Charles A. Dana

Last interview with Mr. Lincoln—Why Jacob Thompson escaped—At the deathbed of the murdered President—Searching for the assassins—The letters which Mr. Lincoln had docketed "Assassination"—At the conspiracy trial—The Confederate secret cipher—Jefferson Davis's capture and imprisonment—A visit to the Confederate President at Fortress Monroe—The grand review of the Union armies—The meeting between Stanton and Sherman—End of Mr. Dana's connection with the War Department.

It was one of my duties at this time to receive the reports of the officers of the secret service in every part of the country. On the afternoon of the 14th of April—it was Good Friday—I got a telegram from the provost marshal in Portland, Me., saying: "I have positive information that Jacob Thompson will pass through Portland to-night, in order to take a steamer for England. What are your orders?"

Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, had been Secretary of the Interior in President Buchanan's administration. He was a conspicuous secessionist, and for some time had been employed in Canada as a semi-diplomatic agent of the Confederate Government. He had been organizing all sorts of trouble and getting up raids, of which the notorious attack on St. Albans, Vt., was a specimen. I took the telegram and went down and read it to Mr. Stanton. His order was prompt: "Arrest him!" But as I was going out of the door he called to me and said: "No, wait; better go over and see the President."

At the White House all the work of the day was over, and I went into the President's business room without meeting any one. Opening the door, there seemed to be no one there, but, as I was turning to go out, Mr. Lincoln called to me from a little side room, where he was washing his hands:

"Halloo, Dana!" said he. "What is it? What's up?"

Then I read him the telegram from Portland.

"What does Stanton say?" he asked.

"He says arrest him, but that I should refer the question to you."

"Well," said the President slowly, wiping his hands, "no, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he's trying to run away, it's best to let him run."

With this direction, I returned to the War Department.

"Well, what says he?" asked Mr. Stanton.

"He says that when you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."

"Oh, stuff!" said Stanton.

That night I was awakened from a sound sleep by a messenger with the news that Mr. Lincoln had been shot, and that the Secretary wanted me at a house in Tenth Street. I found the President with a bullet wound in the head, lying unconscious, though breathing heavily, on a bed in a small side room, while all the members of the Cabinet, and the Chief Justice with them, were gathered in the adjoining parlor. They seemed to be almost as much paralyzed as the unconscious sufferer within the little chamber. The surgeons said there was no hope. Mr. Stanton alone was in full activity.

"Sit down here," said he; "I want you."

Then he began and dictated orders, one after another, which I wrote out and sent swiftly to the telegraph. All these orders were designed to keep the business of the Government in full motion until the crisis should be over. It seemed as if Mr. Stanton thought of everything, and there was a great deal to be thought of that night. The extent of the conspiracy was, of course, unknown, and the horrible beginning which had been made naturally led us to suspect the worst. The safety of Washington must be looked after. Commanders all over the country had to be ordered to take extra precautions. The people must be notified of the tragedy. The assassins must be captured. The coolness and clearheadedness of Mr. Stanton under these circumstances were most remarkable. I remember that one of his first telegrams was to General Dix, the military commander of New York, notifying him of what had happened. No clearer brief account of the tragedy exists to-day than this, written scarcely three hours after the scene in Ford's Theater, on a little stand in the room where, a few feet away, Mr. Lincoln lay dying.

I remained with Mr. Stanton until perhaps three o'clock in the morning. Then he said: "That's enough. Now you may go home."

When I left, the President was still alive, breathing heavily and regularly, though, of course, quite unconscious. About eight o'clock I was awakened by a rapping on a lower window. It was Colonel Pelouze, of the adjutant-general's office, and he said:

"Mr. Dana, the President is dead, and Mr. Stanton directs you to arrest Jacob Thompson."

The order was sent to Portland, but Thompson couldn't be found there. He had taken the Canadian route to Halifax.

The whole machinery of the War Department was now employed in the effort to secure the murderer of the President and his accomplices. As soon as I had recovered from the first shock of Mr. Lincoln's death, I remembered that in the previous November I had received from General Dix the following letter:

Headquarters, Department of the East,

New York City, November 17, 1864.

C. A. Dana, Esq.

My dear Sir: The inclosed was picked up in a Third Avenue railroad car. I should have thought the whole thing got up for the Sunday Mercury but for the genuine letter from St. Louis in a female hand. The Charles Selby is obviously a manufacture. The party who dropped the letter was heard to say he would start for Washington Friday night. He is of medium size, has black hair and whiskers, but the latter are believed to be a disguise. He had disappeared before the letter was picked up and examined.

Yours truly, John A. Dix.

There were two inclosures, this being one of them:

The other was in a woman's handwriting:

On reading the letters, I had taken them at once to President Lincoln. He looked at them, but made no special remark, and, in fact, seemed to attach very little importance to them. I left them with him.

I now reminded Mr. Stanton of this circumstance, and he asked me to go immediately to the White House and see if I could find the letters. I thought it rather doubtful, for I knew the President received a great many communications of a similar nature. However, I went over, and made a thorough search through his private desk. He seemed to have attached more importance to these papers than to others of the kind, for I found them inclosed in an envelope marked in his own handwriting, "Assassination." I kept the letters by me for some time, and then delivered them to Judge John A. Bingham, special judge advocate in the conspiracy trial. Judge Bingham seemed to think them of importance, and asked me to have General Dix send the finder down to Washington. I wired at once to the general. He replied that it was a woman who had found the letters; that she was keeping a small store in New York, had several children, was a widow, and had no servant; that she would have to find some one to take care of her house, but would be in Washington in a day or two.

A few days later she came. I was not in town when Mrs. Hudspeth, as her name proved to be, arrived. I had gone to Chicago, but from the woman's testimony on May 12th, I learned that in November, 1864, just after the presidential election, and on the day, she said, on which General Butler left New York, she had overheard a curious conversation between two men in a Third Avenue car in New York city. She had observed, when a jolt of the car pushed the hat of one of the men forward, that he wore false whiskers. She had noticed that his hand was very beautiful; that he carried a pistol in his belt; that, judging from his conversation, he was a young man of education; she heard him say that he was going to Washington that day. The young men left the car before she did, and after they had gone her daughter, who was with her, had picked up a letter from the floor. Mrs. Hudspeth, thinking it belonged to her, had carried it from the car. She afterward discovered the two letters printed above, and took them to General Scott, who, upon reading them, said they were of great importance, and sent her to General Dix. When a photograph of Booth was shown to Mrs. Hudspeth, she swore that it was the man in disguise whom she had seen in the car. It was found that Booth was in New York on the day that she indicated—that is, the day General Butler left New York, November 11th—and likewise that Booth had gone from there to Washington, as she had heard this man say he was going to do. The inference was that the man who had dropped the letter was Booth.

I was afterward called to the stand, on June 9th, to testify about the letters. Judge Bingham used these documents as a link in his chain of evidence showing that a conspiracy existed "to kill and murder Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Edwin M. Stanton, and others of his advisers," and that Booth was a partner in this conspiracy.

I have said that I was in Chicago when Mrs. Hudspeth gave her testimony. Just after I reached there I received from Major T. F. Eckert, the head of the military telegraph, a message saying that the court wanted me immediately as a witness in the conspiracy trial. I returned at once, and on the 18th of May appeared in court. I was wanted that I might testify to the identity of a key to a secret cipher which I had found on the 6th of April in Richmond. On that day I had gone into the office of Mr. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State; on a shelf, among Mr. Benjamin's books and other things, I had found a secret cipher key.[E] I saw it was the key to the official Confederate cipher, and, as we had at times to decipher at the War Department a good many documents written in that cipher, it seemed to me of interest, and I brought it away, with several other interesting documents. When I returned to Washington I gave it to Major Eckert, who had charge of cipher dispatches in the War Department.

Now, on the night of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, Lieutenant W. H. Terry had been sent to the National Hotel to seize the trunk of J. Wilkes Booth. Among other things, he had found a paper containing a secret cipher. When this was given to Major Eckert, he immediately saw that it was the same as the one which I had found in Richmond. It was thought that possibly by means of this evidence it could be shown that Booth was in communication with the Confederate Government. I was called back to identify the cipher key. Major Eckert at the same time presented dispatches written in the cipher found in Booth's trunk and sent from Canada to the Confederates. They had been captured and taken to the War Department, where copies of them were made. By the key which I had found these dispatches could be read. These dispatches indicated plots against the leaders of our Government, though whether Booth had sent them or not was, of course, never known.

Throughout the period of the trial I was constantly receiving and answering messages and letters relative to the examination or arrest of persons suspected of being connected with the affair. In most cases neither the examinations nor arrests led to anything. The persons had been acquaintances of the known conspirators, or they had been heard to utter disloyal sentiments and had been reported to the department by zealous Unionists. It was necessary, however, under the circumstances, to follow up every clew given us, and, under Mr. Stanton's directions, I gave attention to all cases reported.

While the trial was going on in Washington, Jefferson Davis was captured, on May 10th, near Irwinsville, Ga., by a detachment of General Wilson's cavalry. Mr. Davis and his family, with Alexander H. Stephens, lately Vice-President of the Confederacy, John H. Reagan, Postmaster General, Clement C. Clay, and other State prisoners, were sent to Fortress Monroe. The propeller Clyde, with the party on board, reached Hampton Roads on May 19th. The next day, May 20th, Mr. Stanton sent for me to come to his office. He told me where Davis was, and said that he had ordered General Nelson A. Miles to go to Hampton Roads to take charge of the prisoners, transferring them from the Clyde to the fortress. Mr. Stanton was much concerned lest Davis should commit suicide; he said that he himself would do so in like circumstances. "I want you to go to Fortress Monroe," he said, "and caution General Miles against leaving Davis any possible method of suicide; tell him to put him in fetters, if necessary. Davis must be brought to trial; he must not be allowed to kill himself." Mr. Stanton also told me that he wanted a representative of the War Department down there to see what the military was doing, and to give suggestions and make criticisms and send him full reports.

The status of Jefferson Davis at the time explains Mr. Stanton's anxiety. It should be remembered that Davis had not surrendered when the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, was captured; neither had he surrendered with either of the two principal armies under Lee and Johnston. At that time the whole Confederate army west of the Mississippi was still at large. To allow Davis to join this force was only to give the Confederacy an opportunity to reassemble the forces still unsurrendered and make another stand for life. Even more important than this consideration was the fact that Davis was charged, in President Johnson's proclamation of May 2, 1865, offering a reward for his capture, with instigating the assassination of President Lincoln:

It was with the above facts in mind that I started for Hampton Roads on May 20th. On the 22d the prisoners were transferred from the Clyde to the fortress. The quarter selected for Davis's prison was a casemate such as at that time, as well as at the present, is occupied by officers and their families. In fact, an officer with his family was moved out of the particular casemate in which Davis was placed. Any one who will take the trouble to visit Fortress Monroe can see the place still, and it certainly has not to-day a gloomy or forbidding appearance. The whole scene of the transfer I described in a long telegram which I sent to Mr. Stanton on the 22d. As it contains my fresh impressions, and has never before been published, I give it here in full:

Before leaving Fortress Monroe, on May 22d, I made out for General Miles the order here printed in facsimile:

This order was General Miles's authority for placing fetters upon Davis a day or two later, when he found it necessary to change the inner doors of the casemate, which were light wooden ones, without locks. While these doors were being changed for grated ones, anklets were placed on Davis; they did not prevent his walking, but did prevent any attempt to jump past the guard, and they also prevented him from running. As soon as the doors were changed (it required three days, I think), the anklets were removed. I believe that every care was taken during Mr. Davis's imprisonment to remove cause for complaint. Medical officers were directed to superintend his meals and give him everything that would excite his appetite. As it was complained that his quarters in the casemate were unhealthy and disagreeable, he was, after a few weeks, transferred to Carroll Hall, a building still occupied by officers and soldiers. That Davis's health was not ruined by his imprisonment at Fortress Monroe is proved by the fact that he came out of the prison in better condition than when he went in, and that he lived for twenty years afterward, and died of old age.

I hurried back to Washington from Fortress Monroe to be present at the grand review of the Armies of the Potomac and Tennessee, which had been arranged for May 23d and 24th. I reached the city early in the morning. The streets were all alive with detachments of soldiers marching toward Capitol Hill, for it was there that the parade was to start. Thousands of visitors were also in the streets.

May 23d was given up to the review of the Army of the Potomac, and by nine o'clock General Meade and his staff, at the head of the army, started from the Capitol. Soon after, I joined the company on the reviewing officers' stand, in front of the White House, in just the place which the reviewing stand now occupies on inauguration days. President Johnson had the central position on the platform. Upon his right, a seat was retained for the commander of the corps undergoing review. As soon as the corps commander with his staff had passed the grand stand at the head of his troops, he rode into the grounds of the White House, dismounted, and came to take his position at the right of Mr. Johnson, while his troops continued their march. When all his men had passed, he gave up his place to the commander of the next corps in the column, and so on. Next to the corps commanders were seated Secretary Stanton and Lieutenant-General Grant. On the left of the President was Postmaster-General Dennison and, on the first day of the parade, while the Army of the Potomac passed, Major-General Meade; and on the second day, while the Army of the Tennessee passed, Major-General Sherman. The other members of the Cabinet, many army officers, the assistant secretaries in the different departments, and a number of guests invited by the President and the secretaries, were grouped around these central personages.

On the 24th, when Sherman's army was reviewed, I sat directly behind Mr. Stanton at the moment when General Sherman, after having passed the grand stand at the head of his army, dismounted and came on to the stand to take his position and review his soldiers. As he had to pass immediately in front of Secretary Stanton in order to reach the place assigned to him on the President's right, I could see him perfectly. I watched both men closely, for the difficulty between Stanton and Sherman was at that moment known to everybody.

The terms upon which Sherman in April had accepted the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina went beyond the authority of a military commander, and touched upon political issues. It is true that these terms were made conditional upon the approval of the Government; nevertheless, Mr. Stanton was deeply indignant at the general for meddling with matters beyond his jurisdiction. No doubt his indignation was intensified by his dislike of Sherman. The two men were antagonistic by nature. Sherman was an effervescent, mercurial, expansive man, springing abruptly to an idea, expressing himself enthusiastically on every subject, and often without reflection. Stanton could not accommodate himself to this temperament.

When the memorandum of the agreement between Johnston and Sherman reached Stanton, he sent Grant to the general in hot haste, and then published in the newspapers, which need not have known anything of the affair, a full account of the unwise compact, and an indignant repudiation of it by the Government. Naturally this brought down a furious attack upon Sherman. All his past services were forgotten for a time, and he was even called a "traitor." The public quickly saw the injustice of this attitude; so did most of the men in the Government, and they hastened to appease Sherman, who was violently incensed over what he called Stanton's insult. I think he never forgave the Secretary. When, on May 19th, he reached Washington with his army, which he had marched northward across the battlefields of Virginia, he refused to have anything to do with Stanton, although Grant tried his best to bring about a reconciliation and the President and several members of the Cabinet showed him every attention.

I was, of course, curious to see what General Sherman would do in passing before Mr. Stanton to take his place on the stand. The general says in his Memoirs that, as he passed, Stanton offered his hand and he refused to take it. He is entirely mistaken. I was watching narrowly. The Secretary made no motion to offer his hand, or to exchange salutations in any manner. As the general passed, Mr. Stanton gave him merely a slight forward motion of his head, equivalent, perhaps, to a quarter of a bow.

In May I had been asked to become the editor of a new paper to be founded in Chicago, the Republican. The active promoter was a Mr. Mack, and the concern was organized with a nominal capital of five hundred thousand dollars. Only a small part of this was ever paid up; a large block of the stock was set aside as a bonus to induce a proper man to become the editor. Mr. Mack had offered the post to me, and, through the influence of the Hon. Lyman Trumbull and other prominent men of Illinois, I was persuaded to accept it. In deciding on the change, I had arranged to stay in Washington until I could finish the routine business upon which I was then engaged, and until Mr. Stanton could conveniently spare me. This was not until the 1st of July. On the first day of the month I sent to the President my resignation as Assistant Secretary of War, and a few days later I left the capital for Chicago.

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