I sent this epistle to Mr. Johnson, but, despite the haste in which I had written and despatched it, I was too late for the promised reading, which fact I learned from the following message, that reached me the next day. It was written on the back of the President’s card in his (by this time) familiar, scrawling hand.
“Your letter,” it read, “was too late yesterday. It does your heart and head credit. It is a most powerful appeal. You have excelled yourself in its production!”
At the next Cabinet meeting Mr. Johnson made his promise good. The letter was then read, by Mr. Evarts, too late, however, even had it produced immediate results, to enable me to carry the parole I had hoped for to my husband. I was again with Mr. Clay at the Fortress when this meeting took place, but, having no balm to soothe the wound, I could not tell him of the blow that had befallen him, nor did he hear of it until, nearly four months later, he left the prison. In the interim, in order that my husband should not remark upon the sombreness of my attire, I wore a red rose in my bonnet and red ribbon at my throat whenever I visited the Fort.
I learned the particulars of that (to me) eventful Cabinet reading from Mr. Johnson later. Upon the conclusion of the letter Mr. Stanton asked for it. He scanned it closely and put it into his pocket without comment. Nor was the missive again returned to Mr. Johnson until weeks had elapsed and several requests had been made for it.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Nation’s Prisoners
On the twenty-first of January, 1866, a few days after my last conversation with President Johnson, I found myself a second time within the ramparts of America’s most formidable military prison. This time, unhindered, I was led directly to my husband’s gloomy room. In this and the several succeeding visits I paid Mr. Clay in prison, I learned to comprehend, where before I had but imagined, the terrible sufferings my husband had undergone for now eight months. When I parted from General Miles on May 24th, of the preceding year, he gave me his promise that Mr. Clay should have every comfort he could allow him.
I found, upon my admission to Fortress Monroe, in January, 1866, that his prisoner, for three or more months, had been confined within a narrow cell, grated and barred like a cage in a menagerie, into which the meagre daylight crept through the long, thin opening in the thick walls. An unwholesome sweat had oozed through the bare walls which surrounded him, at times, it was said, increasing until it flowed in streams. For weeks after entering the prison (I now learned) Mr. Clay had been denied not only the use of his clothing, but his toilet brushes and comb, and every item calculated to preserve his health and self-esteem had been taken from him. His only food for weeks had been a soldier’s rations, until Dr. Craven, at last, felt obliged to order a hospital diet. These rations had been passed through the prison bars in tin cup or plate, unaccompanied by knife, fork or spoon.
For forty days at a stretch he had not been permitted to look upon the sun; for months, though debarred from communication with or visits from his own family, he was exhibited to strangers, civilian or military, who from time to time were brought into his cell, conversing among themselves, or to the gratings to stare at him with curious gaze. “I have been treated as if already convicted of an infamous crime,” wrote my husband in a paper sent out by one who proved trustworthy. “Indeed, one of my warders told me that the orders from Washington required I should be subjected to the same prison discipline that the assassins of Abraham Lincoln underwent. While the Third Pennsylvania Artillery (volunteers) were on duty (till October 31st), I scarcely ever walked out without being greeted with ‘Shoot him! Hang him! Bring a rope! The damned rascal!’ But since the regulars came in nothing like this has occurred.... Mr. Davis and I are not allowed to communicate with each other. We have met but a few times, in walking contrary to the intention of officers and orders, but only saluted each other and asked of health.”
Once, my husband told me, upon thus meeting, Mr. Davis and he greeted each other in French, whereupon the soldiers, scenting some further “treason,” rushed at them, pointing their bayonets.
“I have been subjected,” continued my husband’s statement, “to the most refined but severe torture of body and soul; my health considered in order to preserve the sensibility of the body to pain.... I have been allowed irregularly some newspapers, but never one alluding to any evidence against me, or mentioning me, unless in terms of reproach. I am cut off from the world, except its reproaches!”