A pathetic paragraph appeared in one of the newspapers, giving a piteous story of a “loyal citizen of New Orleans,” who, for no namable offence, was made to pine in a foul dungeon to satisfy the personal pique of Mr. Secretary Stanton. Soon afterwards a remonstrance in behalf of this victim of oppression was signed by Surgeon Mooney. Ratcliff, whom the public sympathy had been led to picture as in the last stage of a mortal malady, was forthwith admitted to extraordinary privileges. He was enabled to communicate clandestinely with friends in New York. He soon managed to get on board a Nova Scotia coasting schooner. A week afterwards, he succeeded in running the blockade, and in disembarking safely at Wilmington, N. C.
Anxious as he was to get home, he must first go to Richmond to pay his respects to “President” Davis, of whom everybody at the South used to say to Mr. W. H. Russell of the London Times, “Don’t you think our President is a remarkable man?” Ratcliff was not unknown to Davis, and sent up his card. It drew forth an immediate “Show him in.” The “remarkable man” sat in his library at a small table strewn with letters and manuscripts. A thin, Cassius-like, care-burdened figure, slightly above the middle height. What some persons called dignity in his manner was in truth merely ungracious stiffness; while his hauteur was the unquiet arrogance that fears it shall not get its due. His face was not that of a man who could prudently afford to sneer (as he had publicly done) at Abraham Lincoln’s homeliness. But before him lay letters on which the postage-stamp was an absurdly flattered likeness of himself,—as like him as the starved apothecary is like Jupiter Tonans.
In the original the cheeks were shrunken and sallow, leaving the bones high and salient. The jaws were thin and hollow; the forehead wrinkled and out of all proportion with the lower part of the face; the eyes deep-set, and one of them dulled by a severe neuralgic affection. The lips were too thin, and there was no sweetness in the mouth. The whole expression was that of one whose besetting characteristic is an intense self-consciousness.
This man could not be betrayed into the ease and abandon of one of nature’s noblemen, for he was never thinking so much of others as of himself. The absence in him of all geniality of manner was not the reserve of a gentleman, but the frigidity of an unsympathetic and unassured heart. There was little in him of the Southern type of manhood. It is not to be wondered that bluff General Taylor could not overcome his repugnance to him as a son-in-law.
Although at the head of the Rebellion, this man had no vital faith in it; no enthusiasm that could magnetize others by a noble contagion. He was not a fanatic, like Stonewall Jackson. And yet, just previously to Ratcliff’s call, he had been exercised in mind about joining the church,—a step he finally took.
He had few of the qualities of a statesman. His petty malignities overcame all sense of the proprieties becoming his station; for he would give way, even in his public official addresses, to scurrilities which had the meanness without the virility of the slang of George Sanderson, and which showed a lack of the primary elements of a heroic nature.
A man greatly overrated as to abilities. A repudiator of the sacred obligations assumed by his State, it was his added infelicity to be defended by John Slidell. Never respected for truthfulness by those who knew him best. Future historians will contrast him with President Lincoln, and will show that, while the latter surpassed him immeasurably in high moral attributes, he was also his superior in intellectual pith.
The interview between Ratcliff and Davis began with an interchange of views on the subject of New Orleans. Each cheered the other with assurances of the impracticability of the Federal attack. After public affairs had been discussed, the so-called President said: “Excuse me for not having asked after Mrs. Ratcliff. Is she well?”
“She died some time since,” replied Ratcliff.
“Indeed! In these times of general bereavement we find it impossible to keep account of our friends.”