“A great concourse of people had assembled. From the wharf to the Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads—room had to be made by the mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel, where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a mile up and down Main street. As he passed, one and another put out a hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice said: ‘Hats off, Virginians,’ and again every head was bared. This noble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of bitter anguish.
When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoarse. Our people poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many embraced him.”
Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came. They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the truest of lovers.
No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as disloyal and treasonable.
For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the slanders now current.
Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see the train pass without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for description.
When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for all our people.
Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpassed in profundity of feeling and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his gray hairs as they came in sight; “God bless him” displayed on every corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He passed by a long line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. Is it to be explained by Mr. Davis’s character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south with all her might against the emancipation proclamation, the end of which may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable?
When he was going through Mrs. Hill’s yard to enter her house, little girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one begging, “Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers.” The feeble man tried to gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes.
I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently raised Mr. Davis’s hands to his lips, saying, “Let me kiss the hands that were manacled for me,” and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood.