THE TORTURE
While the prisoner fought to save his reason in the dungeon at Fortress
Monroe, his wife was denied the right to lift her hand in his defense.
No communication was allowed between them except through his jailer.
On arrival in Savannah Mrs. Davis and her children were compelled to
walk through the blazing heat the long distance from the wharf uptown,
the whole party trudging immigrant fashion through the streets. Her
sister carried the baby. Mrs. Davis and the two little boys and Maggie
followed with parcels, and Robert, her faithful black man, brought up
the rear with the baggage.
The people of Savannah, on learning of their arrival, treated their
prisoners with the utmost kindness. Every home in the city was thrown
open to them. Her children had been robbed of all their clothing except
what they wore. The neighbors hurried in with clothes.
The newspaper of Savannah of the new régime, _The Republican_, published
and republished with gleeful comments the most sensational accounts of
the brutal scene of the shackling of Davis. Maggie composed a prayer and
taught her little brothers to repeat it in concert for their grace at
the table morning, noon and night:
"Dear Lord, give our father something he can eat, and keep him strong,
and bring him back to us with eyes that can see and in his good senses,
to his little children, for Jesus' sake."
Nearly every day the child who composed the prayer was so moved by its
recital she would run from the table and dry her tears in the next room
before she could eat.
Hourly scenes of violence increased between the whites and the inflamed
blacks. A negro sentinel leveled his gun at little Jeff and threatened
to shoot him for calling him "Uncle." With prayers and tears the mother
sent her children away to the home of a friend in Montreal.
A year passed before President Johnson in answer to the wife's desperate
pleading permitted her to visit her husband in prison. She arrived from
Montreal on the cold raw morning of May 10, 1866, at four o'clock before
day. There was no hotel at the fort at that time and the mother was
compelled to sit in the desolate little waiting room with her baby
without a fire until ten o'clock.
General Miles called. His references to her husband were made in a
manner which brutally expressed his hatred and contempt. She had been
informed that his health was in so dangerous a condition that physicians
had despaired of his life.
Miles hastened to say:
"'Davis' is in good health--"
"I can see him at once?" she begged.
"Yes. You understand the terms of your parole that you are to take no
deadly weapons into the prison?"
Suppressing a smile at the unique use of the language which a man of the
rank of Miles could make she replied quickly:
"I understand. Please arrange that I can see him at once."
Without answering the jailer turned and left the room. In a few minutes
an officer appeared who conducted her to the room in Carroll Hall to
which Dr. Cooper had forced Miles to remove the prisoner. Dr. Cooper
proved as troublesome to the General as Dr. Craven. In fact a little
more so. He had a way of swearing when angered which made the General
nervous. American physicians don't make good politicians when the life
of a patient is involved.
They were challenged by three lines of sentries, each requiring a
password, ascended a stairway, turned to the right and entered a guard
room where three young officers were sitting. Through the bars of the
inner room the wife gazed at her husband with streaming eyes.
His body had shrunk to a skeleton, his eyes set and glassy, his cheek
bones pressing against the shining skin. He rose and tottered across the
room, his breath coming in short gasps, his voice scarcely audible.
Mrs. Davis was locked in with him. She sent the baby back to her
quarters by Frederick, another faithful negro servant who had followed
their fortunes through good report and evil.
His room had a horse bucket for water, a basin and pitcher on an old
chair whose back had been sawed off, a little iron bedstead with hard
mattress, one pillow, a wooden table, and a wooden chair with one leg
shorter than the others which might be used as an improvised rocker. His
bed was so thick with bugs the room was filled with their odor. He was
so innocent of such things he couldn't imagine what distressed him so at
night--insisting that he had contracted some sort of skin disease.
His dinner was brought slopped from one dish to another and covered by a
gray hospital towel sogged with the liquids. The man of fastidious taste
glanced at the platter and saw that the good doctor's wife had added
oysters to his menu that day and ate one. His vitality was so low even
this gave him intense pain.
He was not bitter, but expressed his quiet contempt for the systematic
petty insults which his jailer was now heaping on him daily. His
physician had demanded that he take exercise in the open air. Miles
always walked with him and never permitted an occasion of this kind to
pass without directing at his helpless prisoner personal insults so
offensive that Davis always cut his walks short to be rid of his
tormentor. On one occasion the general was so brutal in his conversation
after he had locked his prisoner in his room that he suddenly sprang at
the bars, grasped them with his trembling, skeleton hands and cried:
"But for these you should answer to me--here and now!"
A favorite pastime of his jailer was to admit crowds of vulgar
sightseers and permit them to gaze at his prisoner.
A woman inquired of Frederick, who was on his way to his room:
"Where's Jeff?"
The negro bowed gravely and drew his stalwart figure erect:
"I am sorry, madame, not to be able to tell you. I do not know any such
person."
"Yes, you do--aren't you his servant?"
"No, madame, you are mistaken. I have the honor to serve ex-President
Davis."
Only a great soul can command the love and respect of servants as did
this quiet grave statesman of the old régime.
Never during the long hours of these weeks and months of torture did he
lose his dignity or his lofty bearing quail before his tormentor. He was
too refined and dignified to be abusive, and too proud in General Miles'
delicate phraseology to "beg."
The loving wife began now her desperate fight to nurse him back into
life again.
The new Commandant of the fort, General Burton, who replaced Miles,
proved himself a gentleman and a soldier of the old school. He
immediately gave to the prisoner every courtesy possible and to his wife
sympathy and help.
The Bishop of Montreal sent him a case of green chartreuse from his own
stores. This powerful digestive stimulant helped his feeble appetite to
take the nourishment needed to sustain life and slowly build his
strength.
He could sleep only when read to, and many a day dawned on the worn
figure of his wife still droning her voice into his sensitive ears, with
one hand on his pulse praying God it might still beat. At times it
stopped, and then she roused the sleeper, gave him the stimulant and
made him eat something which she always kept ready. Dr. Cooper had
warned that the walls of his heart were so weak even a sound sleep might
prove his death if too long continued.