The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

“At Washington it was found that squads of Federal cavalry scouts were there. A few were in the town at the time, and Mr. Davis was again urged to consult his safety. His family and servants, with a small train of ambulances, accompanied by his private Secretary, Mr. Burton Harrison, had passed through Washington twenty-four hours before, and the enemy then only some twenty miles distant, and Mr. Davis ascertained that he might readily overtake them; and before adopting any plan to leave the country, he desired to see and confer with them.

“On the following morning, with his party somewhat reduced in numbers, he left Washington and joined his family.

“The circumstance of the capture of Mr. Davis, as given officially by General Wilson, were in harmony with that system of misrepresentation by which the popular mind was perverted as to all he said, and did, and designed. His alleged attempt to escape, disguised in female apparel—a naked fiction—served well enough for the moment to gratify and amuse the popular mind. Barnum, the showman, true to his proclivity for practical falsehood, presented to the eyes of Broadway a graphic life-size representation of Mr. Davis, thus habited, resisting arrest by Federal soldiers; and many thousands of children, whose wondering eyes beheld it will grow to maturity and pass into the grave, retaining the ideas thus created as the truth of history. Fortunately, however, history rarely leaves her verification wholly to the testimony of envy, hatred, malice, or falsehood, but contrives, in her own time and method, ways and means to bring truth to her exposition.

“It has been seen that before the President’s proclamation connecting him with the assassination, with every desired opportunity, and with every means of escape from the country at his command, Mr. Davis refrained from leaving it; and it is very doubtful whether, in face of the charge of complicity with this great crime, any power on earth could have induced him to leave.

“The sentiment to which the noble Clement Clay, of Alabama, gave utterance, upon learning that he was charged as particeps criminis in the assassination doubtless actuated Mr. Davis. Clay was able to escape from the country, and was prepared to do so; but when his heroic and loveable wife made known to him this charge, with indignation and scorn at its base falsehood breathing in every tone, he rose quietly, and said: ‘Well, my dear wife, that puts an end to all my plans of leaving the country. I must meet this calumny at once, and will go to Atlanta and surrender myself and demand its investigation.’

“Had Mr. Davis left the country, falsehood and malignity would have multiplied asserted proofs of this black charge against him; and the shortcomings, errors, and crimes, perhaps, of others, would have been conveniently attributed to the faults of his head or heart. But his long captivity, his cruel treatment, the patient, passive heroism with which, when powerless otherwise, and strong only in honor and integrity, he met his fate, have combined, not only to seal the lips of those of his Confederate associates who had wrongs, real or fancied, to resent, but to concentrate upon him the heartfelt sympathy of the Southern people, and no little interest and sympathy wherever heroic endurance of misfortune gains consideration among men.

“His escape from the country and a secure refuge in a foreign land, sustained by the respect and affection of the Southern people, were within his own control; and he might have reasonably looked forward to a return to his native State, as a result of a change in her political status, at no distant day. But he refrained from embracing the opportunities of escape which were his by fortune or by Federal permission.

“The suggestions of friends as to his personal safety were heard with all due consideration, and he manifested none of the airs of a would-be political martyr; and yet it was evident that captivity and death had lost with him their terrors in comparison with the crushing calamity of a defeat of a cause for whose triumph he had been ever ready to lay down his life.

“The general language and bearing of the people of the country through which he passed, their ardent loyalty to the South, their profound sorrow at the failure of her cause, and their warm expressions of regard for himself—all confirmatory of the conviction that, notwithstanding the odds against her, a thorough and hearty union of the people and leaders would have secured her triumph, affected him deeply.

“Throughout his journey he greatly enjoyed the exercise of riding and the open air, and decidedly preferred the bivouac to the bed-room; and at such times, reclining against a tree, or stretched upon a blanket, with his head, pillowed upon his saddle, and under the inspiration of a good cigar, he talked very pleasantly of stirring scenes of other days, and forgot, for a time, the engrossing anxieties of the situation.”