In the meantime, my husband, with whom I had left a digest of Holt’s report, upon a careful perusal of it, had been greatly aroused. By the courtesy of a secret friend, he hastened to send me a list of persons who could, if called upon, readily testify to his whereabouts during certain periods described in the charges against him. He urged me to see the President, and not to cease in my efforts to obtain his release on parole. His condition of mind as expressed in this communication was, it was evident, one of intense excitement.
“You must not get discouraged!” he wrote. “My life depends upon it, I fear! Since the days of Cain and Judas, men may take life for money or some other selfish end. As innocent men as I am have been judicially murdered, and I do not feel secure from it, although God knows I feel innocent of crime against the United States or any citizen thereof. As to my declaring my purpose to surrender to meet the charge of assassination, my unwillingness to fly from such charge, my preferring death to living with that brand on me, my desire to exculpate Mr. Davis, myself and the South from it, you know as well as I do.
“Judge Holt is determined to sacrifice me for reasons given you.[[68]] He may do it if I am not allowed liberty to seek witnesses and prepare my defense; or, if I am subjected to the mockery of trial by Military Court, when all the charges he can make may be brought against me in a great drag-net.”
As a step toward securing an early interview, and also because the President’s daughters, Mrs. Stover and Mrs. Patterson, now presiding at the White House, had been courteous to me, I resolved, as a stroke of policy, to attend the Presidential reception to take place on the ninth of January. Naturally, since my arrival in Washington, I had not participated in the social life about me. In acknowledgment of Mr. Johnson’s concessions, and, with my husband’s life at stake, with a desire further to win the President’s good offices, I now prepared to attend his levee. My toilette was complete save for the drawing on of my gloves, when, while awaiting the call of my hostess Mrs. Parker and her daughter Mrs. Bouligny, whose preparations were somewhat more elaborate than my own, I broke the seal of some letters from home. The news they contained was of a nature well calculated to divert me from the thought of appearing at a public gathering, even at the Executive Mansion.
The first told me, in hurried lines, of the illness of my husband’s mother; the second, posted a few hours later, announced her death. “I write beside mother’s dead body,” began my sister, Mrs. J. Withers Clay. “Her constant theme was brother Clement, and the last thing I remember hearing her say was ‘What of my son?’ in so distressed a tone that her heart appeared broken.... I trust you have seen your dear husband ere this. I hope he will be released before poor father leaves us. He is very distressed, very gentle and subdued in his trouble.... I can never forget mother’s heart-thrilling question ‘What of my son?’ She was very unhappy about your last letter—it was rather low-spirited—and said, ‘I have no hope; I shall never see my son!’”
Within the next day I called upon Mr. Johnson. He received me with his usual urbane manner, quite in contrast with my own indignant mood.
“Mr. Johnson,” I began, “Who is the President of the United States?”
He smiled rather satirically and shrugged his shoulders.
“I am supposed to be!” he said.
“But you are not!” I answered. “Your autographed letter was of little more use to me when I reached Fortress Monroe than blank paper would have been! For hours it was not honoured, during which time your Secretary of War held the wires and refused to allow me either to see my husband or to communicate with you!” Then, in as few words as possible, I related the circumstances of my visit to the Fort. Mr. Johnson, though constrained to preserve his official reserve, was unable to repress or disguise his anger at my recital.