CHAPTER XIX
The Prisoner of Fortress Monroe
An extract from a letter by Mrs. Robert E. Lee to Miss Mason, from Derwent, September 10, 1865, may interest my readers: “I have just received, dear Miss Em, a long letter from Mrs. Davis in reply to one of mine. She was in Augusta, Ga.; says she is confined to that State. She has sent her children to kindred in Canada. Says she knows nothing whatever of her husband, except what she has seen in the papers. Says any letter sent her under care of Mr. Schley will reach her safely. She writes very sadly, as she well may, for I know of no one so much to be pitied.... She represents a most uncomfortable state of affairs in Augusta. No one, white or black, can be out after ten o’clock at night without a pass.... We must wait God’s time to raise us up again. That will be the best time.” In a later letter, Mrs. Lee said: “I cannot help feeling uneasy about Mr. Davis. May God protect him, and grant him deliverance!”
The whole South was anxious about Mr. Davis. Those who had come in close touch with him felt a peculiar sympathy for him inspired by a side of his character not generally recognized, as his manner often conveyed an impression of coldness and sternness. Under his reserve, was an almost feminine tenderness revealed in many stories his close friends tell. Thus: One night, Judge Minor, to see the President on business of state, sat with him in the room of the “White House” where the telegraph wire came in at the window (now, Alabama Room in the Confederate Museum), when in stumbles little Joe, in night-gown, saying: “Papa, I want to say my prayers.” The President, caressing his child, despatched a message, answered Judge Minor’s immediate question, and saying, “Excuse me a moment,” led his little one’s devotions. He was of wide reading and wonderful memory, yet was ignorant of “Mother Goose” until he heard his children babbling the jingles. Mrs. Davis brought “Babes in the Wood” to his notice. He suffered from insomnia after visits to the hospitals; his wife would try to read him to sleep. One night she picked up the “Babes” as the one thing at hand, and was astonished to find the poem unknown to him; at the children’s desertion he rose, exclaiming: “Was there no one to help those poor tender babies? The thought is agonizing!” A part of his childhood was spent in a Kentucky monastery, where the good monks did not bethink themselves to teach him nursery rhymes.
There was the story of the soldier’s widow, to answer whose call the President left his breakfast unfinished. Mrs. Davis found him trying to comfort and to induce her to partake of a tray of delicacies sent in by his order. She was trying to find her husband’s body, and feared that as he was a poor private due aid might not be given her; she had been certain that she would receive scant attention from the Chief Magistrate. But he was telling her that the country’s strength and protection lay in her private soldier. “My father, Madam, was a private in the Revolution, and I am more proud of what he did for his country than if he had been an officer expecting the world’s praise. Tell your sorrows to my wife. She will take you in her carriage wherever you wish to go, and aid you all she can.”
Dr. Craven, Mr. Davis’ Federal physician at Fortress Monroe, testifies in his book to his patient’s unusual depth and quickness of sympathy: “Despite a certain exterior cynicism of manner, no patient ever crossed my path who, suffering so much himself, appeared to feel so warmly and tenderly for others.” In Confederate hospitals, he had not limited pity to wearers of the gray. A “White House” guest told me of his robbing his scant table more than once for a sick Federal who had served with him in Mexico. Another laughingly remarked: “I don’t see how he managed to rob his table of a delicacy. When I sat down to it, it had none to spare. Yet certainly he might have kept a bountiful board, for Government stores were accessible to Government officials, and the President might have had first choice in purchasing blockade goods. But the simplicity of our White House regime was an object-lesson. I recall seeing Mr. Davis in home-spun, home-made clothes at State receptions. That required very positive patriotism if one could do better! ‘Do look at Mr. Davis!’ Mrs. Davis whispered, ‘He will wear those clothes, and they look lop-sided!’ Their deficiencies were more noticeable because he was so polished and elegant.”
One of the faithful shows me in her scrap-book a dispatch, of May 25, 1865, in the “Philadelphia Inquirer”: “Jeff does not pine in solitude. An officer and two soldiers remain continually in the cell with him.” And then points to these words from the pen of Hugh McCulloch, Mr. Davis’ visitor from Washington: “He had the bearing of a brave and high-born gentleman, who, knowing he would have been highly honoured if the Southern States had achieved their independence, would not and could not demean himself as a criminal because they had not.” She tells how men who had served under Mr. Davis in Mexico were among his guards at Fortress Monroe and showed him respect and kindness; and how almost everybody there grew to like him, he was so kind and courteous, and to the common soldier as to the strapped and starred officer.
Our ladies sent articles for his comfort to Mr. Davis, but knew not if he received them. Dr. Minnegerode’s efforts to see him were for a weary while without success. It seemed that his pastor, at least, might have had this privilege without question, especially such as Dr. Minnegerode, a man of signal peace and piety who had carried the consolations of religion and such comforts as he could collect in an almost famine-stricken city to Federals in prison. His first endeavour, a letter of request to President Johnson, met no response. Finally, appeal was made through Rev. Dr. Hall, Mr. Stanton’s pastor; to the committee of ladies waiting on him, Dr. Hall said he did not wish to read the petition, wished to have nothing to do with the matter; they besought, he read, and secured privilege of intercourse between pastor and prisoner.