The Prisoner Free

On a beautiful May afternoon, two years after Mr. Davis’ capture, the “John Sylvester” swung to the wharf at Rocketts and the prisoner walked forth, smiling quietly upon the people who, on the other side of the blue cordon of sentinels, watched the gangway, crying, “It is he! it is he!” Always slender, he was shadowy now, worn and thin to emaciation. He did not carry himself like a martyr. Only his attenuation, the sharpness of his features, the care-worn, haggard appearance of the face, the hair nearly all gray, the general indications of having aged ten years in two, made any appeal for sympathy. With him were his wife, Judge Ould, and Mr. James Lyons, Dr. Cooper, Mr. Burton Harrison, and General Burton, General Miles’ successor, whose prisoner he yet was, but whose attitude was more that of friend than custodian.

A reserved and dignified city is the Capital on the James, taking joys sedately; but that day she wore her heart on her sleeve; she cheered and wept. The green hills, streets, sidewalks, were alive with people; porches, windows, balconies, roofs, were thronged; Main Street was a lane of uncovered heads as two carriages rolled swiftly towards the Spotswood, one holding Mr. Davis, General Burton, Dr. Cooper and Mr. Harrison; the other, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Lyons, Mr. Lyons and Judge Ould; an escort of Federal cavalry bringing up the rear with clattering hoofs and clanging sabres. It was more like a victor’s home-returning than the bringing of a prisoner to trial. Yet through popular joy there throbbed the tragic note that marks the difference between the huzzas of a conquering people for their leader, and the welcoming “God bless you!” of a people subdued.

This difference was noticeable at the Spotswood, which famous hostelry entertained many Northern guests. A double line of policemen, dividing the crowd, formed an avenue from sidewalk to ladies’ entrance. This crowd, it seems, had its hat on. Among our own people may have been some who thought it not wise in their own or the prisoner’s interests to show him too much honour. But as the emaciated, careworn man with the lofty bearing, stepped from the carriage, a voice, quiet but distinct, broke the impressive stillness: “Hats off, Virginians!” Instantly every man stood uncovered.

Monday he went to trial. The Court Room in the old Custom House was packed. In the persons of representative men, North and South were there for his vindication of the charge of high treason. Were he guilty, then were we all of the South, and should be sentenced with him.

Reporters for Northern papers were present with their Southern brethren of scratch-pad and pencil. The jury-box was a novelty to Northerners. In it sat a motley crew of negroes and whites. For portrait in part of the presiding judge, I refer to the case of McVeigh vs. Underwood, as reported in Twenty-third Grattan, decided in favour of McVeigh. When the Federal Army occupied Alexandria, John C. Underwood used his position as United States District Judge to acquire the homestead, fully furnished, of Dr. McVeigh, then in Richmond. He confiscated it to the United States, denied McVeigh a hearing, sold it, bought it in his wife’s name for $2,850 when it was worth not less than $20,000, and had her deed it to himself. The first time thereafter that Dr. McVeigh met the able jurist face to face on a street in Richmond, the good doctor, one of the most amiable of men, before he knew what he was doing, slapped the able jurist over and went about his business; whereupon, the Honourable the United States Circuit Court picked himself up and went about his, which was sitting in judgment on cases in equity. In 1873, Dr. McVeigh’s home was restored to him by law, the United States Supreme Court pronouncing Underwood’s course “a blot upon our jurisprudence and civilisation.” Underwood was in possession when he presided at the trial of Jefferson Davis.

AN HISTORICAL PETIT JURY

This is the Petit Jury impaneled to try President Jefferson Davis, being the first mixed Petit Jury
ever impaneled in the United States. Judge Underwood, not Chief Justice Chase, presided.

His personal appearance has been described as “repellant; his head drooping; his hair long; his eyes shifty and unpleasing, and like a basilisk’s; his clothes ill-fitting;” he “came into court, fawning, creeping, shuffling; ascended the bench in a manner awkward and ungainly; lifted his head like a turtle.” “Hear ye! hear ye! Silence is commanded while the Honourable the United States Circuit Court is in session!” calls the crier on this May morning.

General Burton, with soldierly simplicity, transfers the prisoner from the military to the civil power; Underwood embarrasses the officer and shames every lawyer present by a fatuous response abasing the bench before the bayonet. Erect, serene, undefiant, surrounded by mighty men of the Northern and Southern bar—O’Conor, Reed, Shea, Randolph Tucker, Ould—Jefferson Davis faces his judge, his own clear, fearless glance meeting squarely the “basilisk eye.”

The like of Underwood’s charge to the jury was never heard before in this land. It caused one long blush from Maine to Texas, Massachusetts to California; and resembled the Spanish War that came years after in that it gave Americans a common grievance. This poor, political bigot thought to please his Northern hearers by describing Richmond as “comely and spacious as a goodly apple on a gilded sepulchre where bloody treason flourished its whips of scorpions” and a “place where licentiousness has ruled until a majority of the births are illegitimate,” and “the pulpit prostituted by full-fed gay Lotharios.” But the thing is too loathsome to quote! Northern reporters said it was not a charge, took no cognisance of the matter before the Court, was a “vulgar, inflammatory stump speech.” The “New York Herald” pronounced it “The strangest mixture of drivel and nonsense that ever disgraced a bench,” and “without a parallel, with its foul-mouthed abuse of Richmond.” “A disgrace to the American bench,” declared the “New York World.” “He has brought shame upon the entire bench of the country, for to the people of other countries he is a representative of American judges.”

There was no trial. Motion was made and granted for a continuance of the case to November, and bail given in bond for $100,000, which Horace Greeley signed first, the crowd cheering him as he went up to write his name, which was followed by signatures of other well-known men of both sections. “The Marshal will discharge the prisoner!” a noble sentence in the judge’s mouth at last! Applause shakes the Court Room. Men surge forward; Mr. Davis is surrounded; his friends, his lawyers, his sureties, crowd about him; the North and the South are shaking hands; a love-feast is on. Human nature is at its best. The prisoner is free. When he appears on the portico the crowd grows wild with joy. Somebody wrote North that they heard the old “Rebel yell” once more, and that something or other unpleasant ought to be done to us because we would “holler” like that whenever we got excited.

It looks as if his carriage will never get back to the Spotswood, people press about him so, laughing, crying, congratulating, cheering. Negroes climb upon the carriage steps, shaking his hand, kissing it, shouting: “God bless Mars Davis!” No man was ever more beloved by negroes he owned or knew.

The South was unchained. The South was set free. No! That fall the first election at which negroes voted and whites—the majority disqualified by test-oath provision—did not vote, was held to send delegates to a convention presided over by John C. Underwood. This convention—the Black and Tan—made a new Constitution for the Old Dominion.

“If black men will riot, I will fear that emancipation is a failure.” So spoke the great abolitionist, Gerrit Smith, from the pulpit of the Old African Church Tuesday night after the Davis trial. “Riots in Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans have made me sick at heart.” On the platform with him were Horace Greeley, Governor Pierpont, Colonel Lewis and Judge Underwood. His audience consisted of negroes, prominent white citizens of Richmond, Federal officers and their wives. The negroes, as ready to be swayed by good advice as bad, listened attentively to the wisest, most conservative addresses they had heard from civilians of the North, or than they were again to hear for a long time. Gerrit Smith, who was pouring out his money like water for their education, told them:

“I do not consider the white people of the South traitors. The South is not alone responsible for slavery. Northern as well as Southern ships brought negroes to this shore. When Northern States passed laws abolishing slavery in their borders, Northern people brought their negroes down here and sold them before those laws could take effect. I have been chased in the North by a pro-slavery mob—never in the South.” Referring to the South’s impoverished condition, he said he wished the Federal Government would give the section six years’ exemption from the Federal tax to make rapid rehabilitation possible. He plead for harmony between races; urged whites to encourage blacks by selling lands to them cheap; urged blacks to frugality, industry, sobriety; plead with them not to drink. “Why cannot you love the whites among whom you have been born and raised?” he asked. “We do! we do!” cried the poor darkeys who had yelled, “We will! we will!” when Hayward was inciting them to mischief.

Horace Greeley said: “I have heard in Richmond that coloured people would not buy homes or lands because they are expecting these through confiscation. Believe me, friends, you can much sooner earn a home. Confiscation is a slow, legal process. (Underwood had not found it so.) Thaddeus Stevens, the great man who leads the movement—and perhaps one of the greatest men who ever sat in Congress—is the only advocate of such a course, among all our representatives and senators. If it has not taken place in the two years since the war, we may not hope for it now. Famine, disaster, and deadly feuds would follow confiscation.” His voice, too, was raised against calling Southern whites “traitors.” “This seems to me,” he said, “to brand with the crime of treason—of felony—millions of our fellow-countrymen.”

It is to be said in reference to one part of Gerrit Smith’s advice, that Southerners were only too ready to sell their lands at any price or on any terms to whoever would buy. Had the negroes applied the industrial education which they then possessed they might have become owners of half the territory of the South. Politicians and theorists who diverted negroid energies into other channels were unconsciously serving Nature’s purpose, the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon race. Upon every measure that might thwart that purpose, Nature seems to smile serenely, turning it to reverse account.

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A lively account of the seating of the first negro in the Congress of the United States was contained in a letter of February, 1870, from my friend, Miss Winfield, stopping in Washington. “Revels,” she wrote, “occupies the seat of Jefferson Davis. The Republicans made as much of the ceremony as possible. To me it was infinitely sad, and infinitely absurd. We run everything in the ground in America. Here, away from the South, where the tragedy of it all is not so oppressively before me and where I see only the political clap-trap of the whole African business, I am prone to lose sight of the graver side and find things simply funny.”

A lively discussion preceded the seating. Senator Wilson said something very handsome about the “Swan Song of Slavery” and God’s hand in the present state of affairs; as he was soaring above the impious Democrats, Mr. Casserly, one of the last-named sinners, bounced up and asked: “I would like to know when and where the Senator from Massachusetts obtained a commission to represent the Almighty in the Senate? I have not heard of such authorisation, and if such person has been selected for that office, it is only another illustration of the truism that the ways of Providence are mysterious and past finding out.” Laughter put the “Swan Song” off key; Casserly said something about senators being made now, not by the voice of God and the people, but by the power of the bayonet, when somebody flung back at him, “You use the shelalah in New York!”

“But the ceremony!” Miss Winfield wrote. “Nothing has so impressed me since the ball to Prince Arthur, nor has anything so amused me unless it be the pipe-stem pantaloons our gentlemen wear in imitation of His Royal Highness. Senator Wilson conducted Revels to the Speaker’s desk with a fine air that said: ‘Massachusetts has done it all!’ Vice-President Colfax administered the oath with such unction as you never saw, then shook hands with great warmth with Revels—nobody ever before saw him greet a novitiate so cordially! But then, those others were only white men! With pomp and circumstance the sergeant-at-arms led the hero of the hour to his exalted position. ‘Some day,’ said my companion, ‘history will record this as showing how far the race-madness of a people can go under political spurs.’ Republican Senators fell over each other to shake Revels’ hand and congratulate him. Poor Mississippi! And Revels is not even a native. General Ames, of Maine, is her other senator. Poor Mississippi!”

A LITTLE PLAIN HISTORY