“Forgive me, Mr. Clay,” he said, “I don’t know why I did it. I’ve got nothing against you. Guess it’s a kind of habit of damning Johnny Rebs! I’ll get you the water. I believe you’re a Christian gentleman!”
On the evening of the first day of my second visit to the Fortress, I encountered Dr. Cooper, against whom, it will be recalled, Dr. Craven had warned me. To the prisoner he had always revealed himself as a man of strictly unsocial manner, not to say an austere and pitiless one. During the first day of my visit to the Fort, I saw nothing of him. It was dark when I left my husband’s cell and set out, escorted by Lieutenant Stone, for the little hotel outside the ramparts. Once outside of the prison, the air was chill, and so silent, save for a strong wind, that I was conscious of no sound save it and the swashing of the waters against the stone walls of the Fort. Its cadence was weird and full of melancholy. As the doors of the prison closed behind us, I saw in the shadows a curious figure coming directly toward us. It was clad in a long, loose, flapping dressing-gown, and in its mouth was a pipe in which glowed a live spark of tobacco. I observed my guard looking straight ahead and apparently unobservant; but he said, under his breath and in a tone only audible to me, “Here comes Dr. Cooper!”
Another moment and the figure was beside us.
“Stone,” said a gruff voice, “present me to Mrs. Clay!”
My escort complied promptly, and then, to my alarm, hastened away at once, leaving me dismayed and apprehensive, in the care of the “blackest of Black Republicans” and one who would “show me no mercy!”
“Madam!” said the Doctor, whose features I could scarcely discern in the dusk, “my wife wishes you to accept the hospitality of our house to-night!”
Had the man turned suddenly and clasped manacles about my wrists, I could scarcely have been more startled.
“I beg your pardon!” I stammered. “I am on my way to General Miles’s headquarters for my passport with which to leave the Fort. I have not the privilege of remaining within the ramparts over night.”
DR. GEORGE COOPER
Fortress Monroe, 1866