Among relics in the Confederate Museum is a mask which Mr. Davis wore at Fortress Monroe. His wife sent it to him when she heard that the everlasting light in his eyes and the everlasting eyes of guards upon him were robbing him of sleep and threatening his eyesight and his reason. Over a mantel is Jefferson Davis’ bond in a frame; under his name are those of his sureties, Horace Greeley’s leading the signatures of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Gerrit Smith, Benjamin Wood, and Augustus Schell, all of New York; A. Welsh and D. K. Jackson, of Philadelphia; and Southern sureties, W. H. McFarland, Richard Barton Haxall, Isaac Davenport, Abraham Warwick, Gustavus A. Myers, W. Crump, James Lyons, John A. Meredith, W. H. Lyons, John Minor Botts, Thomas W. Boswell, James Thomas. Thousands of Southerners would have rejoiced to sign that bond; but it must be pleasing now to visitors of both sections to see Northern and Southern names upon it. The mask and the bond tell the story.
RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY
CHAPTER XX
Reconstruction Oratory
Northern visitors, drawn to Richmond in the Spring of 1867, to the Davis trial, came upon the heels of a riot if not squarely into the midst of one. Friday, May 10, began with a mass-meeting at one of the old Chimborazo buildings, where negroes of both sexes, various ages, and in all kinds of rags and raiment, congregated. Nothing could exceed the cheerfulness with which their initiation fees and monthly dues were received by the white Treasurer of the National Political Aid Society, while their names were called by the white Secretary—the one officer a carpet-bagger, the other a scalawag. Initiation fee was a quarter, monthly dues a dime; the Treasurer’s table was piled with a hillock of small change. The Secretary added 400 names to a roll of 2,000.
A negro leader, asked by a Northern reporter, “What’s this money to be used for?” replied: “We gwi sen’ speakers all ’roun’ de country, boss; gwi open de eyes er de cullud folks, an’ show ’em how dee gotter vote. Some niggers out in de country don’ know whe’er dee free er not—hoein’ an’ plowin’ fuh white folks jes lak dee always been doin’. An’ dee gwi vote lak white folks tell ’em ef dar ain’ suppin’ did. De country’s gwi go tuh obstruction ef us whar knows don’ molighten dem whar don’ know. Dat huccum you sees what you does see.” When collection had been taken up, a young carpet-bagger led in speech-making: