with something of the same zest that a child
experiences from its first gaudy toy, and for a time they fairly reveled
in visions of a court martial which, unincumbered of the troublesome rules
of evidence observed in courts of law, would speedily give the desired
result.
But fortunately for the American people, there were men in the Cabinet and
in Congress, who knowing the law, clearly saw that such a course of
procedure must shock the whole civilized world and reduce the guarantees
of the Constitution to a parity with the so-called organic law of the
revolutionary despotisms of Central American and South America. Against
this sentiment the ravings of the vindictive cabal availed nothing, and,
as the months went by, it became evident that if a trial ever came, it
must be according to the laws of the land.
XXXII. Indictment of Mr. Davis
In the meantime Mr. Davis was constantly demanding that he be given the
speedy and impartial trial provided in such cases by the Constitution.
Charles O'Connor, then the greatest of living lawyers, Henry Ould and many
other leading members of the bar from the Northern states volunteered to
defend Mr. Davis, while Thaddeus Stevens proffered his services to Clement
C. Clay. Horace Greeley, through the columns of the _Tribune_, constantly
demanded that Mr. Davis be either liberated or brought to trial, and by
the spring of the year 1866 he had created such a sentiment throughout the
country in favor of his contentions that the government could no longer
delay some action.
Accordingly in May an indictment was procured, charging Jefferson Davis
with high treason against the United States, and in June of the same year
Mr. Boutwell offered a resolution in Congress that the accused should be
tried according to the laws of the land, which passed that body by a vote
of 105 to 19.
But despite that resolution, there were those who clearly foresaw the
danger involved in it, and hoping that time might dispose of the necessity
for any trial at all, urged delay as the wisest measure. Consequently,
despite the efforts of Greeley and Gerritt Smith, and other great men of
the North, the trial was postponed until May, 1867.
Mr. Davis, weak pale and emaciated, appeared before Chief Justice Chase
sitting with Justice Underwood in the Circuit Court at Richmond. The
court-room was crowded to its utmost capacity and despite the stern
discipline sought to be enforced it was with the greatest difficulty that
the applause could be suppressed that from time to time greeted the
profound logic and masterly eloquence of Charles O'Connor's great speech
on a motion to quash the indictment. The arguments lasted two days and at
their conclusion Chief Justice Chase voted to quash the indictment, while
Justice Underwood voted to sustain it, thus necessitating a reference of
the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States for final decision.
In accordance with a previous arrangement Mr. Davis was soon afterward
admitted to bail, Horace Greeley, Gerritt Smith, Augustus Schell and a
number of other former political enemies becoming his bondsmen.
XXXIII. Why Davis Was Not Tried for Treason
From that moment the administration knew that Jefferson Davis would never
be tried for treason and drew a long breath of relief. Yes, the
administration knew, but the general public, beyond the gilded vagaries
about humanity and the magnanimity of a great nation to a vanquished foe,
sedulously promulgated to obscure the real reason, has never understood
why Jefferson Davis was never tried for the high crime which it was
alleged that he had committed against the United States.
Unfortunately the restricted space at this time at the disposal of the
author precludes anything more than setting forth the conclusions based
upon the evidence now in his possession, of why this charge was so
joyously abandoned by an administration which less than two years before
had moved heaven and earth to discover any pretext which might lend the
color of justice to the summary execution of the illustrious chieftain of
the Confederacy.
To one in any way acquainted with popular sentiment, with the temper of
the administration even in 1867, all declarations of magnanimity,
generosity and abhorrence of extreme measures must seem the merest cant.
It is, of course, not beyond the pale of possibility that those who in
1865 were willing to descend to any depths of infamy to secure a pretext
for the execution of Mr. Davis _might_ have experienced a change of heart
in two years sufficiently marked to create conscientious scruples against
putting him upon a fair trial in a court of justice on the charge of
treason. But that theory of the case would be altogether unlikely even if
we did not know that the desire of the administration to hang Jefferson
Davis was just as intense in 1867 as it was two years before. That it did
not attempt to accomplish that result through the regular channels of
justice, is due entirely to the fact that such a trial would have opened
up the whole question of secession for final adjudication by our highest
court of last resort. It would have been a trial not so much of Mr. Davis
as of the question of state rights, and the able lawyers of the
administration, partisans as they were, had no desire to see the highest
judicial body of the land reverse an issue which had been satisfactorily
decided by the sword.
Charles O'Connor's bold declaration that Jefferson Davis could never _be_
convicted of treason under the Constitution as it then stood first aroused
the administration to the dangers of the task that it had assumed. Mr.
Johnson sent for his attorney-general and had him prepare an opinion on
the case. In due time it was submitted. It was a veritable bombshell which
fairly demolished every theory upon which Jefferson Davis might have been
convicted of treason or any other crime.
Mr. Johnston then called to his aid two of the greatest constitutional
lawyers of the age, and they agreed with the conclusions of Mr. Stanberry.
Not satisfied with this, he invited the chief justice to a conference for
a full discussion of the matter.
If there was ever a partisan, it was Salmon P. Chase, but at the same time
he was a great lawyer and an honest and fearless man. "Lincoln," he said,
"wanted Jeff. Davis to escape. He was right. His capture was a mistake,
his trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.
Secession is settled. Let it stay settled!" Significant words truly from
that source, and they explain the vote of the great judge who would have
quashed the indictment against Mr. Davis no less than the question so
often asked, "Why was Jefferson Davis never tried for treason?"
Immediately after Mr. Davis' release on bond, he went with his family to
New York, and a few weeks later to Montreal, where he continued to reside
until May of the following year when he again appeared before the Circuit
Court in Richmond for trial. But despite the efforts of his counsel to
force a trial of the case, it was dismissed by the government and thus
ended ingloriously the boast of the government that it intended "in the
arch traitor Davis to make treason odious."
XXXIV. Freedom, Reverses, Beauvoir
Impaired in health and longing for rest far away from the tragic scenes of
the past few years, Mr. Davis accepted the invitation of English friends
to visit them. But it was soon discovered that his visit was to be a
continuous ovation. Everywhere he was greeted as though he had been the
conqueror instead of the vanquished. The spirit that prompted those
manifestations he appreciated, but it revived sad memories of the cause
for which he had staked all and lost, and to avoid this lionizing he took
up his residence in Paris.
The cordiality of the Frenchmen, however, surpassed that of their English
brethren, and Mr. Davis soon found himself so much in the public eye that
he decided to return to England. Before quitting Paris, the emperor
conveyed his desire for an audience, which Mr. Davis courteously refused.
Napoleon, he conceived, had acted in bad faith with the South and such was
the moral rectitude of the man that he could never disguise his contempt
for any one, of however exalted station, whom he believed to be guilty of
double dealing of any kind.
As the guest of Lord Leigh and the Duke of Shrewsbury in Wales, Mr. Davis'
health gradually improved until he felt himself once more able to enter an
active business of life. The war had left him a poor man, and when a life
insurance company of Memphis offered him its presidency with a fair salary
he accepted, and with his family returned to America. The people of
Memphis soon after his arrival presented him a fine residence, but this he
refused.
Mr. Davis was probably a very poor business man and his associates of the
insurance company were in no way superior, for its affairs soon became
anything but prosperous. All of his available capital was invested in it,
but this he gladly sacrificed in order to sell his own company to a
stronger one which could protect the policies of the former.
[Illustration: The Davis Mansion]
The people of Texas, learning of Mr. Davis' losses offered to give him an
extensive stock farm in that state, but this he also refused.
Upon the Gulf of Mexico, near the little station of Beauvoir, Mr. Davis
owned a tract of land which he conceived would support his family, and
there, far from the strife of the busy world, he resolved to spend the
declining years of his life. However, retirement at best could only be
partial, for a man loved and venerated as Mr. Davis was throughout the
South, and Beauvoir accordingly became the shrine of the public men who
sought the counsel of its sage. But with the modesty characteristic of the
man he refused to advise any one upon measures of national import, since
by the action of Congress he was forever disfranchised.
He would not ask pardon, sincerely believing that he had done no wrong,
and when the people of Mississippi would have elected him to the United
States Senate he declined the honor in words which should be perused by
all who know the man as he was, during this period of his life: "The
franchise is yours here, and Congress can but refuse you admission and
your exclusion will be a test question," ran the invitation to which Mr.
Davis replied: "I remained in prison two years and hoped in vain for a
trial, and now scenes of insult and violence, producing alienation between
the sections, would be the only result of another test. I am too old to
serve you as I once did and too enfeebled by suffering to maintain your
cause."
Any word that might serve to still further increase that alienation never
passed the lips of the gentle, kindly old man, who still the idol of his
people, preferred to all honors the quiet life there among the pines,
where amidst his flowers he played with his children and their little
friends, and far into the night, surrounded by his books, he worked
assiduously upon his only defense, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
States of America." The concluding paragraph of that book, written in the
gray dawn of a summer morning after a night of continuous labor, should be
read by every one who would understand the motives that actuated Jefferson
Davis in the great part that he played in the world's history.
"In asserting the right of secession it has not been my wish to incite to
its exercise. I recognize the fact that the war showed it to be
impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong; and now that it may
not be again attempted, and the Union may promote the general welfare, it
is needful that the truth, the whole truth, should be known so that
crimination and recrimination may forever cease, and then on the basis of
fraternity and faithful regard for the rights of the states there may be
written on the arch of the Union 'Esto perpetua.'"