[59]. But not unimpeachable, as later events proved. They were afterward denounced by Mr. Holt as unprincipled perjurers and the cause of all his trouble. A. S.
[60]. In fact, as will have been seen elsewhere, Mr. Clay arrived in South Carolina on the fourth of February, 1865, after a full month’s journeying by stormy sea from Nova Scotia to Bermuda; thence on the ill-fated Rattlesnake, which, failing to make its way into port at Wilmington, now in the hands of the Federals, with delay and circumlocution, ran the blockade at Charleston, only to perish under the very ramparts of Fort Moultrie. His return, therefore, was sufficiently dramatic, and known to hundreds of truly unimpeachable witnesses, had the Judge Advocate allowed Mr. Clay to know the charges against him or given him an opportunity for denial. A. S.
[61]. Conover was the chief witness in the cases of Mrs. Surratt and her companions, and Mr. Holt’s charges against Mr. Clay were based on his testimony and that of others who had been drilled in their parts by Conover. A. S.
[62]. The public, however, was not destined to be treated to a spectacle so likely to react to the Government’s dishonour. Mr. Holt, who for a year caused to be denied to the prisoners (one of whom had been a Cabinet Minister, the other a United States Senator) even the visits of counsel, now, for some forever unexplained reason, instead of arresting the perjurer Conover, after his admissions in the Committee room of the House, talked to him kindly, and extended him the courtesy of a trip to New York, in order that he might procure further testimony. Once arrived, the polite swindler excused himself to his companion, and, bowing himself out, “was not seen by him thereafter,” said Mr. Holt; and he adds naïvely, “and up to this time he has not communicated with me, nor has he made any effort, as I believe, to produce the witnesses!” A. S.
[63]. In part an interview with Mr. Holt, and the whole most obviously inspired by him.
[64]. Practically the only voice now raised in an attempt to explain or justify the Advocate General’s unique methods. While denying his knavishness, it had the singular appearance of developing his foolishness. A. S.
[65]. Conover had obviated the necessity for proving, by confessing, his own infamy. A. S.
[66]. Now for sixteen months a prisoner in Fortress Monroe, and denied trial or counsel! A. S.
[67]. It is hard to believe that, if Mr. Holt’s reputation had survived the doubt thrown upon it by the House Committee, in the preceding July, it could be seriously injured by anything that might be averred by so vile a man as his former ally, Conover. A. S.
[68]. In the preparation for the publication of these Memoirs, I found myself continually lighting upon evidences of irregularity in the Government’s proceedings against Mr. Clay. I was met constantly by what appeared to be a persistent and inexplicable persecution of Messrs. Davis and Clay (if not a plot against them, as hinted by Representative Rogers) at the hands of the War Department, acting through Mr. Joseph Holt. I encountered charges, not ambiguously made against Mr. Holt, of malice, and of rancour which would be satisfied only with the “judicial murder” of the prisoners in his hands. Charges of malice and meanness have been made against him by living men as frequently as by those who have passed away; men, moreover, whose integrity of purpose has never been challenged. A rather general condemnation of Mr. Holt appears in certain correspondence of the sixties. It was uttered publicly in the press in the early and middle portion of that decade. In the pamphlet alluded to and quoted from in Chapter XXII. of these “Memoirs,” the Rev. Stuart Robinson had quoted Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, and another, to show the peculiar estimate in which Mr. Holt was then held. “I know little,” wrote Mr. Robinson, in June of ’5, “either of the personal or public character of Mr. Holt.... The only well-defined impression I have of his personal character is gained from two remarks concerning him in 1861–’2. The first, that of a venerable Christian lady, of the old-fashioned country type, made to me: ‘Joe Holt, Sir, is the only young man I ever knew that left this country without leaving one friend behind him in it!’ The other, the fierce retort of the venerable Crittenden, to a Cabinet officer, reported to me by Governor Morehead: ‘Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, did you say, Sir? I tell you, Sir, by Heaven! there is no such man as Joseph Holt, of Kentucky!’”