Nearly every day the child who composed the prayer was so moved by its recital she would run from the table and dry her tears in the next room before she could eat.
Hourly scenes of violence increased between the whites and the inflamed blacks. A negro sentinel leveled his gun at little Jeff and threatened to shoot him for calling him "Uncle." With prayers and tears the mother sent her children away to the home of a friend in Montreal.
A year passed before President Johnson in answer to the wife's desperate pleading permitted her to visit her husband in prison. She arrived from Montreal on the cold raw morning of May 10, 1866, at four o'clock before day. There was no hotel at the fort at that time and the mother was compelled to sit in the desolate little waiting room with her baby without a fire until ten o'clock.
General Miles called. His references to her husband were made in a manner which brutally expressed his hatred and contempt. She had been informed that his health was in so dangerous a condition that physicians had despaired of his life.
Miles hastened to say:
"'Davis' is in good health—"
"I can see him at once?" she begged.
"Yes. You understand the terms of your parole that you are to take no deadly weapons into the prison?"
Suppressing a smile at the unique use of the language which a man of the rank of Miles could make she replied quickly:
"I understand. Please arrange that I can see him at once."