Arrived at the Fort, I was taken at once to the headquarters of General Miles, and conducted to a room commodiously and even luxuriously furnished. In a short time the General made his appearance. He was polite and even courteous in the examination of my passport, which he scanned carefully; but his manner was non-committal as he politely asked me to “be seated.” I seated myself and waited. The General withdrew. After the lapse of a few moments, an orderly appeared, bearing upon a salver a tempting breakfast; but I, who had spent months in seeking the privilege I had now come to claim, could touch nothing. I declined the food, saying I would wait and breakfast with my husband. The orderly looked perplexed, but removed the tray; and now a dreary and inexplicable wait began, interbroken with first a nervous, then an indignant, and at last a tearful inquiry. During the morning I affected a nonchalance wholly at variance with my real feelings. Picking up a book that lay at my elbow on the table, I was surprised to see a familiar name upon the fly-leaf. I commented upon the luxury of the apartment when next General Miles entered, and added, “These books seem to have been Governor Wise’s property.” The General was quick to defend himself from any suggestion that might lie in my words. He replied at once. “These headquarters were furnished by General Butler before I was sent here!”
DR. HENRY C. VOGELL
Fortress Monroe, 1866
Midday came and still the President’s autographed permit, which to me had seemed so powerful a document, was not honoured. A savoury luncheon was now brought in, but a nausea of nervousness had seized me and I could not eat a morsel. My excitement increased momentarily, until the distress of mind and apprehension were wholly beyond my control. I now implored General Miles to let me see my husband, if only for a moment; to explain this delay in the face of the President’s order. I begged him to allow me to telegraph to Washington; but to all my pleadings his only reply was to urge me to “be calm.” He assured me he regretted the delay, but that “his orders” were such that he could neither admit me to my husband’s room, nor allow me to use the Government wires at present.
By the middle of the afternoon, faint with pleadings and worn with indignation and fears at the unknown powers which dared thus to obstruct the carrying out of the President’s orders, not knowing what might yet be before me, my self-possession entirely deserted me. I remember, during my hysterical weeping, crying out to General Miles, “If you are ever married, I pray God your wife may never know an hour like this!”
In the midst of an uncontrollable paroxysm which seized me at last, Dr. Vogell, who has been variously designated as the private secretary and instructor of General Miles, entered. During the day General Miles had presented the Doctor to me, and, in his subsequent passing and repassing through the room, we had from time to time exchanged a remark. He was a tall, picturesque man, of possibly sixty years. At the sight of my culminating misery, Dr. Vogell could bear the distressful scene no longer. He cried out impulsively, “Miles, for God’s sake, let the woman go to her husband!”
Unhappily, this manly outburst, though it had its own message of sympathy for me, failed as utterly to move the commanding General Miles as had my previous urgings. In the months that followed, Dr. Vogell often called upon me clandestinely in Washington (announced as “Mr. Brown”), to say that “a friend of yours was quite well this morning, and desired his love given you!” The recollection of his kindnesses lives imperishable in my memory, but especially vivid is that first upwelling sympathy during the painful waiting at the Fort.
General Miles seemed not untouched by my pleadings, but, it was evident, he felt himself subject to a superior power which forced him to refuse them. His manner throughout, in fact, was courteous and apologetic. Despite my agony of mind, it was late in the afternoon ere the President’s order was honoured. Then General Miles entered, and, with an appearance of completest relief, consigned me, tear-stained and ill, to the care of Lieutenant Stone, who conducted me to Mr. Clay’s prison.
All day my husband, to whom there had penetrated a rumour of my coming, had been waiting for me, himself tortured by fears for my safety and by the mystery of my delay. The gloomy corridors, in which soldiers patrolled night and day, guarding the two delicate prisoners of State, were already darkening with the early evening shadows when, at last, I saw my husband, martyr to his faith in the honour of the Government, standing within the grating, awaiting me. The sight of his tall, slender form, his pale face and whitened hair, awaiting me behind those dungeon bars, affected me terribly. My pen is too feeble to convey the weakness that overcame me as Lieutenant Stone inserted and turned the key in the massive creaking lock and admitted me; nor shall I attempt to revive here the brief hours that followed, with their tumultuous telling over of the happenings of the past months and our hurried planning for the future.
I returned to the capital full of sorrow and indignation. My adventure at Fortress Monroe had revealed to me, far more fully than I previously had suspected was possible, the struggle for power that was now going on between the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, on the one side, and on the other, President Johnson, by whose courtesy or timidity this official still retained his portfolio. I resolved to relate my entire experience at Fortress Monroe to the President at the first opportunity.