The Prisoner of Fortress Monroe

An extract from a letter by Mrs. Robert E. Lee to Miss Mason, from Derwent, September 10, 1865, may interest my readers: “I have just received, dear Miss Em, a long letter from Mrs. Davis in reply to one of mine. She was in Augusta, Ga.; says she is confined to that State. She has sent her children to kindred in Canada. Says she knows nothing whatever of her husband, except what she has seen in the papers. Says any letter sent her under care of Mr. Schley will reach her safely. She writes very sadly, as she well may, for I know of no one so much to be pitied.... She represents a most uncomfortable state of affairs in Augusta. No one, white or black, can be out after ten o’clock at night without a pass.... We must wait God’s time to raise us up again. That will be the best time.” In a later letter, Mrs. Lee said: “I cannot help feeling uneasy about Mr. Davis. May God protect him, and grant him deliverance!”

The whole South was anxious about Mr. Davis. Those who had come in close touch with him felt a peculiar sympathy for him inspired by a side of his character not generally recognized, as his manner often conveyed an impression of coldness and sternness. Under his reserve, was an almost feminine tenderness revealed in many stories his close friends tell. Thus: One night, Judge Minor, to see the President on business of state, sat with him in the room of the “White House” where the telegraph wire came in at the window (now, Alabama Room in the Confederate Museum), when in stumbles little Joe, in night-gown, saying: “Papa, I want to say my prayers.” The President, caressing his child, despatched a message, answered Judge Minor’s immediate question, and saying, “Excuse me a moment,” led his little one’s devotions. He was of wide reading and wonderful memory, yet was ignorant of “Mother Goose” until he heard his children babbling the jingles. Mrs. Davis brought “Babes in the Wood” to his notice. He suffered from insomnia after visits to the hospitals; his wife would try to read him to sleep. One night she picked up the “Babes” as the one thing at hand, and was astonished to find the poem unknown to him; at the children’s desertion he rose, exclaiming: “Was there no one to help those poor tender babies? The thought is agonizing!” A part of his childhood was spent in a Kentucky monastery, where the good monks did not bethink themselves to teach him nursery rhymes.

There was the story of the soldier’s widow, to answer whose call the President left his breakfast unfinished. Mrs. Davis found him trying to comfort and to induce her to partake of a tray of delicacies sent in by his order. She was trying to find her husband’s body, and feared that as he was a poor private due aid might not be given her; she had been certain that she would receive scant attention from the Chief Magistrate. But he was telling her that the country’s strength and protection lay in her private soldier. “My father, Madam, was a private in the Revolution, and I am more proud of what he did for his country than if he had been an officer expecting the world’s praise. Tell your sorrows to my wife. She will take you in her carriage wherever you wish to go, and aid you all she can.”Dr. Craven, Mr. Davis’ Federal physician at Fortress Monroe, testifies in his book to his patient’s unusual depth and quickness of sympathy: “Despite a certain exterior cynicism of manner, no patient ever crossed my path who, suffering so much himself, appeared to feel so warmly and tenderly for others.” In Confederate hospitals, he had not limited pity to wearers of the gray. A “White House” guest told me of his robbing his scant table more than once for a sick Federal who had served with him in Mexico. Another laughingly remarked: “I don’t see how he managed to rob his table of a delicacy. When I sat down to it, it had none to spare. Yet certainly he might have kept a bountiful board, for Government stores were accessible to Government officials, and the President might have had first choice in purchasing blockade goods. But the simplicity of our White House regime was an object-lesson. I recall seeing Mr. Davis in home-spun, home-made clothes at State receptions. That required very positive patriotism if one could do better! ‘Do look at Mr. Davis!’ Mrs. Davis whispered, ‘He will wear those clothes, and they look lop-sided!’ Their deficiencies were more noticeable because he was so polished and elegant.”

One of the faithful shows me in her scrap-book a dispatch, of May 25, 1865, in the “Philadelphia Inquirer”: “Jeff does not pine in solitude. An officer and two soldiers remain continually in the cell with him.” And then points to these words from the pen of Hugh McCulloch, Mr. Davis’ visitor from Washington: “He had the bearing of a brave and high-born gentleman, who, knowing he would have been highly honoured if the Southern States had achieved their independence, would not and could not demean himself as a criminal because they had not.” She tells how men who had served under Mr. Davis in Mexico were among his guards at Fortress Monroe and showed him respect and kindness; and how almost everybody there grew to like him, he was so kind and courteous, and to the common soldier as to the strapped and starred officer.

Our ladies sent articles for his comfort to Mr. Davis, but knew not if he received them. Dr. Minnegerode’s efforts to see him were for a weary while without success. It seemed that his pastor, at least, might have had this privilege without question, especially such as Dr. Minnegerode, a man of signal peace and piety who had carried the consolations of religion and such comforts as he could collect in an almost famine-stricken city to Federals in prison. His first endeavour, a letter of request to President Johnson, met no response. Finally, appeal was made through Rev. Dr. Hall, Mr. Stanton’s pastor; to the committee of ladies waiting on him, Dr. Hall said he did not wish to read the petition, wished to have nothing to do with the matter; they besought, he read, and secured privilege of intercourse between pastor and prisoner.

For months, Mr. Davis was not allowed to correspond with his wife; was allowed no book but the Bible; June 8, 1865, Stanton reproved General Miles for permitting the prison chaplain to visit him. He was unprepared for his pastor’s coming, when Dr. Minnegerode, conducted by General Miles, entered his cell. In a sermon in St. Paul’s after Mr. Davis’ death, Dr. Minnegerode described this meeting. Mr. Davis had been removed (on medical insistence) from the casemate, and was “in an end room on the second floor of Carroll Hall, with a passage and windows on each side of the room, and an anteroom in front, separated by an open grated door—a sentinel on each passage and before the grated door of the anteroom; six eyes always upon him, day and night.” With these eyes looking on, the long-parted friends, the pastor and the prisoner, met.

A VIEW OF FORTRESS MONROE

Showing section of casemates overlooking the moat. In a casemate of this fort Mr. Davis was confined.

Photographed in 1890

When the question of Holy Communion was broached, Mr. Davis hesitated. “He was a pure and pious man, and felt the need and value of the means of grace. But could he take the Sacrament in the proper spirit—in a forgiving mind? He was too upright and conscientious to eat and drink unworthily—that is, not at peace with God and man, as far as in him lay.” In the afternoon, General Miles took the pastor to the prisoner again. Mr. Davis was ready to pray, “Father, forgive them!” “Then came the Communion. It was night. The fortress was so still that you could hear a pin fall. General Miles, with his back to us, leaned against the fire-place in the anteroom, his head on his hands—not moving; sentinels stood like statues.”

Of Mr. Davis’ treatment, Dr. Minnegerode said: “The officers were polite and sympathetic; the common soldiers—not one adopted the practice of high dignitaries who spoke sneeringly of him as ‘Jeff.’ Not one but spoke of him in a subdued and kindly tone as ‘Mr. Davis.’ I went whenever I could,” he adds, “to see my friend, and precious were the hours spent with that lowly, patient, God-fearing soul. It was in these private interviews that I learned to appreciate his noble, Christian character—‘pure in heart,’ unselfish, without guile, and loyal unto death to his conscience and convictions.” The prisoner’s health failed fast. Officers thought it would be wise and humane to allow him more liberty; they knew that he not only had no desire to escape, but could not be induced to do so. He was begging for trial. The pastor, encouraged by Dr. Hall, called on Mr. Stanton. He had hoped to find the man of iron softened by sorrow; Mr. Stanton had lost a son; his remaining child was on his knees. His greeting was like ice—a bow and nothing more. The pastor expressed thanks for permit to visit the prisoner, and respectfully broaching the subject of Mr. Davis’ health, suggested that, as he neither would nor could escape, he be allowed the liberty of the fort. Mr. Stanton broke his silence: “It makes no difference what the state of Jeff Davis’ health is. His trial will come on, no doubt. Time enough till that settles it.” “It settled it in my leaving the presence of that man,” said the pastor. “I realise,” Dr. Craven protested, “the painful responsibilities of my position. If Mr. Davis were to die in prison, without trial, subject to such indignities as have been visited upon his attenuated frame, the world would form unjust conclusions, but conclusions with enough colour to pass them into history.” Arguments breathing similar appreciation of the situation began to appear in the Northern press, while men of prominence, advocating the application of the great principles of justice and humanity to his case, called for his release or trial; such lawyers as William B. Reed, of Philadelphia, and Charles O’Conor, of New York, tendered him free services. Strong friends were gathering around his wife. The Northern heart was waking. General Grant was one of those who used his influence to mitigate the severity of Mr. Davis’ imprisonment.

Again and again Mrs. Davis had implored permission to go to him. “I will take any parole—do anything, if you will only let me see him! For the love of God and His merciful Son, do not refuse me!” was her cry to the War Department, January, 1866. No reply. Then, this telegram to Andrew Johnson from Montreal, April 25, 1866: “I hear my husband’s health is failing rapidly. Can I come to see him? Can you refuse me? Varina Davis.” Stanton acquiesced in Johnson’s consent. And the husband and wife were reunited.

Official reports to Washington, changing their tone, referred to him as “State Prisoner Davis” instead of merely “Jeff Davis.” The “National Republican,” a Government organ, declared: “Something ought in justice to be done about his case. By every principle of justice as guaranteed by the Constitution, he ought to be released or brought to trial.” It would have simplified matters had he asked pardon of the National Government. But this he never did, though friends, grieving over his sufferings, urged him. He did not hold that the South had committed treason or that he, in being her Chief Magistrate, was Arch-Traitor. Questions of difference between the States had been tried in the court of arms; the South had lost, had accepted conditions of defeat, would abide by them; that was all there was to it. Northern men were coming to see the question in the same light.

Through indignities visited upon him who had been our Chief Magistrate was the South most deeply aggrieved and humiliated; through the action of Horace Greeley and other Northern men coming to his rescue was the first real balm of healing laid upon the wound that gaped between the sections. That wound would have healed quickly, had not the most profound humiliation of all, the negro ballot and white disfranchisement, been forced upon us.

Among relics in the Confederate Museum is a mask which Mr. Davis wore at Fortress Monroe. His wife sent it to him when she heard that the everlasting light in his eyes and the everlasting eyes of guards upon him were robbing him of sleep and threatening his eyesight and his reason. Over a mantel is Jefferson Davis’ bond in a frame; under his name are those of his sureties, Horace Greeley’s leading the signatures of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, Benjamin Wood, and Augustus Schell, all of New York; A. Welsh and D. K. Jackson, of Philadelphia; and Southern sureties, W. H. McFarland, Richard Barton Haxall, Isaac Davenport, Abraham Warwick, Gustavus A. Myers, W. Crump, James Lyons, John A. Meredith, W. H. Lyons, John Minor Botts, Thomas W. Boswell, James Thomas. Thousands of Southerners would have rejoiced to sign that bond; but it must be pleasing now to visitors of both sections to see Northern and Southern names upon it. The mask and the bond tell the story.

RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY