Such a brave challenge might well have been expected to give the Government pause. To the increased agony of our minds, its agents took no cognisance of Mr. Robinson’s fearless exposure, but ignored the protest with its startling array of charges, which easily might have been verified, and continued to rely upon its strange allies to assist in the persecution of its prison victims.
Instinct with the zeal of the fanatic, and intrenched behind the bewildered Mr. Johnson, the Head of the Bureau of Military Justice was indifferent alike to contumely and the appeals of even the merely just. In so far as the country at large might see, its Judge Advocate was imperial in his powers. The legality of the existence of the Bureau had been denied by the greatest jurists of the times; yet its dominating spirit was determined, despite the gravest warnings and condemnation, to railroad, by secret trial, the more distinguished of the prisoners to the gallows. “Thoughtful men,” Reverdy Johnson had said in his argument in the trial of Mrs. Surratt, “feel aggrieved that such a Commission should be established in this free country when the war is over, and when the common law courts are open and accessible. Innocent parties, sometimes by private malice, sometimes for a mere partisan purpose, sometimes from a supposed public policy, have been made the subjects of criminal accusation. History is full of such instances. How are such parties to be protected if a public trial be denied them, and a secret one in whole or in part be substituted?”
“The Judge Advocate said, in reply to my inquiries,” said Thomas Ewing, “that he would expect to convict under the common law of war. This is a term unknown to our language, a quiddity incapable of definition.” And, again, “The Judge Advocate, with whom chiefly rests the fate of these citizens, from his position cannot be an impartial judge unless he be more than man. He is the Prosecutor in the most extended sense of the word. As in duty bound before this court was called, he received the reports of detectives, pre-examined the witnesses, prepared and officially signed the charges, and, as principal counsel for the Government, controlled on the trial the presentation, admission and rejection of evidence. In our courts of law, a lawyer who heard his client’s story, if transferred from the bar to the bench, may not sit in the trial of the cause, lest the ermine be sullied through the partiality of the counsel.”
To our sad household at distant Huntsville, each day, with its disquieting rumours and reports of these trials, added to our distress of mind. There was scarcely a man or woman in the South who did not prophesy that, the popular cry being “Vengeance,” and full military power in the hands of such men as Stanton and Holt, our former President and Mr. Clay would surely meet the fate of Mrs. Surratt.
Under the domination of such knowledge, my condition of mind was a desperate one. We were nearly a thousand miles removed from the seat of Government and from my husband’s prison. The Bureau of Military Justice, it was well known, was industriously seeking to convict its prisoners; while the latter, ignorant even of the charges against them, and denied the visits of counsel or friends, were helpless to defend themselves, however easy to obtain the proof might be. It were impossible for a wife, knowing her husband to be innocent, and resenting the ignobleness of a government which would thus refuse to a self-surrendered prisoner the courtesies the law allows to the lowest of criminals, to rest passively under conditions so alarming.
From the moment I stepped upon the soil of Georgia I renewed my appeals to those in the North of whose regard for my husband I felt assured. Among the first to respond were Charles O’Conor, of New York, T. W. Pierce, of Boston, R. J. Haldeman, and Benjamin Wood, editor and proprietor of the New York Daily News. Mr. Wood wrote spontaneously:
“I beg you to have full faith in my desire and exertions to relieve your noble husband from persecution, and to secure for him a prompt and impartial trial, and consequently an inevitable acquittal of the charge that has been infamously alleged against him. I will communicate immediately with Mr. O’Conor, Mr. Carlisle, Mr. Franklin Pierce, and Judge Black. Let me request you to accord me the pleasure of advancing to Mr. Clay, until his liberation, whatever sum may be necessary for the expenses attendant upon legal action for his defense, as, owing to his imprisonment and the present unsettled condition of your neighbourhood, there might be a delay that would prove prejudicial to his interests.”
“I have no idea he will be brought to trial,” wrote Mr. Pierce, on June 16th, “as the evidence on which the Government relies is a tissue of wicked fabrication, from the perjured lips of the lowest upon the earth! No one who knows him (Mr. Clay) can for a moment believe him guilty or even capable of crime. I have written to Judge Black and requested him to make effort to have you come to the North. I hope your application to Judge Holt[[47]] will secure for you this liberty.”
Mr. O’Conor’s letter ran as follows:
“New York, June 29, 1865.
“My Dear Madam: I do not believe that any attempt will be made to try Mr. Clay or any other of the leading Southern gentlemen on the charge of complicity in the assassination[[48]] of Lincoln.
“Such of them as have, through mistaken confidence in the magnanimity of their enemies, surrendered themselves into custody, may be obliged to suffer imprisonment, until it shall be determined, as a matter of policy, whether they ought to be tried for treason....