PRISON BARS
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!"
[Illustration: "'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--though in 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 was torturing, 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.