This difference was noticeable at the Spotswood, which famous hostelry entertained many Northern guests. A double line of policemen, dividing the crowd, formed an avenue from sidewalk to ladies’ entrance. This crowd, it seems, had its hat on. Among our own people may have been some who thought it not wise in their own or the prisoner’s interests to show him too much honour. But as the emaciated, careworn man with the lofty bearing, stepped from the carriage, a voice, quiet but distinct, broke the impressive stillness: “Hats off, Virginians!” Instantly every man stood uncovered.
Monday he went to trial. The Court Room in the old Custom House was packed. In the persons of representative men, North and South were there for his vindication of the charge of high treason. Were he guilty, then were we all of the South, and should be sentenced with him.
Reporters for Northern papers were present with their Southern brethren of scratch-pad and pencil. The jury-box was a novelty to Northerners. In it sat a motley crew of negroes and whites. For portrait in part of the presiding judge, I refer to the case of McVeigh vs. Underwood, as reported in Twenty-third Grattan, decided in favour of McVeigh. When the Federal Army occupied Alexandria, John C. Underwood used his position as United States District Judge to acquire the homestead, fully furnished, of Dr. McVeigh, then in Richmond. He confiscated it to the United States, denied McVeigh a hearing, sold it, bought it in his wife’s name for $2,850 when it was worth not less than $20,000, and had her deed it to himself. The first time thereafter that Dr. McVeigh met the able jurist face to face on a street in Richmond, the good doctor, one of the most amiable of men, before he knew what he was doing, slapped the able jurist over and went about his business; whereupon, the Honourable the United States Circuit Court picked himself up and went about his, which was sitting in judgment on cases in equity. In 1873, Dr. McVeigh’s home was restored to him by law, the United States Supreme Court pronouncing Underwood’s course “a blot upon our jurisprudence and civilisation.” Underwood was in possession when he presided at the trial of Jefferson Davis.
AN HISTORICAL PETIT JURY
This is the Petit Jury impaneled to try President Jefferson Davis, being the first mixed Petit Jury
ever impaneled in the United States. Judge Underwood, not Chief Justice Chase, presided.
His personal appearance has been described as “repellant; his head drooping; his hair long; his eyes shifty and unpleasing, and like a basilisk’s; his clothes ill-fitting;” he “came into court, fawning, creeping, shuffling; ascended the bench in a manner awkward and ungainly; lifted his head like a turtle.” “Hear ye! hear ye! Silence is commanded while the Honourable the United States Circuit Court is in session!” calls the crier on this May morning.
General Burton, with soldierly simplicity, transfers the prisoner from the military to the civil power; Underwood embarrasses the officer and shames every lawyer present by a fatuous response abasing the bench before the bayonet. Erect, serene, undefiant, surrounded by mighty men of the Northern and Southern bar—O’Conor, Reed, Shea, Randolph Tucker, Ould—Jefferson Davis faces his judge, his own clear, fearless glance meeting squarely the “basilisk eye.”
The like of Underwood’s charge to the jury was never heard before in this land. It caused one long blush from Maine to Texas, Massachusetts to California; and resembled the Spanish War that came years after in that it gave Americans a common grievance. This poor, political bigot thought to please his Northern hearers by describing Richmond as “comely and spacious as a goodly apple on a gilded sepulchre where bloody treason flourished its whips of scorpions” and a “place where licentiousness has ruled until a majority of the births are illegitimate,” and “the pulpit prostituted by full-fed gay Lotharios.” But the thing is too loathsome to quote! Northern reporters said it was not a charge, took no cognisance of the matter before the Court, was a “vulgar, inflammatory stump speech.” The “New York Herald” pronounced it “The strangest mixture of drivel and nonsense that ever disgraced a bench,” and “without a parallel, with its foul-mouthed abuse of Richmond.” “A disgrace to the American bench,” declared the “New York World.” “He has brought shame upon the entire bench of the country, for to the people of other countries he is a representative of American judges.”
There was no trial. Motion was made and granted for a continuance of the case to November, and bail given in bond for $100,000, which Horace Greeley signed first, the crowd cheering him as he went up to write his name, which was followed by signatures of other well-known men of both sections. “The Marshal will discharge the prisoner!” a noble sentence in the judge’s mouth at last! Applause shakes the Court Room. Men surge forward; Mr. Davis is surrounded; his friends, his lawyers, his sureties, crowd about him; the North and the South are shaking hands; a love-feast is on. Human nature is at its best. The prisoner is free. When he appears on the portico the crowd grows wild with joy. Somebody wrote North that they heard the old “Rebel yell” once more, and that something or other unpleasant ought to be done to us because we would “holler” like that whenever we got excited.