The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 90

"You are to leave," Jennie went on evenly--"leave at once--"

"Of course--"

"And give me your solemn parole--never again during this war to fight the South--"

"It is your right to demand it. I agree."

She gently took his hand.

"I know that I can trust you now--" She paused and looked wistfully into his face. "One last long look into your dear eyes--"

"Not the last--"

"One last kiss--"

She drew his lips down to hers.

"One last moment in your arms." She clung to him desperately and freed herself with quick resolution.

"And now you must go--from Richmond--from the South and out of my life forever--"

"You can't mean this!" he protested bitterly.

"I do," was the firm answer. "Good-by."

He pressed her hand and shook his head.

"I refuse to say it--"

"You must."

"No--"

"It is the end--"

"It is only the beginning."

With a look of tenderness he left her standing in the doorway, the hunger of eternity in her brown eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

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 Was.h.i.+ngton Government to send transportation for them to Savannah.

Lincoln had given Grant a free hand in a.s.suming 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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-fas.h.i.+on to keep them out of the mud.

With a s.h.i.+ver 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 G.o.d. 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed the bone from the prisoner's hand, c.o.c.ked 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.