Destruction and Reconstruction Part 13

CHAPTER XIV.

CRITICISMS AND REFLECTIONS.

The military collapse of the South was sudden and unexpected to the world without, but by no means so to some within. I happen to know that one or two of our ablest and most trusted generals concurred with me in opinion that the failure at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg in July, 1863, should have taught the Confederate Government and people the necessity of estimating the chances for defeat; but soldiers in the field can not give utterance to such opinions unless expressly solicited by the civil head of their government, and even then are liable to misconstruction.

Of many of the important battles of the civil war I have written, and desire to dwell somewhat on s.h.i.+loh, but will first say a few words about Gettysburg, because of recent publications there-anent.

Some facts concerning this battle are established beyond dispute. In the first day's fighting a part of Lee's army defeated a part of Meade's.

Intending to continue the contest on that field, a commander not smitten by idiocy would desire to concentrate and push the advantage gained by previous success and its resultant _morale_. But, instead of attacking at dawn, Lee's attack was postponed until afternoon of the following day, in consequence of the absence of Longstreet's corps. Federal official reports show that some of Meade's corps reached him on the second day, several hours after sunrise, and one or two late in the afternoon. It is positively a.s.serted by many officers present, and of high rank and character, that Longstreet was nearer to Lee on the first day than Meade's reenforcing corps to their chief, and even nearer than a division of Ewell's corps, which reached the field in time to share in the first day's success. Now, it nowhere appears in Lee's report of Gettysburg that he ordered Longstreet to him or blamed him for tardiness; but his report admits errors, and quietly takes the responsibility for them on his own broad shoulders. A recent article in the public press, signed by General Longstreet, ascribes the failure at Gettysburg to Lee's mistakes, which he (Longstreet) in vain pointed out and remonstrated against. That any subject involving the possession and exercise of intellect should be clear to Longstreet and concealed from Lee, is a startling proposition to those having knowledge of the two men. We have Biblical authority for the story that the angel in the path was visible to the a.s.s, though unseen by the seer his master; but suppose, instead of smiting the honest, stupid animal, Balaam had caressed him and then been kicked by him, how would the story read? And thus much concerning Gettysburg.

s.h.i.+loh was a great misfortune. At the moment of his fall Sidney Johnston, with all the energy of his nature, was pressing on the routed foe. Crouching under the bank of the Tennessee River, Grant was helpless. One short hour more of life to Johnston would have completed his destruction. The second in command, Beauregard, was on another and distant part of the field, and before he could gather the reins of direction darkness fell and stopped pursuit. During the night Buell reached the northern bank of the river and crossed his troops. Wallace, with a fresh division, got up from below. Together, they advanced in the morning, found the Confederates rioting in the plunder of captured camps, and drove them back with loss. But all this was as nothing compared to the calamity of Johnston's death.

Educated at West Point, Johnston remained for eight years in the army of the United States, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the details of military duty. Resigning to aid the cause of the infant Republic of Texas, he became her Adjutant-General, Senior Brigadier, and Secretary of War. During our contest with Mexico, he raised a regiment of Texans to join General Zachary Taylor, and was greatly distinguished in the fighting around and capture of Monterey. General Taylor, with whom the early years of his service had been pa.s.sed, declared him to be the best soldier he had ever commanded. More than once I have heard General Zachary Taylor express this opinion. Two cavalry regiments were added to the United States army in 1854, and to the colonelcy of one of these Johnston was appointed. Subsequently, a brigadier by brevet, he commanded the expedition against the Mormons in Utah.

Thus he brought to the Southern cause a civil and military experience surpa.s.sing that of any other leader. Born in Kentucky, descended from an honorable colonial race, connected by marriage with influential families in the West, where his life had been pa.s.sed, he was peculiarly fitted to command western armies. With him at the helm, there would have been no Vicksburg, no Missionary Ridge, no Atlanta. His character was lofty and pure, his presence and demeanor dignified and courteous, with the simplicity of a child; and he at once inspired the respect and gained the confidence of cultivated gentlemen and rugged frontiersmen.

Besides, he had pa.s.sed through the furnace of ignorant newspapers, hotter than that of the Babylonian tyrant. Commanding some raw, unequipped forces at Bowling Green, Kentucky, the habitual American exaggeration represented him as at the head of a vast army prepared and eager for conquest. Before time was given him to organize and train his men, the absurdly constructed works on his left flank were captured. At Fort Donelson on the c.u.mberland were certain political generals, who, with a self-abnegation worthy of Plutarch's heroes, were anxious to get away and leave the glory and renown of defense to others. Johnston was in no sense responsible for the construction of the forts, nor the a.s.signment to their command of these self-denying warriors; but his line of communication was uncovered by their fall, and he was compelled to retire to the southern bank of the Tennessee River. From the enlighteners of public opinion a howl of wrath came forth, and Johnston, who had just been Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, was now a miserable dastard and traitor, unfit to command a corporal's guard.

President Davis sought to console him, and some of the n.o.blest lines ever penned by man were written by Johnston in reply. They even wrung tears of repentance from the pachyderms who had attacked him, and will be a text and consolation to future commanders, who serve a country tolerant of an ignorant and licentious press. Like pure gold, he came forth from the furnace above the reach of slander, the foremost man of all the South; and had it been possible for one heart, one mind, and one arm to save her cause, she lost them when Albert Sidney Johnston fell on the field of s.h.i.+loh.

As soon after the war as she was permitted, the Commonwealth of Texas removed his remains from New Orleans, to inter them in a land he had long and faithfully served. I was honored by a request to accompany the coffin from the cemetery to the steamer; and as I gazed upon it there arose the feeling of the Theban who, after the downfall of the glory and independence of his country, stood by the tomb of Epaminondas.

"Amid the clash of arms laws are silent," and so was Confederate statesmans.h.i.+p; or at least, of its objects, efforts, and expectations little is known, save the abortive mission of Messrs. Stevens, Hunter, and Campbell to Fortress Monroe in the last months of the struggle, and about this there has recently been an unseemly wrangle.

The followers of the Calhoun school, who controlled the Government, held the right of secession to be too clear for discussion. The adverse argument of Mr. Webster, approved by a large majority of the Northern people, was considered to be founded on l.u.s.t of power, not on reason.

The governments of western Europe, with judgments unclouded by selfishness, would at once acknowledge it. France, whose policy since the days of the eleventh Louis had been one of intense centralization, and Germany and Italy, whose hopes and aspirations were in the same direction, would admit it, while England would not be restrained by anti-slavery sentiment. Indeed, the statesmen of these countries had devoted much time to the study of the Const.i.tution of the United States, knew that it was a compact, and were in complete harmony with the opinions of Mr. Calhoun. There was to be no revolution, for this, though justified by oppression, involved the recognition of some measure of obligation to the Union, from which the right to secede was manifest.

Hence the haste to manufacture a paper const.i.tution, in which the powers of different departments were as carefully weighed as are dangerous drugs by dispensing chemists. Hence two houses of Congress, refuge for mischievous twaddlers to worry the executive and embarra.s.s the armies.

Hence the Governor Browns, who, reasoning that one State had as much right to disagree with eleven as eleven with twenty, declared each of their hamlets of more importance than the cities of others. While the sections were marching through the streets, with pikes crowned by gory heads, and clamoring for more, Sieyes had his pockets stuffed with const.i.tutions and felt that his country was safe. It is not pretended that these ideas were entertained by the larger part of the Southern people, or were confessed by the ruling minority; but they existed, nevertheless, under different forms.

Aggrieved by the action and tendencies of the Federal Government, and apprehending worse in the future, a majority of the people of the South approved secession as the only remedy suggested by their leaders. So travelers enter railway carriages, and are dragged up grades and through tunnels with utter loss of volition, the motive power, generated by fierce heat, being far in advance and beyond their control.

We set up a monarch, too, King Cotton, and hedged him with a divinity surpa.s.sing that of earthly potentates. To doubt his royalty and power was a confession of ignorance or cowardice. This potent spirit, at the nod of our Prosperos, the cotton-planters, would arrest every loom and spindle in New England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary. The power of Old England, the growth of eight hundred years, was to wither as the prophet's gourd unless she obeyed its behests. And a right "tricksy spirit" it proved indeed. There was a complete mental derangement on this subject. The Government undertook to own all cotton that could be exported. Four millions of bales, belonging to many thousands of individuals, could be disposed of to better advantage by the Government than by the proprietors; and this was enforced by our authorities, whose ancestors for generations had been resisting the intrusion of governments into private business. All cotton, as well as naval stores, that was in danger of falling into the enemy's possession, was, by orders based on legislative enactment, to be burned; and this policy continued to the end. It was fully believed that this destruction would appall our enemies and convince the world of our earnestness.

Possibly there was a lurking idea that it was necessary to convince ourselves.

In their long struggle for independence, the Dutch trafficked freely with the Spaniards, got rich by the trade, paid enormous taxes to support the war, and achieved their liberty. But the Dutch fought to rid themselves of a tyrant, while our first care was to set up one, Cotton, and wors.h.i.+p it. Rules of common sense were not applicable to it. The Grand Monarque could not eat his dinners or take his emetics like ordinary mortals. Our people were much debauched by it. I write advisedly, for during the last two and a half years of the war I commanded in the State of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the great producing States. Out-post officers would violate the law, and trade. In vain were they removed; the temptation was too strong, and their successors did the same. The influence on the women was dreadful, and in many cases their appeals were heartrending. Mothers with suffering children, whose husbands were in the war or already fallen, would beseech me for permits to take cotton through the lines. It was useless to explain that it was against law and orders, and that I was without authority to act. This did not give food and clothing to their children, and they departed, believing me to be an unfeeling brute. In fact, the instincts of humanity revolted against this folly.

It is with no pleasure that I have dwelt on the foregoing topics, but the world can not properly estimate the fort.i.tude of the Southern people unless it understands and takes account of the difficulties under which they labored. Yet, great as were their sufferings during the war, they were as nothing compared to those inflicted upon them after its close.

Extinction of slavery was expected by all and regretted by none, although loss of slaves destroyed the value of land. Existing since the earliest colonization of the Southern States, the inst.i.tution was interwoven with the thoughts, habits, and daily lives of both races, and both suffered by the sudden disruption of the accustomed tie. Bank stocks, bonds, all personal property, all acc.u.mulated wealth, had disappeared. Thousands of houses, farm-buildings, work-animals, flocks and herds, had been wantonly burned, killed, or carried off. The land was filled with widows and orphans crying for aid, which the universal dest.i.tution prevented them from receiving. Humanitarians shuddered with horror and wept with grief for the imaginary woes of Africans; but their hearts were as adamant to people of their own race and blood. These had committed the unpardonable sin, had wickedly rebelled against the Lord's anointed, the majority. Blockaded during the war, and without journals to guide opinion and correct error, we were unceasingly slandered by our enemies, who held possession of every avenue to the world's ear.

Famine and pestilence have ever followed war, as if our Mother Earth resented the defilement of her fair bosom by blood, and generated fatal diseases to punish humanity for its crimes. But there fell upon the South a calamity surpa.s.sing any recorded in the annals or traditions of man. An article in the "North American Review," from the pen of Judge Black, well describes this new curse, the carpet-baggers, as worse than Attila, scourge of G.o.d. He could only destroy existing fruits, while, by the modern invention of public credit, these caterans stole the labor of unborn generations. Divines, moralists, orators, and poets throughout the North commended their thefts and bade them G.o.d-speed in spoiling the Egyptians; and the reign of these harpies is not yet over. Driven from the outworks, they hold the citadel. The epithet of August, first applied to the mighty Julius and to his successor Octavius, was continued, by force of habit, to the s...o...b..ring Claudius; and so of the Senate of the United States, which august body contained in March last several of these freebooters. Honest men regarded them as monsters, generated in the foul ooze of a past era, that had escaped destruction to linger in a wholesomer age; and their speedy extinction was expected, when another, the most hideous of the species, was admitted. This specimen had been kept by force of bayonets for four years upon the necks of an unwilling people, had no t.i.tle to a seat in the Senate, and was notoriously despised by every inhabitant of the State which he was seated to misrepresent. The Senators composing the majority by which this was done acted under solemn oaths to do the right; but the Jove of party laughs at vows of politicians. Twelve years of triumph have not served to abate the hate of the victors in the great war. The last presidential canva.s.s was but a crusade of vengeance against the South.

The favorite candidate of his party for the nomination, though in the prime of vigor, had not been in the field, to which his eloquent appeals sent thousands, but preferred the pleasanter occupation of making money at home. He had converted the power of his great place, that of Speaker of the House of Representatives, into lucre, and was exposed. By mingled chicanery and audacity he obtained possession of his own criminating letters, flourished them in the face of the House, and, in the Cambyses vein, called on his people to rally and save the l.u.s.ter of his loyalty from soil at the hands of rebels; and they came. From all the North ready acclaims went up, and women shed tears of joy, such as in King Arthur's day rewarded some peerless deed of Galahad. In truth, it was a manly thing to hide dishonorable plunder beneath the prostrate body of the South. The Emperor Commodus, in full panoply, met in the arena disabled and unarmed gladiators. The servile Romans applauded his easy victories. Ancient Pistol covers with patches the ign.o.ble scabs of a corrupt life. The vulgar herd believes them to be wounds received in the Gallic wars, as it once believed in the virtue and patriotism of Marat and Barrere.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Divine Moralist instructed his hearers to forgive those who had injured them; but He knew too well the malice of the human heart to expect them to forgive those whom they had injured. The leaders of the radical ma.s.ses of the North have inflicted such countless and cruel wrongs on the Southern people as to forbid any hope of disposition or ability to forgive their victims; and the land will have no rest until the last of these persecutors has pa.s.sed into oblivion.

During all these years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fort.i.tude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and maligner of his brethren. Accepting the harshest conditions and faithfully observing them, they have struggled in all honorable ways, and for what? For their slaves? Regret for their loss has neither been felt nor expressed. But they have striven for that which brought our forefathers to Runnymede, the privilege of exercising some influence in their own government. Yet we fought for nothing but slavery, says the world, and the late Vice-President of the Confederacy, Mr. Alexander Stephens, reechoes the cry, declaring that it was the corner-stone of his Government.

CHAPTER XV.

RECONSTRUCTION UNDER JOHNSON.

The following considerations induced me to make a pilgrimage to Was.h.i.+ngton, where, by accident of fortune, I had a larger acquaintance with influential politicians than other Southern commanders. When the Whig party dissolved, most of its Northern members joined the Republicans, and now belonged to the reigning faction; and I had consorted with many of them while my father was President and afterward.

Mention has been made of the imprisonment of Governors Clarke and Watts for adopting my advice, and it was but right for me to make an effort to have them released. Moreover, Jefferson Davis was a prisoner in irons, and it was known that his health was feeble. Lee, Johnston, and I, with our officers and men, were at large, protected by the terms of our surrenders--terms which General Grant had honorably prevented the civil authorities from violating. If Mr. Davis had sinned, we all were guilty, and I could not rest without making an attempt for his relief.

At the time, it was understood that prisoners on parole should not change their residence without military permission, and leave to go to New York was asked and obtained of General Canby. By steamer I reached that place in a week, and found that General Dix had just been relieved by General Hooker, to whom I at once reported. He uttered a shout of welcome (we were old acquaintances), declared that he was more pleased to see me than to see a church (which was doubtless true), made hospitable suggestions of luncheon, champagne, etc., and gave me a permit to go to Was.h.i.+ngton, regretting that he could not keep me with him. A warm-hearted fellow is "fighting Joe," who carried on war like a soldier.

In Was.h.i.+ngton, at Willard's--a huge inn, filled from garret to cellar with a motley crowd--an acquaintance, whom I chanced to meet, informed me that a recent disturbance had induced the belief of the existence of a new plot for a.s.sa.s.sination, and an order had been published forbidding rebels to approach the capital without the permission of the War Secretary. Having been at sea for a week, I knew nothing of this, and Hooker had not mentioned it when he gave me the permit to come to Was.h.i.+ngton. My informant apprehended my arrest, and kindly undertook to protect me. Through his intervention I received from the President, Andrew Johnson, permission to stay or go where I chose, with an invitation to visit him at a stated time.

Presenting myself at the "White House," I was ushered in to the President--a saturnine man, who made no return to my bow, but, after looking at me, asked me to take a seat. Upon succeeding to power Mr.

Johnson breathed fire and hemp against the South, proclaimed that he would make treason odious by hanging traitors, and ordered the arrest of General Lee and others, when he was estopped by the action of General Grant. He had now somewhat abated his wolfish desire for vengeance, and asked many questions about the condition of the South, temper of the people, etc. I explained the conduct of Governors Clarke and Watts, how they were imprisoned for following my advice, submitted to and approved by General Canby, who would hardly have abetted a new rebellion; and he made memoranda of their cases, as well as of those of many other prisoners, confined in different forts from Boston to Savannah, all of whom were released within a short period. Fearing to trespa.s.s on his time, I left with a request that he would permit me to call again, as I had a matter of much interest to lay before him, and was told the hours at which I would be received.

Thence to the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, who in former Whig times, as Senator from New York, had been a warm supporter of my father's administration. He greeted me cordially, and asked me to dine. A loin of veal was the _piece de resistance_ of his dinner, and he called attention to it as evidence that he had killed the fatted calf to welcome the returned prodigal. Though not entirely recovered from the injuries received in a fall from his carriage and the wounds inflicted by the knife of Payne, he was cheerful, and appeared to sympathize with the objects of my mission--at least, so far as I could gather his meaning under the cloud of words with which he was accustomed to cover the slightest thought. One or two other members of the Cabinet, to whom Mr. Seward presented me, were also favorably inclined. One, the War Secretary, I did not meet. A spy under Buchanan, a tyrant under Lincoln, and a traitor to Johnson, this man was as cruel and crafty as Domitian.

I never saw him. In the end conscience, long dormant, came as Alecto, and he was not; and the temple of Justice, on whose threshold he stood, escaped profanation.

In a second interview, President Johnson heard the wish I had so much at heart, permission to visit Jefferson Davis. He pondered for some time, then replied that I must wait and call again.

Meantime, an opportunity to look upon the amazing spectacle presented by the dwellers at the capital was afforded. The things seen by the Pilgrims in a dream were at this Vanity Fair visible in the flesh: "all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, states, l.u.s.ts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, as bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, greenbacks, pearls, precious stones, and what not." The eye of the inspired tinker had pierced the darkness of two hundred years, and seen what was to come. The martial tread of hundreds of volunteer generals, just disbanded, resounded in the streets. Gorged with loot, they spent it as lavishly as Morgan's buccaneers after the sack of Panama. Their women sat at meat or walked the highways, resplendent in jewels, spoil of Southern matrons. The camp-followers of the army were here in high carnival, and in character and numbers rivaled the attendants of Xerxes. Courtesans swarmed everywhere, about the inns, around the Capitol, in the antechambers of the "White House,"

and were brokers for the transaction of all business. Of a tolerant disposition and with a wide experience of earthly wickedness, I did not feel called upon to cry aloud against these enormities, remembering the fate of Faithful; but I had some doubts concerning divine justice; for why were the "cities of the Plain" overthrown and this place suffered to exist?

The officers of the army on duty at Was.h.i.+ngton were very civil to me, especially General Grant, whom I had known prior to and during the Mexican war, as a modest, amiable, but by no means promising lieutenant in a marching regiment. He came frequently to see me, was full of kindness, and anxious to promote my wishes. His action in preventing violation of the terms of surrender, and a subsequent report that he made of the condition of the South--a report not at all pleasing to the radicals--endeared him to all Southern men. Indeed, he was in a position to play a role second only to that of Was.h.i.+ngton, who founded the republic; for he had the power to restore it. His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest and generous; and I talked much with him of the n.o.ble and beneficent work before him. While his heart seemed to respond, he declared his ignorance of and distaste for politics and politicians, with which and whom he intended to have nothing to do, but confine himself to his duties of commander-in-chief of the army. Yet he expressed a desire for the speedy restoration of good feeling between the sections, and an intention to advance it in all proper ways. We shall see when and under what influences he adopted other views.

The President put me off from day to day, receiving me to talk about Southern affairs, but declining to give an answer to my requests. I found that he always postponed action, and was of an obstinate, suspicious temper. Like a badger, one had to dig him out of his hole; and he was ever in one except when on the hustings, addressing the crowd. Of humble birth, a tailor by trade, nature gave him a strong intellect, and he had learned to read after his marriage. He had acquired much knowledge of the principles of government, and made himself a fluent speaker, but could not rise above the level of the cla.s.s in which he was born and to which he always appealed. He well understood the few subjects laboriously studied, and affected to despise other knowledge, while suspicious that those possessing such would take advantage of him. Self-educated men, as they are called, deprived of the side light thrown on a particular subject by instruction in cognate matters, are narrow and dogmatic, and, with an uneasy consciousness of ignorance, soothe their own vanity by underrating the studies of others.

To the vanity of this cla.s.s he added that of the demagogue (I use the term in its better sense), and called the wise policy left him by his predecessor "my policy." Compelled to fight his way up from obscurity, he had contracted a dislike of those more favored of fortune, whom he was in the habit of calling "the slave-aristocracy," and became incapable of giving his confidence to any one, even to those on whose a.s.sistance he relied in a contest, just now beginning, with the Congress.

President Johnson never made a dollar by public office, abstained from quartering a horde of connections on the Treasury, refused to uphold rogues in high places, and had too just a conception of the dignity of a chief magistrate to accept presents. It may be said that these are humble qualities for a citizen to boast the possession of by a President of the United States. As well claim respect for a woman of one's family on the ground that she has preserved her virtue. Yet all whose eyes were not blinded by partisans.h.i.+p, whose manhood was not emasculated by servility, would in these last years have welcomed the least of them as manna in the desert.

The President, between whom and the Congressional leaders the seeds of discord were already sown, dallied with me from day to day, and at length said that it would spare him embarra.s.sment if I could induce Stevens, Davis, and others of the House, and Sumner of the Senate, to recommend the permission to visit Jefferson Davis; and I immediately addressed myself to this unpleasant task.

Thaddeus Stevens received me with as much civility as he was capable of.

Deformed in body and temper like Caliban, this was the Lord Hategood of the fair; but he was frankness itself. He wanted no restoration of the Union under the Const.i.tution, which he called a worthless bit of old parchment. The white people of the South ought never again to be trusted with power, for they would inevitably unite with the Northern "Copperheads" and control the Government. The only sound policy was to confiscate the lands and divide them among the negroes, to whom, sooner or later, suffrage must be given. Touching the matter in hand, Johnson was a fool to have captured Davis, whom it would have been wiser to a.s.sist in escaping. Nothing would be done with him, as the executive had only pluck enough to hang two poor devils such as Wirtz and Mrs.

Surratt. Had the leading traitors been promptly strung up, well; but the time for that had pa.s.sed. (Here, I thought, he looked lovingly at my neck, as Pet.i.t Andre was wont to do at those of his merry-go-rounds.) He concluded by saying that it was silly to refuse me permission to visit Jefferson Davis, but he would not say so publicly, as he had no desire to relieve Johnson of responsibility.

There was no excuse for longer sporting with this radical Amaryllis either in shade or in suns.h.i.+ne; so I sought Henry Winter Davis. Like the fallen angel, Davis preferred to rule in h.e.l.l rather than serve in heaven or on earth. With the head of Medusa and the eye of the Basilisk, he might have represented Siva in a Hindoo temple, and was even more inaccessible to sentiment than Thaddeus Stevens. Others, too numerous and too insignificant to particularize, were seen. These were the cuttle-fish of the party, whose appointed duty it was to obscure popular vision by clouds of loyal declamation. As Sicilian banditti prepare for robberies and murders by pious offerings on shrines of favorite saints, these brought out the altar of the "nation," and devoted themselves afresh, whenever "Credits Mobiliers" and kindred enormities were afoot, and sharpened every question of administration, finance, law, taxation, on the grindstone of sectional hate. So sputtering tugs tow from her moorings the stately s.h.i.+p, to send her forth to winds and waves of ocean, caring naught for the cargo with which she is freighted, but, grimy in zeal to earn fees, return to seek another.

Hopeless of obtaining a.s.sistance from such statesmen, I visited Mr.

Charles Sumner, Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, who received me pleasantly.

A rebel, a slave-driver, and, without the culture of Boston, ignorant, I was an admirable vessel into which he could pour the inexhaustible stream of his acquired eloquence. I was delighted to listen to beautiful pa.s.sages from the cla.s.sic as well as modern poets, dramatists, philosophers, and orators, and recalled the anecdote of the man sitting under a fluent divine, who could not refrain from muttering, "That is Jeremy Taylor; that, South; that, Barrow," etc. It was difficult to suppress the thought, while Mr. Sumner was talking, "That is Burke, or Howard, Wilberforce, Brougham, Macaulay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Exeter Hall," etc.; but I failed to get down to the particular subject that interested me. The nearest approach to the practical was his disquisition on negro suffrage, which he thought should be accompanied by education. I ventured to suggest that negro education should precede suffrage, observing that some held the opinion that the capacity of the white race for government was limited, although acc.u.mulated and transmitted through many centuries. He replied that "the ignorance of the negro was due to the tyranny of the whites," which appeared in his view to dispose of the question of the former's incapacity. He seemed over-educated--had retained, not digested his learning; and beautiful flowers of literature were attached to him by filaments of memory, as lovely orchids to sapless sticks. Hence he failed to understand the force of language, and became the victim of his own metaphors, mistaking them for facts. He had the irritable vanity and weak nerves of a woman, and was bold to rashness in speculation, dest.i.tute as he was of the ordinary masculine sense of responsibility. Yet I hold him to have been the purest and most sincere man of his party. A lover, nay, a devotee of liberty, he thoroughly understood that it could only be preserved by upholding the supremacy of civil law, and would not sanction the garrison methods of President Grant. Without vindictiveness, he forgave his enemies as soon as they were overthrown, and one of the last efforts of his life was to remove from the flag of a common country all records of victories that perpetuated the memory of civil strife.

Foiled in this direction, I worried the President, as old Mustard would a stot, until he wrote the permission so long solicited. By steamer from Baltimore I went down Chesapeake Bay, and arrived at Fortress Monroe in the early morning. General Burton, the commander, whose civility was marked, and who bore himself like a gentleman and soldier, received me on the dock and took me to his quarters to breakfast, and to await the time to see Mr. Davis.

It was with some emotion that I reached the casemate in which Mr. Davis was confined. There were two rooms, in the outer of which, near the entrance, stood a sentinel, and in the inner was Jefferson Davis. We met in silence, with grasp of hands. After an interval he said, "This is kind, but no more than I expected of you." Pallid, worn, gray, bent, feeble, suffering from inflammation of the eyes, he was a painful sight to a friend. He uttered no plaint, and made no allusion to the irons (which had been removed); said the light kept all night in his room hurt his eyes a little, and, added to the noise made every two hours by relieving the sentry, prevented much sleep; but matters had changed for the better since the arrival of General Burton, who was all kindness, and strained his orders to the utmost in his behalf. I told him of my reception at Was.h.i.+ngton by the President, Mr. Seward, and others, of the attentions of Generals Grant and Humphreys, who promoted my wish to see him, and that with such aid I was confident of obtaining permission for his wife to stay with him. I could solicit favors for him, having declined any for myself. Indeed, the very accident of position, that enabled me to get access to the governing authorities, made indecent even the supposition of my acceptance of anything personal while a single man remained under the ban for serving the Southern cause; and therefore I had no fear of misconstruction. Hope of meeting his family cheered him much, and he asked questions about the condition and prospects of the South, which I answered as favorably as possible, pa.s.sing over things that would have grieved him. In some way he had learned of attacks on his character and conduct, made by some Southern curs, thinking to ingratiate themselves with the ruling powers. I could not deny this, but remarked that the curse of unexpected defeat and suffering was to develop the basest pa.s.sions of the human heart. Had he escaped out of the country, it was possible he might have been made a scapegoat by the Southern people, and, great as were the sufferings that he had endured, they were as nothing to coward stabs from beloved hands.

The attacks mentioned were few, and too contemptible for notice; for now his calamities had served to endear him to all. I think that he derived consolation from this view.

The day pa.s.sed with much talk of a less disturbing character, and in the evening I returned to Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton. After some delay Mr.