Ground to the earth as we were by the cruelties of the times, that Freedman’s Bureau was frequently, nevertheless, a source of amusement. Its name bore but one meaning to the simple-minded follower of the mule-tail who appealed to it. He knew but one “bureau” in the world, and that was “ole Missus’s” or “Mis’ Mary’s,” an unapproachable piece of furniture with a given number of drawers. Bitter was the disappointment of the innocent blacks when they failed to see the source whence came their support.

“Whar’s dat bureau?” was sure to be the first question. “Whar all dem drawers what got de money an’ de sugar an’ de coffee? God knows I neber see no bureau ’t all, an’ dat man at de book-cupboard[[45]] talked mighty short ter me, at dat!”

While letting my thoughts linger for a moment on those dreary days, I cannot refrain from recalling one of the occasional instances of humane conduct shown us by those placed in authority over the citizens of Huntsville, associated, as it is, with a bit of genuine negro blundering. The generosity of Dr. French, Medical Director, there stationed, toward the family of our brother, J. Withers Clay, in giving his medical services freely to them, greatly touched us all. Appreciating his obvious desire to administer to our wounded spirits a true “oil and wine,” my sister one morning gathered a bunch of fragrant camomile blossoms, and, calling her ebony femme de menage to her, she said, “Take these flowers over to Dr. French and say Mrs. Clay sends them with her compliments. Tell him that these camomile blossoms are like the Southern ladies—the more they are bruised and oppressed the sweeter and stronger they grow! Now,” she added, “tell me, Sally, what are you going to say?” Sally answered promptly:

“I’se gwine tell de doctor dat Mis’ Mary Clay sont her compliments an’ dese cammile flowers, an’ says dey’s like de Southern ladies, de harder you squeezes an’ presses ’em de sweeter dey gits!”

It is perhaps unnecessary to relate that the message which reached the kind doctor was put in written form.

CHAPTER XXIII
News from Fortress Monroe

To minister to my husband’s aged parents dulled in some degree my own alarms, yet the wildest rumours continued to multiply as to the probably early trial and certainly awful fate of Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay. Controversies were waging in the press, both condemning and approving the actions of the Military Commission in Washington; yet, even in those still early days of his imprisonment, voices were raised in many localities to declare Mr. Clay’s incapability of the crimes imputed to him.[[46]]

Meantime, reputable men in Canada, who adduced indubitable proof of the truth of the accusations they made, had already assailed the characters of the witnesses upon whom the Bureau of Military Justice so openly relied to convict its distinguished prisoners—witnesses by whose testimony some had already perished on the gallows. How true these accusations were was proved a year later, when, his misdoings exposed on the floor of the House of Representatives, a self-confessed perjurer, Conover, the chief reliance of the Bureau of Military Justice, the chief accuser of my husband, fled the country. At this dénouement, Representative Rogers openly averred his belief that the flight of Conover, one of the most audacious of modern criminals, had been assisted by some one high in authority, in order to make impossible an investigation into the disgraceful culpability of the high unknown!

So early as June 10, 1865, a pamphlet had been printed and circulated throughout the country by the Rev. Stuart Robinson, exposing seriatim the “Infamous Perjuries of the Bureau of the Military Justice.” It took the form of a letter to the Hon. H. H. Emmons, United States District-Attorney at Detroit, and was quoted, when not printed in full, by many leading newspapers. Throughout the closely printed pages the paper presented an exposé of the unworthy character of the most prominent witnesses on whose testimony the hapless Mrs. Surratt and her companions had been condemned to the gallows; witnesses, moreover, who were known to be the accusers of Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay, who, it was announced, were soon to be tried for complicity in the murder of the late Federal President. In his pamphlet, Mr. Robinson did not content himself with refuting the statements made by the miscreant witnesses. He went further and accused Mr. Holt (by name), head of the Bureau of Military Justice, of being particeps criminis with the evil men whose testimony he so credulously or maliciously employed.

“If any one supposes,” wrote Mr. Robinson, “I have judged Mr. Holt uncharitably in making him particeps criminis with this villain”—a notorious witness—“whom he parades and assists in the work of lying himself out of his previous perjuries by still more preposterous lies, let him carefully ponder this letter.... This is the man whom Judge Advocate Holt, after his perjuries have been exposed, brings back to the stand and assists in his attempts to force his lies down the throat of the American people. Who now,” Mr. Robinson continued, “is the base criminal—Judge Holt, or the men whom he seeks by such base and impudent perjuries, under the garb of sworn testimony, to defame?”