“When you go there again you’ll have no difficulty, I assure you!” he said.

“When may I?” I asked eagerly.

“When you wish,” he answered.

I now pictured to him my husband’s position; I related the sad news I had just received, and which, under present conditions, I knew I dared not tell Mr. Clay. I implored the President, by every argument at my command, to exercise his Executive power and release Mr. Clay on his parole. Every moment of his incarceration under the discipline invented by the unscrupulous military authorities, I felt his life to be imperilled. As our interview proceeded, however, I perceived the old indecision of manner returning. The President’s replies were all to one effect; viz.: that the Secretary of War must decide upon the case. He freely made out another permit to the prison, this time to cover a longer stay, but about a parole for Mr. Clay, or the naming of a day for an early trial, he could promise nothing. He would consult his Cabinet; he would see Mr. Stanton. At last, my importunities for an authoritative action growing greater, the President burst out with every evidence of deep feeling:

“Go home, woman, and write what you have to say, and I’ll read it to my Cabinet at the next meeting!”

“You will not!” I answered hotly.

“Why?” he asked, cynically.

“Because,” I replied, “you are afraid of Mr. Stanton! He would not allow it! But, let me come to the Cabinet meeting, and I will read it,” I said. “For, with my husband’s life and liberty at stake, I do not fear Mr. Stanton or any one else.”

The President assured me I need have no misgivings; if I would write my plea and send it directly to him, he would, he promised me, have it read at the next Cabinet meeting (on the morrow). Actuated by the hope, however meagre, of gaining a possible sympathy from the President’s Governmental associates, even though the dictator Stanton was so coercing a personality in that body, I prepared my letter. I afterward secured an official copy of it. It ran as follows:

“Washington City, January 11, 1866.

“To His Excellency, President of the United States:

“... How true it is that all conditions of life, however seemingly extreme, are capable of augmentation! I have thought and so told you, that for eight months past I have been, and God knows with what cause, at the Nadir of despair; that my cup, bitterer than the waters of Marah, was brimming, my heart breaking. A letter received two evenings ago announces the death of my husband’s beloved mother, wife of ex-Governor Clay. Deeply distressing to me; oh! Mr. Johnson, what a blow to my husband, your unhappy prisoner! He was her idolised son, her first-born; bears the name of her lover-husband, and upon whose lineaments she had not rested her longing eyes for three long, weary, desolate years.

“On the morning of the first she swooned, and expired on the second, inquiring, ‘What of my son?’ Oh, Mr. President, what an agonising reflection to my husband! How can I summon nerve to tell him the news? I cannot write so great a grief, nor can I tell it and leave him in his gloomy prison to struggle with it alone! Will you not pour in the oil of healing? I beg of you, permit me to bear with me, along with my ‘weight of woe,’ the antidote. Issue the order for my husband’s release on his parole d’honneur, with bail if desired, and let him once more see our father, who lies (now) on a bed of illness. My sister writes, ‘Father cannot long survive.[[69]] God grant that he may see dear brother Clement ere he goes. Cannot he come?’—I repeat, cannot he come?

“Mr. President, you hold many noble prisoners in your forts, but Mr. Clay’s case is sui generis. General Grant, the whole-souled soldier, in his letter to you in his behalf, says, ‘His manly surrender is to me a full and sufficient guarantee that he will be forthcoming at any time the civil authorities of the land may call for him.’ Even Mr. Stanton, who is not considered partial to so-called ‘Rebels,’ told me, in my only interview, that ‘he was not my husband’s judge,’ as if he, Pilate-like, were willing to wash his hands of innocent blood. I replied tremblingly, ‘I would fain not have you for his accuser, Sir.’ To which he rejoined, not unkindly, ‘I am not his accuser, Madam.’ I thanked God for even that cold comfort as harbinger of better days.

“And now, Sir, may I ask you who are those opposed to my husband’s release on parole? I have yet to find the first man, Federal or other, who does not express admiration at the high sense of honour and chivalric faith, in the prompt and manly surrender; and astonishment at the detention. To-day we might have been far away in some peaceful spot, united at least, and happy, but for that sense of unsullied honour, which ‘feeling a stain like a wound,’ remained to wipe it out. Can you longer refuse him the privilege?

“The law supposes all men innocent till proven guilty, and if it will allow me, I, alone, can disprove, in toto, the testimony of the conspiracy case, implicating him. Mr. Clay, always delicate, is dying daily. He told me he was resigned to God’s will and perfectly willing to perish in those four walls if his country would be benefited thereby. Mr. President, my husband is my world, my all, and ‘dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit this sad heart.’ Give him to me for a little while, at least long enough to glad the dim eyes of the eager and aged watcher at home and close them; and he shall return to you, on his honour and my life, at any moment called for by the Government. Let me bring him to you to prove to you the truth of my statement in point of health, and to afford him the right of personal appeal.... That God may incline you to grant my prayer and soften ‘the hearts of our enemies,’ restore Peace indeed to the land, and bless and guide and guard you in public and private life to your journey’s end, is the prayer of her who hopefully, trustfully, and truthfully subscribes herself,

“Your friend,

(Signed.) “V. C. Clay.”