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CHAPTER VIII
The Wrath of the North
The mad act of crazy Wilkes Booth set the whole country crazy. The South was aghast, natural recoil intensified by apprehension. The North, convulsed with anguish, was newly inflamed, and even when the cooler moment came and we were acquitted of any responsibility for Booth’s crazy act, the angry humour of a still sore heart was against us. We, of both sections, who suffered so lately as one people in the death of President McKinley, can comprehend the woe and unreason of the moment.
Indignation and memorial meetings simply flayed the South alive. At one in the New York Custom House, when the grieving, exasperated people did not know whether to weep or to curse the more, or to end it by simply hanging us all, Mr. Chittenden rose and said: “Peace, be still!” And declared the death of Lincoln providential, God removing the man of mercy that due punishment might be meted out to rebels. Before the pacific orator finished, people were yelling: “Hang Lee!” and “The rebels deserve damnation!” Pulpits fulminated. Easter sermons demanded the halter, exile, confiscation of property, for “rebels and traitors”; yet some voices rose benignly, as Edward Everett Hale’s, Dr. Huntington’s, and Rufus Ellis’, in words fitting the day. Beecher urged moderation.
The new President, Andrew Johnson, was breathing out threatenings and slaughter before Lincoln’s death. Thousands had heard him shout from the southern portico of the Patent Office, “Jeff Davis ought to be hung twenty times as high as Haman!”
In Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, the following paragraph follows comment upon unanimity in Southern and Northern sentiment: “There was one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed over in silence. Among the extreme Radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln’s determined clemency and liberality towards the Southern people had made an impression so unfavourable that, though they were shocked at his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal their gratification that he was no longer in the way. In a political caucus held a few hours after the President’s death, ‘the thought was nearly universal,’ to quote the language of one of their most representative members, ‘that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsend to the country.’”
The only people who could profit by Lincoln’s death were in the Radical wing of the Republican party. These extremists thought Johnson their man. Senator Wade, heading a committee that waited on him, cried: “Johnson, we have faith in you! By the gods, it will be no trouble now running the Government!”
“Treason,” said the new President, “is the highest crime in the calendar, and the full penalty for its commission should be visited upon the leaders of the Rebellion. Treason should be made odious.” It is told as true “inside history” that the arrest and execution of General Lee had been determined upon; General Grant heard of it and went in the night to see President Johnson and Secretary Stanton and said to them: “If General Lee or any of the officers paroled by me are arrested while keeping the terms of their parole, I will resign my commission in the United States Army.”
But on April 15, even General Grant was of a divided mind, for he wired General Ord: “Arrest J. A. Campbell, Mayor Mayo, and members of the old Council who have not yet taken the oath of allegiance, and confine them in Libby Prison … arrest all paroled officers and surgeons until they can be sent beyond our lines unless they have taken the oath of allegiance. Extreme rigour will have to be observed whilst assassination is the order of the day with rebels.”
General Ord replied: “The two citizens we have seen. They are old, nearly helpless, and, I think, incapable of harm. Lee and staff are in town among the paroled prisoners. Should I arrest them under the circumstances, I think the rebellion here would be reopened. I will risk my life that present paroles will be kept, if you will allow me to so trust the people here, who are ignorant of the assassination, done, I think, by some insane Brutus with but few accomplices. Judge Campbell and Mr. Hunter pressed me earnestly yesterday to send them to Washington to see the President. Would they have done so if guilty?”
General Grant answered: “I leave my dispatch of this date in the light of a suggestion to be executed only as far as you may judge the good of the service demands.” But the venerable peace-maker and his associates were not to escape vengeance.
General Halleck, from Richmond, to General Grant, May 5: “Hunter is staying quietly at home, advises all who visit him to support the Union cause. His hostility to Davis did much to make Davis unpopular in Virginia. Considering this, and the fact that President Lincoln advised against arresting Hunter, I would much prefer not to arrest him unless specially ordered to do so. All classes are taking the Amnesty Oath; it would be unfortunate to shake by unnecessary arrests this desire for general amnesty. Lee’s officers are taking the oath; even Lee himself is considering the propriety of doing so and petitioning President Johnson for pardon.”
May 11, Halleck to Stanton: “R. M. T. Hunter has, in accordance with General Grant’s orders, been arrested, and is now on a gunboat in the James. Judge Campbell is still at his house. If necessary, he can be confined with Mr. Hunter. He voluntarily submits himself to such punishment as the Government may see fit to impose. He is very destitute and much broken down, and his case excites much sympathy.”
Fortress Monroe, May 22, General Halleck wires General Ord, Richmond: “The Secretary of War directs that John A. Campbell be placed in the Libby or some other secure prison. Do this at once.” Announcements of arrivals at Fort Pulaski in June would have made a fine page for any hotel desiring a brilliant register, thus: “Ex-Senator R. M. T. Hunter, Virginia; ex-Assistant Secretary of War Judge J. A. Campbell, Alabama; ex-Senator D. L. Yulee, Florida; ex-Governor Clark, Mississippi; ex-Secretary of the Treasury G. A. Trenholm, South Carolina;” and so on. Pulaski had rivals in other Federal prisons.
A reward of $25,000 for “Extra Billy” did not bring him in, but he delivered himself up to General Patrick, was paroled, and went to his home in Warrenton, Fauquier, and set to work with a will, though he was, to quote General Halleck, “seventy years old and quite feeble.” The rightful Governor of Virginia, he advised her people to cheerful acceptance of Pierpont.
As soon as the aged Governor of Mississippi learned that General Dick Taylor would surrender, he convened the Legislature; his message, recommending the repeal of the secession ordinance and deploring Lincoln’s murder, was not more than read, when General Osband, under orders from Washington, dissolved the Legislature with threats of arrest. Governor Clark was arrested: “The old soldier straightened his mangled limbs as best he could, with great difficulty mounted his crutches, and with a look of defiance, said: ‘General Osband, I denounce before high Heaven this unparalleled act of tyranny and usurpation. I am the duly and constitutionally elected Governor of Mississippi, and would resist, if in my power, to the last extremity the enforcement of your order.’”
Governors, generals and statesmen were arrested in all directions. No exception was made for Alexander H. Stephens, the invalid, the peace-maker, the gentlest Roman of them all. At Liberty Hall, Mr. Stephens and a young friend, Robert W. Hull, were playing casino, when Tim, a negro, ran in, exclaiming: “Marster, de town is full uh Yankees! Whole heaps uv ’em, gallopin’ all about, carryin’ guns.” Mr. Stephens rose and said to his guest: “I have been expecting this. They have come for me. Excuse me, please, while I pack.” He went into his bedroom and began this task, when an officer called. Mr. Stephens met him in the parlor. The officer said, “Are you Alex Stephens?” “That is my name.” “I have an order for your arrest.” “I would like to have your name and see your order.” “I am Captain Saint, of the 4th Iowa, acting under General Upton’s orders. Here is the order.” Mr. Stephens saw that himself and General Toombs were to be brought before General Upton in Atlanta. “I have been anticipating arrest,” he said quietly, “and have been careful not to be out of the way, remaining here at home. General Upton need not have sent an armed force for me. A simple intimation from him that my presence was desired would have taken me to Atlanta.” His negroes were weeping when he was carried away; one, by special permission, accompanied him.
He was left under guard in a shanty on the road; the troops went on to Washington, “to be back in a little while with Bob Toombs.” “Where is General Toombs?” asked Mr. Stephens, when they returned. “We don’t know,” was the rejoinder. “He flanked us.” Thus:
General Toombs, going to the basement doorway of his house in Washington, exclaimed suddenly: “My God! the blue-coats!” turned and went rapidly through his house and out at the back door, saying to his wife: “Detain them at the front as long as you can.” Their daughter, Mrs. Du Bose, helped her. “Bob Toombs” was asked for. Mrs. Du Bose went to bring “Bob Toombs”; she reappeared leading a lovely boy. “Here is Bob Toombs,” she said, “Bob Toombs Du Bose, named for my father, General Toombs.”
Mrs. Toombs took them through the house, showing them into every room – keys of which were lost and had to be looked for. They would burn the building, they insisted, if General Toombs was not produced. “Burn,” she said, “and burn me in it. If I knew my husband’s hiding-place, I would not betray him.” They told her to move her furniture out. She obeyed. They changed their minds about the burning and went off. General Toombs escaped to the woods, where he remained hidden until nightfall. His friend, Captain Charles E. Irvin, got some gold from Mrs. Toombs, and carried the money to him, together with his mare, Gray Alice. From Nassau Island he crossed to England, where the doughty “rebel” was mightily liked.
Mr. Davis, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Clay, General Wheeler, and General Ralls met aboard the steamer at Augusta, all prisoners. The President’s arrest occurred the day before Mr. Stephens’, near Irwinsville. Picture it. Gray dawn in the Georgia woods. A small encampment of tents, horses, and wagons. Horses saddled and bridled, with pistols in holsters, picketed on the edge of the encampment. A negro watching and listening. Suddenly, he hurries to one of the tents: “Mars Jeff!” His call wakes a man lying fully dressed on one of the cots. “What’s the matter, Jim?” “Firin’ ’cross de branch, suh. Jes behin’ our camp. Marauders, I reckon.”
After leaving Washington, Mr. Davis had heard that marauders were in pursuit of his wife’s cortege, and turning out of his course, he rode hard across country, found his family, conveyed them beyond the present danger, as he thought, and was about to renew his journey south. Horses for himself and staff were ready, when he heard that marauders were again near; he concluded to wait, and so lay down to rest. At Jim’s call, he went to the tent-door, then turned to where his wife bent over her sleeping baby, Winnie. “They are not marauders,” he said, “but regular troopers of the United States Army.”
She begged him to leave her quickly. His horses and weapons were near the road down which the cavalry was coming. In the darkness of the tent, he caught up what he took to be his raglan, a sleeveless, waterproof garment. It was hers. She, poor soul, threw a shawl over his head. He went out of the tent, she keeping near. “Halt!” cried a trooper, levelling a carbine at him. He dropped his wraps and hurried forward. The trooper, in the dark, might miss aim; a hand under his foot would unhorse him; when Mr. Davis would mount and away. Mrs. Davis saw the carbine, cast her arms about her husband, and lost him his one chance of escape.
In one of her trunks, broken open by pilferers of the attacking party, a hoop-skirt was found. I shall refer to this historic hoop-skirt again.
I left Generals Johnston and Sherman discussing Mr. Lincoln’s death and arranging terms of peace, based upon what Sherman recognized as the object of the war – salvation of the Union; and upon instructions received from Mr. Lincoln’s own lips in their last interview when the President authorized him to “assure Governor Vance and the people of North Carolina that, as soon as the rebel armies will lay down their arms, they will at once be guaranteed all their rights as citizens of a common country; and that, to avoid anarchy, the State Governments now in existence will be recognized.”
“When peace does come, you may call upon me for anything. Then, I will share with you the last crust and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” Thus Sherman closed his reply to Calhoun’s protest against the depopulation of Atlanta. Now that war was over, he was for living up to this.
In soldierly simplicity, he thought he had done an excellent thing in securing Johnston’s guarantee of disbandment of all Confederate forces, and settling all fear of guerilla warfare by putting out of arms not only regular Confederates, but any who might claim to be such.
Stanton disposed of the whole matter by ordering Grant to “proceed to the headquarters of Major-General Sherman and direct operations against the enemy.” This was, of course, the end to any terms for us. As is known, General Johnston surrendered on the same conditions with Lee. Grant so ordered his course as not to do Sherman injustice.
General Sherman wrote a spicy letter for Mr. Stanton’s benefit: the settlement he had arranged for would be discussed, he said, in a different spirit “two or three years hence, after the Government has experimented a little more in the machinery by which power reaches the scattered people of this vast country known as the South.” He had made war “hell”; now, the people of “this unhappy country,” as he pityingly designated the land he had devastated, were for peace; and he, than whom none had done more to bring them to that state of mind, was for giving them some of its fruits. “We should not drive a people to anarchy”; for protection to life and property, the South’s civil courts and governments should be allowed to remain in operation.
“The assassination has stampeded the civil authorities,” “unnerved them,” was the conclusion he drew when he went to Washington when, just after the crime, the long roll had been beaten and the city put under martial law; public men were still in dread of assassination. At the grand review in Washington, Sherman, hero of the hour, shook hands with the President and other dignitaries on the stand, but pointedly failed to accept Mr. Stanton’s.
After Mr. Lincoln’s death, leniency to “rebels” was accounted worse than a weakness. The heavy hand was applauded. It was the fashion to say hard things of us. It was accounted piety and patriotism to condemn “traitors and rebels.” Cartoonists, poets, and orators, were in clover; here was a subject on which they could “let themselves out.”
THE CHAINING OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
CHAPTER IX
The Chaining of Jefferson Davis
Strange and unreal seem those days. One President a fugitive, journeying slowly southward; the other dead, journeying slowly north and west. Aye, the hand of God was heavy on both our peoples. The cup of defeat could not be made more bitter than it was; and into the cup of triumph were gall and wormwood poured.
Hunters pursuing one chieftain with hoarse cries of “rebel!” and “traitor!” For the other, bells tolling, guns booming requiem, great cities hung with black, streets lined with weeping thousands, the catafalque a victor’s chariot before which children and maidens scattered flowers. Nearly a month that funeral march lasted – from Washington through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago – it wound its stately way to Springfield. Wherever it passed, the public pulse beat hotter against the Southern chieftain and his people.
Yet the dead and the hunted were men of one country, born in the same State. Sharp contrasts in many ways, they were yet enough alike in personal appearance to have been brothers. Both were pure men, brave, patriotic; both kindly and true. The dead had said of the living: “Let Jeff escape.”
Johnson’s proclamation threw the entire South into a white rage and an anguish unutterable, when it charged the assassination to Mr. Davis and other representative men of the South. Swift on it came news that our President was captured, report being spread to cast ridicule upon him that, when caught, he was disguised in his wife’s garments. Caricatures, claiming to be truthful portraiture, displayed him in hoops and petticoats and a big poke bonnet, of such flaming contrasts as certainly could not have been found in Mrs. Davis’ wardrobe.
In 1904, I saw at a vaudeville entertainment in a New York department store, a stereopticon representation of the War of Secession. The climax was Mr. Davis in a pink skirt, red bonnet, yellow bodice, and parti-coloured shawl, struggling with several Federals, while other Federals were rushing to the attack, all armed to the teeth and pointing warlike weapons at this one fantastic figure of a feeble old man. The theatre was full of children. The attraction had been running some time and thousands of young Americans had doubtless accepted its travesties as history. The Northern friend with me was as indignant as myself.
When Mr. Davis’ capture was announced in theatres and other places of amusement in the North, people went crazy with joy, clapping their hands and cheering, while bands played “Yankee Doodle” and “Star-Spangled Banner.” Many were for having him hung at once. Wendell Phillips wanted him “left to the sting of his own conscience.”
Presently, we heard that the “Clyde” was bringing Mr. Davis, his family, General Wheeler, Governor Vance, and others, to Fortress Monroe. And then – will I ever forget how the South felt about that? – that Mr. Davis was a prisoner in a damp, casemated cell, that lights were kept burning in his face all night until he was in danger of blindness; that human eyes were fixed on him night and day, following his every movement; that his jailer would come and look at him contemptuously and call him “Jeff”; that sightseers would be brought to peer at him as if he were some strange wild beast; that his feeble limbs had been loaded with chains; that he was like to lose his life through hardships visited upon him! To us who knew the man personally, his sensitiveness, dignity, and refinement, the tale is harrowing as it could not be to those who knew him not thus. Yet to all Americans it must be a regrettable chapter in our history when it is remembered that this man was no common felon, but a prisoner of State, a distinguished Indian-fighter, a Mexican veteran, a man who had held a seat in Congress, who had been Secretary of War of the United States, and who for four years had stood at the head of the Confederate States.
When they came to put chains upon him, he protested, said it was an indignity to which as a soldier he would not submit, that the intention was to dishonour the South in him; stood with his back to the wall, bade them kill him at once, fought them off as long as he could – fought them until they held him down and the blacksmiths riveted the manacles upon his wasted limbs. Captain Titlow, who had the work in charge, did not like his cruel task, but he had no choice but to obey orders.6
And this was in Fortress Monroe, where of old the gates fell wide to welcome him when he came as Secretary of War, where guns thundered greeting, soldiers presented arms, and the highest officer was proud to do him honour! With bated breath we speak of Russian prisons. But how is this: “Davis is in prison; he is not allowed to say a word to any one nor is any one allowed to say a word to him. He is literally in a living tomb. His position is not much better than that of the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet, exposed by his captor, Tamerlane, in a portable iron cage.” (“New York Herald,” May 26, 1865.) The dispatch seemed positively to gloat over that poor man’s misery.
A new fad in feminine attire came into vogue; women wore long, large, and heavy black chains as decorations.
The military murder of Mrs. Surratt stirred us profoundly. Too lowly, simple, and obscure in herself to rank with heroic figures, her execution lifts her to the plane where stand all who fell victims to the troubled times. Suspicion of complicity in Mr. Lincoln’s murder, because of her son’s intimacy with Wilkes Booth, led to her death. They had her before a military tribunal in Washington, her feet linked with chains.
Several men were executed. Their prison-life and hers was another tale to give one the creeps. They were not allowed to speak to any one, nor was any one allowed to speak to them; they were compelled to wear masks of padded cloth over face and head, an opening at the mouth permitting space for breathing; pictures said to be drawn from life showed them in their cells where the only resting-places were not beds, but bare, rough benches; marched before judges with these same horrible hoods on, marched to the gallows with them on, hanging with them on.
One of the executed, Payne, had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Seward and his son; the others had been dominated and bribed by Booth, but had failed to play the parts assigned them in the awful drama his morbid brain wrought out.
