After the examination of General Stone, many officers of his command appeared before the committee. The captains and lieutenants, fresh from private life, whose names he probably did not know, and with whom he perhaps never exchanged a word, were summoned in large number. They had remarkable stories to tell about General Stone's disloyalty; about his holding secret correspondence with the enemy; about his permitting letters and packages to be taken across the line without examination; about his allowing rebels to go freely back and forth; and finally about his passing within the rebel lines to hold confidential interviews with the officers commanding the force opposed to him. It is singular that men of the acuteness and high character of those composing the committee did not carefully sift the testimony and subject it to the test of a rigorous cross- examination. The stories told by many of these swift witnesses were on the surface absurd, and should have been exposed. Publicity alone would have largely counteracted the evil effect of their narratives, but the examination was secret, and the witnesses evidently felt that the strongest bias against General Stone was the proper turn to give their testimony. The atmosphere was, as it often is in such cases, unfavorable to the suspected man; and his reputation was mercilessly assailed where he could not reply, and was not even allowed to hear. When officers of the higher grades, who came near to General Stone, who shared his confidence and assisted in his councils, were examined, the weight of the testimony was markedly different. General F. W. Lander regarded General Stone as "a very efficient, orderly, and excellent officer." Colonel Isaac J. Wistar, who succeeded Colonel Baker in the command of the California regiment, gave the highest testimony to General Stone's loyalty, and to the "full confidence" reposed in him by men of every rank in the brigade with which he was serving. Colonel Charles Devens who, with his regiment, the Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry, had borne an honorable part on the bloody field, testified that he and the officers of the Fifteenth "had confidence in General Stone." Colonel James H. Van Allen, commanding a regiment of cavalry in General Stone's division, gave the most cordial testimony of his loyalty and high character.
After the larger part of the evidence adverse to General Stone had been heard, he received an intimation through General McClellan that it might be well for him to appear again before the Committee on the Conduct of the War. He obtained leave of absence from his command, repaired to Washington, and presented himself before the committee on the 31st of January, twenty-six days after his first testimony had been given. For some reason which the committee did not deem it necessary to explain, General Stone was not furnished with the names of the witnesses who had testified against him in the dark; their testimony was not submitted to him; it was not even read in his hearing. He was simply informed by the chairman— Senator Wade of Ohio—that "in the course of our investigations there has come out in evidence matters which may be said to impeach you. I do not know that I can enumerate all the points, but I think I can. In the first place is your conduct in the Ball's- Bluff affair—your ordering your forces over without sufficient means of transportation, and in that way endangering your army, in case of a check, by not being able to re-enforce them. . . . Another point is that the evidence tends to show that you have had undue communication with the enemy by letters that have passed back and forth, by intercourse with officers from the other side, and by permitting packages to go over unexamined, to known Secessionists. . . . The next and only other point that now occurs to me is that you have suffered the enemy to erect formidable fortifications or batteries on the opposite side of the river, within the reach of your guns, and which you could easily have prevented." General Stone's answer was as lucid, frank, and full as could be made to charges of so sweeping a character. His explanations were unreserved, and his justification apparently complete and unanswerable against every form of accusation which the chairman submitted. To the charge of disloyalty General Stone replied with much feeling, "That is one humiliation I had hoped I should never be subjected to. I thought there was one calumny that could not be brought against me. Any other calumny I should expect after what I have received, but that one I should have supposed that you personally, Mr. Chairman, would have rejected at once. You remember last spring when the Government had so few friends here, when the enemy had this city I might almost say in his power, I raised all the volunteer troops that were here during the seven dark days. I disciplined and posted those troops. I commanded them, and they were the first to invade the soil of Virginia, and I led them." Mr. Wade here interrupted, and said, "I was no so unjust as not to mention that circumstance to the committee." General Stone resumed, "I could have surrendered Washington. And now I will swear that this government has not a more faithful soldier, of poor capacity it may be, but not a more faithful soldier from the day I was called into service to this minute."
GENERAL CHARLES P. STONE ARRESTED.
Subsequent developments proved that three days before this second examination General McClellan had in his possession an order from Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, directing him "to relieve General Stone from his command of a division in the Army of the Potomac, and that he be placed in arrest and kept in close custody until further orders." It is evident therefore that so far as the War Department was involved, the case had been prejudged, or judged at least without giving the accused man an opportunity to be heard in his own defense. It is difficult to understand why his testimony did not have the effect to recall or suspend the order of arrest, but despite the candor and evident honesty of his explanations, the blow fell upon him. Early on Saturday the eighth day of February General McClellan directed the provost marshal of the district, General Andrew Porter, "to arrest Brigadier-General Charles P. Stone at once, and to send him under close custody by first train to Fort Lafayette, where he will be placed in charge of the commanding officer, and have no communication with any one from the time of his arrest." Brigadier-General Sykes, commanding the City Guard, executed the order, taking General Stone from his bed at midnight in the hotel where he was stopping, and making him a close prisoner. Shortly after daylight the following morning General Stone addressed a note to General Seth Williams, Adjutant-General on the staff of General McClellan, informing him of his arrest, and adding, "Conscious of having been at all times a faithful soldier of the United States, I must respectfully request that I may be furnished at an early a moment as practicable with a copy of whatever charges may have been preferred against me, with the opportunity of promptly meeting them."
To this respectful communication no answer was made, and General Stone was hurried off to Fort Lafayette, under strict guard, with an order from General McClellan for his imprisonment. At the fort the money which he had in his pockets was taken from him, and he was placed in solitary confinement in a room ordinarily used for quarters of enlisted men. No letter was allowed to leave him or reach him without the most rigid inspection. Under this close surveillance, with an armed sentinel pacing before the door of his room, without opportunity for outdoor air or exercise, he was kept for forty-nine days. He applied at different times to the military authorities in Washington for a statement of the charges against him, for a speedy trial, for access to the records of his own office and his own headquarters, for a change of the place of his confinement. To none of these applications was answer of any kind returned. After he had been nearly two months in prison he asked that his wife might be allowed to visit him. She was in the deepest anguish, and her society in his imprisonment could have subjected the government to no danger, because she would have been under the same restraint and espionage as her husband. This natural and reasonable request, made only after his confinement promised to be indefinite, was peremptorily and curtly refused by the War Department.
On the fiftieth day the place of his imprisonment was changed from Fort Lafayette to Fort Hamilton near by, and the opportunity for open-air exercise within the fort was accorded him, though always under the eye of a sentinel. Here he renewed his request for the charges against him, without eliciting answer. He applied to the officer in command of the fort to learn of what possible crime he was accused, and the officer replied that he knew nothing of it; he was absolutely ignorant of any ground for General Stone's imprisonment. After striving for more than sixty days to ascertain the nature of his offense, and secure an opportunity to vindicate himself, the prisoner adopted another course. He applied for suspension of arrest with liberty to join the army just setting forth under General McClellan for the Peninsular campaign. No reply was made to his request. A few weeks later, when the Union forces under General Banks were defeated in the valley of the Shenandoah, he again asked the privilege of active duty, and again was treated with contemptuous silence. On the 4th of July he telegraphed directly to President Lincoln, recalling the honorable service in which he had been engaged just one year before. Reminding the President of the pressing need which the country then had "of the services of every willing soldier," he begged to be sent to the field. With manly dignity he declared, "I am utterly unconscious of any act, word, or design which should make me less eligible to an honorable place among the soldiers of the Republic than upon any day of my past life."
GENERAL STONE'S CASE IN CONGRESS.
Meanwhile the subject had forced itself upon the attention of Congress. On the 24th of March, Senators Latham and McDougall of California, the first a supporter of Breckinridge in 1860, the other a supporter of Douglas, with Aaron A. Sargent, representative from the same State and a most radical Republican, united in an energetic memorial to Secretary Stanton, on behalf of General Stone as a citizen of California. They stated that "the long arrest of General Stone without military trial or inquiry has led to complaints from many quarters. . . . Having known General Stone for years, and never having had cause to doubt his loyalty, we feel it our duty to inquire of the government through you for some explanation of a proceeding which seems to us extraordinary." To this memorial no reply was made, and after waiting nearly three weeks Mr. McDougall introduced in the Senate a very searching resolution of inquiry, requesting the Secretary of War to state upon whose authority the arrest was made, and upon whose complaint; why General Stone had been denied his rights under the articles of war; why no charges and specifications of his offense had been made; whether General Stone had not frequently asked to be informed of the charges against him; and finally upon what pretense he was still kept in prison. Mr. McDougall spoke in the Senate on the 15th of April in support of his resolution, making some interesting personal statements. General Stone was arrested on the night of Saturday, the 8th of February. "On the Wednesday evening before that," said Mr. McDougall, "I met General Stone, dressed as became a person of his rank, at the house of the President, where no one went on that evening except by special invitation. He was there mingling with his friends, receiving as much attention and as much consideration from all about him as any man there present. . . . Only two evenings after that, if I remember right, he was the guest under similar circumstances of the senior general in command of our army [McClellan], and there again receiving the hospitalities of the men first in office and first in the consideration of the country. On, I think, the very day of his arrest he was in the War Department, and was received by the head of that department as a man who had the entire confidence of the government, and of himself as one of the government's representatives. On that evening he was seized, taken from his home and family at midnight, carried off to Fort Lafayette and imprisoned, as are men convicted and adjudged guilty of the highest offense known to the law. . . . I undertake to say upon good authority that almost presently before his arrest he said to the present Secretary of War [Stanton], 'Sir, I hear complaints about my conduct as an officer at Ball's Bluff. I wish you to inquire into it and have the matter determined.' He was assured that there were no charges against him, and the secretary advised him in substance in these words: 'There is no occasion for your inquiry; go back to your command.' That was the day of the night on which he was arrested." Mr. McDougall's statement, the accuracy of which was not challenged by any one, disclosed the fact that while General Stone was a guest at the White House and at the residence of General McClellan, the latter had in his possession the order for arrest, and had held it for several days.
The resolution of Mr. McDougall was debated at some length in the Senate, Mr. Wade making a fiery speech in defense of the course pursued by the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and Mr. Browning of Illinois defending the President, upon whom there had been no imputation of any kind. Mr. Doolittle suggested that the resolution be referred to a committee. Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts submitted a substitute, simply requesting "the President of the United States to communicate to the Senate any information touching the arrest and imprisonment of General Stone, not deemed incompatible with the public interest." Mr. Sumner had "no opinion to express in the case, for he knew nothing about it;" but "it seemed clear" to him "that General Stone ought to be confronted with his accusers at an early day, unless there be some reason of an overbearing military character which would render such a trial improper." Mr. Sumner had "seen in various newspapers a most persistent attempt" to connect him "with the credit or discredit of the arrest." He declared that from the beginning he "had been an absolute stranger to it." The arrest was made, he repeated, without his "suggestion or hint, direct or indirect." He declared that he "was as free from all connection with it" as "the intimate friends and family relatives of the prisoner." At the close of the debate Mr. McDougall accepted Mr. Wilson's resolution as a substitute for his, and on the 21st of April the latter was adopted by general consent.