THE CONSPIRATORS
The raid of Dahlgren and Kilpatrick had sent a thrill of horror through
Richmond. The people had suddenly waked to the realization of what it
meant to hold fifteen thousand desperate prisoners in their city with a
handful of soldiers to guard them.
The discovery on the young leader's body of the remarkable papers of
instructions to burn the city and murder the Confederate President and
his Cabinet produced a sharp discussion between Jefferson Davis and his
councilors.
Not only did the people of Richmond demand that such methods of warfare
be met by retaliation of the most drastic kind but the Cabinet now
joined in this demand. Hundreds of prisoners had been captured both from
Dahlgren's and Kilpatrick's division.
It was urged on Davis with the most dogged determination that these
prisoners--in view of the character of their instructions to burn a city
crowded with unarmed men, women and children and murder in cold blood
the civil officers of the Confederate Government--should be treated as
felons and executed by hanging.
The President had refused on every occasion to lend his power to brutal
measures of retaliation. This time his Cabinet was persistent and in
dead earnest in their purpose to force his hand.
Davis faced his angry council with unruffled spirit.
"I understand your feelings, gentlemen," he said evenly. "You have had
a narrow escape. The South does not use such methods of warfare. Nor
will I permit our Government to fall to such level by an act of
retaliation. The prisoners we hold are soldiers of the enemy's army.
Their business is to obey orders--not plan campaigns--"
"We have captured officers also," Benjamin interrupted.
"Subordinate officers are not morally responsible for the plans of their
superiors."
No argument could move the Confederate Chieftain. He was adamant to all
appeals for harsh treatment. Even Lee had at last found it impossible to
maintain discipline in his army unless he prevented the review of his
court martial by Davis. The President was never known to sign the death
warrant of a Confederate soldier. Lincoln was a man of equally tender
heart and yet the Northern President did sign the death warrants of more
than two hundred Union soldiers during his administration.
The only action Davis would permit was the removal of the fifteen
thousand prisoners further south to places of safety where such raids
would be impossible. The prisons of Richmond were emptied and the
stockades at Salisbury and Andersonville over-crowded with these men.
Davis renewed his urgent appeal to the Federal Government for the
exchange of these men. His request was treated with discourtesy and
steadily refused. When the hot climate of Georgia caused the high death
rate at Andersonville he released thousands of those men without
exchange and notified the Washington Government to send transportation
for them to Savannah.
Lincoln had given Grant a free hand in assuming the command of all the
armies of the Union. But he watched his cruel policy of refusal to
exchange prisoners with increasing anguish. In every way possible,
without directly opposing his commanding general, the big-hearted
President at Washington managed to smuggle Southern prisoners back into
the South unknown to Grant and take an equal number of Union soldiers
home.
A crowd of Southern boys from the prison at Elmira, New York, were
announced to arrive in Richmond on the morning train from
Fredericksburg. Among them Jennie expected her brother Jimmie who had
been captured in battle six months ago. She hurried to the station to
meet them.
A great crowd had gathered. A row of coffins was placed on the ground at
the end of the long platform awaiting the train going south. A dozen men
were sitting on those rude caskets smoking, talking, laughing, their
feet drawn up tailor-fashion to keep them out of the mud.
With a shiver the girl hurried to the other gate.
Her eager eyes searched in vain among the ragged wretches who shambled
from the cars. A man from Baton Rouge, whom she failed to recognize,
lifted his faded hat and handed her a letter.
She read it through her tears and hurried to the Confederate White House
to show it to the President. Davis scanned the scrawl with indignant
sympathy:
"_Dear Little Sis_:
"This is the last message I shall ever send. Before it can reach you
I shall be dead--for which I'll thank God. I'm sorry now I didn't
take my chances with the other fellows, bribe the guard and escape
from Camp Douglas in Chicago. A lot of the boys did it. Somehow I
couldn't stoop. Maybe the fear of the degrading punishment they gave
McGoffin, the son of the Governor of Kentucky, when he failed,
influenced me, weak and despondent as I was. They hung him by the
thumbs to make him confess the name of his accomplices. He refused
to speak and they left him hanging until the balls of his thumbs
both burst open and he fainted.
"The last month at Camp Douglas was noted for scant rations. Hunger
was the prevailing epidemic. At one end of our barracks was the
kitchen, and by the door stood a barrel into which was thrown beef
bones and slops. I saw a starving boy fish out one of these bones
and begin to gnaw it. A guard discovered him. He snatched the bone
from the prisoner's hand, cocked his pistol, pressed it to his head
and ordered him to his all-fours and made him bark for the bone he
held above him--
"We expected better treatment when transferred to Elmira. But I've
lost hope. I'm too weak to ever pull up again. I've made friends
with a guard who has given me the list of the men who have died here
in the five months since we came. In the first four months out of
five thousand and twenty-seven men held here, one thousand three
hundred and eleven died--six and one-half per cent a month--"
Davis paused and shook his head--
"The highest rate we have ever known at Salisbury or Andersonville
during those spring months was three per cent!"
He finished the last line in quivering tones.
"There's not a chance on earth that I'll live to see you again. See
the President and beg him for God's sake to save as many of the boys
as he can. With a heart full of love.
"Jimmie."
The President took both of Jennie's hands in his.
"I need not tell you, my dear, that I have done and am doing my level
best. The policy of the new Federal Commander is to refuse all offers of
exchange. You understand my position?"
"Perfectly," was the sorrowful answer. "I only came as a duty to bear
his dying message--"
"Express to your father and mother my deepest sympathy."
With a gentle pressure of the Chieftain's hand the girl answered:
"I need not tell you I appreciate it--"
The President watched her go with a look of helpless anguish. His
troubles for the moment had only begun. The returned prisoners had
marched in a body to his office to thank their Chief for his sympathy
and help and asked him to say something to them.
Jennie paused and stared in a dazed way into the poor shrunken faces.
When the President appeared every ragged hat was in the air and they
cheered with all the might of the strength that was left in them. The
girl burst into tears. These men, so forlorn, so dried up with a
strange, half-animal, hunted look in their eyes--others restless and
wild-looking--others calmly vacant in their stare as if they had been
dead for years!
A poor mother was rushing in and out among them hunting for her son.
"He was coming with you boys, you know!" she cried.
She stopped suddenly and laughed at her own anxiety and confusion.
"He's here somewhere--I just can't find him--help me, men!"
She hadn't spoken his name, in her eager search for his loved face. She
kept lifting the cloth from a basket of provisions which she had cooked
that morning.
"I've got his breakfast here--poor boy--I expect he's hungry."
She had lost all consciousness of the crowd now.
She was talking to herself, trying to keep her courage up.
The President looked into the emaciated faces before him and lifted his
long arm in solemn salutation.
"_Soldiers of the South_:
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this tribute of your
loyalty. You were offered your freedom in prison at any moment if
you would take the oath and forswear your allegiance to the South.
You deliberately chose the living death to the betrayal of your
faith. I stand with uncovered head before you. I am proud to be the
Chief Executive of such men!"
Again they cheered.
The old mother with her basket was searching again for her boy.
Jennie slipped an arm gently around her and led her away.
On the day Lee left Richmond for the front to meet Grant's invading
host, the Confederate President was in agony over a letter from General
Winder portraying the want and suffering among the prisoners confined at
Andersonville.
"If we could only get them across the Mississippi," Davis cried, "where
beef and supplies of all kind are abundant--but what can we do for them
here?"
"Our men are in the same fix," Lee answered quickly, "except that
they're free. These sufferings are the result of our necessity, not of
our policy. Do not distress yourself."
The South was entering now the darkest hours of her want. The market
price of food was beyond the reach of the poor or even the moderately
well-to-do. Turkeys sold for $60 each. Flour was $300 a barrel, corn
meal $50 a bushel. Boots were $200 a pair. A man's coat cost $350--his
trousers $100. He could get along without a vest. Wood was $50 a cord.
It took $1,800 to buy $100 in gold.
In the midst of this universal suffering the yellow journals of the
South, led by the Richmond _Examiner_, made the most bitter and
determined assaults on Davis to force him to a policy of retaliation on
Northern prisoners.
"Hoist the black flag!" shrieked the _Examiner_. "Retaliate on these
Yankee prisoners for the starvation and abuse of our men in the North--a
land teeming with plenty." The President was held up to the scorn and
curses of the Southern people because with quiet dignity he refused to
lower the standard of his Government to a policy of revenge on helpless
soldiers in his power.
To a Committee of the Confederate Congress who waited on him with these
insane demands he answered with scorn:
"You dare ask me to torture helpless prisoners of war! I will resign my
office at the call of my country. But no people have the right to demand
such deeds at my hands!"
In answer to this brave, humane stand of the Southern President the
_Examiner_ had the unspeakable effrontery to accuse him of clemency to
his captives that he might curry favor with the North and shield himself
if the South should fail.
No characteristic of Davis was more marked than his regard for the weak,
the helpless and the captive. His final answer to his assailants was to
repeat with emphasis his orders to General Winder to see to it that the
same rations issued to Confederate soldiers in the field should be given
to all prisoners of war, though taken from a starving army and people.
Enraged by the defeat of their mad schemes, the conspirators drew
together now to depose Davis and set up a military dictatorship.