“Are you Mrs. Clay?” he asked. “Wife of the prisoner at Fortress Monroe?”
Upon receiving my affirmative answer, the Captain spoke earnestly.
“Mrs. Clay, you have my deep sympathy. I’m a regular Down-Easter myself—a Maine man; but for forty years I’ve plied a boat between Northern and Southern cities; and I know the Southern people well. I think it is a damned shame the way the Government is behaving toward you and Mrs. Davis!”
For a moment the tears blinded me, seeing which the Captain at once withdrew, comprehending the thanks he saw I could not utter. However, when the gong sounded for supper, he returned, and with kindly tact led me to a place beside him at the table, though I assured him I wanted nothing. At my obvious lack of appetite he showed a very woman’s thoughtfulness, himself preparing the viands before me while he urged me “to drink my coffee. You must take something,” he said from time to time, whenever he perceived a lagging interest in the dishes before me. Nor did this complete his kindnesses, for on the following morning, as I left the boat, Captain Blakeman handed me a slip of paper on which was written:
“New Line Steamers, Baltimore, December 27, 1865.
“Will please pass free Mrs. C. C. Clay, rooms and meals included, to all points as she wishes, and oblige,
“S. Blakeman,
“Commanding Steamer George Leary.”
“I hope you will use this pass as often as you need it,” he said.
We arrived at Fortress Monroe at four o’clock the next morning. As I stepped from the gang-plank, the scene about me was black and bleak, the air wintry. Save for a few dozing stevedores here and there, whom I soon perceived, the wharf was quite deserted. It had been my intention, upon my arrival, to go directly to the little Hygeia Hotel just outside the Fort, but upon the advice of Captain Blakeman I accepted the shelter offered me by the clerk in charge of the wharf, and rested until daylight in his snug little room just off from the office.
Just before leaving Washington I had written to Dr. Craven, telling him of my intended visit to the prison, and asking him to meet me at the little hotel. I now, at the first streak of dawn, still acting upon the suggestions of the kind captain, found a messenger and sent him with a note to General Miles, telling him of my arrival with the President’s permit to see my husband, and asking that an ambulance be sent to convey me to the Fort; and I despatched a second to Dr. Craven to tell him my whereabouts. Unknown to me, that friendly physician, whose humane treatment of Mr. Davis and my husband had brought upon him the disapproval of the War Department, had already been removed from his station at the Fort. My messenger found him, nevertheless, and upon receipt of my message he came and made himself known to me. His words were few, and not of a character to cheer one in my forlorn condition.
“Look for no kindness, Mrs. Clay,” he said, “at the hands of my successor, Dr. Cooper. He is the blackest of Black Republicans, and may be relied upon to show the prisoners little mercy.”
Our interview was brief, and, as the Fort ambulance was seen approaching, the Doctor left me hurriedly. “For,” said he, “it will do neither you nor the prisoners any good if you are seen talking with me.” He had scarcely disappeared in the grey morning when the escort from the Fort arrived. The vehicle was manned by two handsome Union soldiers, one, Major Hitchcock of General Miles’s staff, and the other Lieutenant Muhlenberg, a grandson, as I afterward learned, of the author of “I would not live alway.” Months afterward, when Mr. Clay left the Fortress, he carried with him the little volume containing Bishop Muhlenberg’s verses, a gift from the young lieutenant.