The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 103

"'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 pa.s.sword, 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 gla.s.sy, his cheek bones pressing against the s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.s 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 regime.

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 appet.i.te 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 G.o.d 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.

CHAPTER XLVII

VINDICATION

When Socola had finished his work developing the history and character of Conover and his crew of professional perjurers there was a sudden collapse in the machinery of the Bureau of Military Justice. Holt was compelled not only to repudiate the wretches by whose hired testimony he had committed more than one murder through the forms of military law, but also to issue a long doc.u.ment defending himself as Judge Advocate General of the United States from the charge of subornation of perjury--the vilest accusation that can be brought against a sworn officer of any court. His weak defense served its purpose for the moment. He managed to cling to his office and his salary for a brief season. With the advent of restored law he sank into merited oblivion.

The charge of murder having collapsed, the Government now pressed against Davis an indictment for treason. Salmon P. Chase, the Chief Justice of the United States, warned the President and his Cabinet that no such charge could be sustained.

And still malice held the Confederate Chieftain a prisoner. Every other leader of the South had long since been released. On the public exposure of Holt and his perjurers the conscience of the North, led by Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith, demanded the speedy trial or release of Davis.

The Radical conspirators at Was.h.i.+ngton, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Stevens inspired by his dusky companion, were now pressing with feverish haste their programme of revolution. They pa.s.sed each measure over the veto of the President amid jeers, groans and curses. They disfranchised one-third of the whites of the South, gave the ballot to a million ignorant negroes but yesterday taken from the jungles of Africa, blotted out the civil governments of the Southern States, and sent the army back to enforce their decrees. Stevens introduced his bill to confiscate the property of the whites and give it to the negroes. This measure was his pet. It was the only one of his schemes which would be defeated on a two-thirds vote if Johnson should veto it. Stevens and Butler at once drew their bill of indictment against the President and set in motion the machinery to remove him from office--the grim old leader still swearing that he would hang him.

In this auspicious moment Charles O'Connor marshaled his forces and demanded the release of Davis on bail. Andrew Johnson had seen a new light. He was now in a life and death struggle with the newly enthroned mob to save the Republic from a Dictators.h.i.+p. The conspirators had already selected the man they proposed to set up on his removal from office.

The President issued an order to General Burton at Fortress Monroe to produce his prisoner in the United States District Court of Richmond.

On May fourth, 1867, the little steamer from the fort touched the wharf at Richmond and Jefferson Davis and his wife once more appeared in the Capital of the Confederacy.

The South had come to greet them.

All differences of opinion were stilled before the white face of the man who had been put in irons for their sins. They came from the four corners of the country for which he had tolled and suffered.

Senator Barton, his wife and daughter and all his surviving sons had come from Fairview to do him honor. A vast crowd a.s.sembled at the wharf.

No king ever entered his palace with grander welcome. The road from the wharf to the Spotswood Hotel was a living sea of humanity. His carriage couldn't move until the way was forced open by the mounted police. The windows and roofs of every house were crowded. Men and women everywhere were in tears. As the carriage turned into Main Street a man shouted:

"Hats off, Virginians!"

Every head was bared in the vast throng which stretched a mile along the thoroughfare. As he pa.s.sed in triumph, the people for whom he had worked and suffered crowded to his carriage, stretched out their hands in silence and touched his garments while the tears rolled down their cheeks.

They arraigned him for trial on a charge of high treason.

The indictment had also named Robert E. Lee as guilty of the same crime.

Grant lifted his mailed fist and told the Government he would fight if necessary to protect the man who had surrendered in good faith to his army. The peanut politicians dropped Lee's name.

When the tall, emaciated leader of the South stood erect before his accusers in court he faced a scene which proclaimed the advent of the new Democracy in America which must yet make good its right to live.

On the Judge's bench sat John C. Underwood, a crawling, shambling, shuffling, ignorant demagogue who had set a new standard of judicial honor and dignity. He had selected one of the handsomest homes in Virginia, ordered it confiscated as a Federal judge, and made his wife buy it in and convey it to him after warning other bidders to keep off the scene. The thief was living in his stolen mansion on the day he sat down beside the Chief Justice of the United States in this trial. When Chase had warned the Government that no charge of treason could stand against Davis, Underwood a.s.sured the Attorney General that he would fix a negro jury in Richmond which could be relied on to give the verdict necessary. He had impaneled the first grand jury ever a.s.sembled in America composed of negroes and whites. A negro pet.i.t jury now sat in the box grinning at the judge, their thick lips, flat noses and omnipotent African odor proclaiming the dawn of a new era in the history of America.

Salmon P. Chase with quiet dignity voted to quash the indictment.

Underwood with a vulgar stump speech to the crowd of negroes voted to hold the indictment good. The case was sent to the Supreme Court on this disagreement and the defendant admitted to bail.

Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Augustus Sch.e.l.l, representing the n.o.blest spirit in the North were among the men who signed his bail bond.