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Chapter 65: the separation and imprisonment of our party.
Before we were parted
Mr. Davis told me if we should be separated by the authorities, to tell any of the
Confederate agents I saw that they must use all the money they could get to pay the debts of the
Confederacy.
He also told me to request
Mr. O'Conor to defend him; but in the meanwhile
Mr. O'Conor had volunteered his services, and he was a tower of strength to us, to whom we owed more than can be expressed.
He passed away before my husband, but his honored name still lives.
After lying at anchor a few days a tug came out, and my brother Jefferson, a paroled midshipman, without arms, and taken in no hostile act, came with a cheerful face, and throwing his arms around me, said, “They have come for me; good-by, do not be uneasy;” the cheery smile of the boy as he went over the side of the vessel to an unknown fate, haunts me yet. He and the other gentlemen of our travelling party were taken off together to their carefully concealed destination.
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A second tug took
Mr. Stephens,
General Wheeler, our friends of the staff, and
Mr. Davis's private secretary, who all preserved the same quiet demeanor.
On the next day a tug with a company of German soldiers came up. Our little
Jeff ran to us, pale with horror, and sobbed out, “They say they have come for father, beg them to let us go with him.”
Mr. Davis went forward, and returned with an officer, saying, “It is true, I must go at once.”
He whispered to me, “Try not to weep, they will gloat over your grief,” and the desire to lessen his anguish enabled me to bid farewell quietly.
Mrs. Clay preserved the same self-control.
His parting from our children was a sacred sorrow, in which the people on deck participated so far as observation without sympathy would go. We parted in silence.
As the tug bore him away from the ship, he stood with bared head between the files of undersized German and other foreign soldiers on either side of him, and as we looked, as we thought, our last upon his stately form and knightly bearing, he seemed a man of another and higher race, upon whom “shame would not dare to sit.”
After a few hours
Colonel Pritchard left us here, and asked me for my waterproof, which I thought would disprove the assertion that it was essentially a woman's cloak, and gave to
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him. Such provisions as we had were taken from us, and hard tack and soldier's fare was substituted.
Captain Grant, of
Maine, however, was a humane man, and did his best for us. The effort was made to get a physician for my sister, who was exceedingly ill, but
Dr. Craven accounts for our inability to do so in his “Prison life of
Jefferson Davis,” p. 77, by saying that the orders were to allow no communication with the ship.
We were now visited by a raiding party, headed by
Captain Hudson.
They opened our trunks and abstracted everything they desired to have.
Among these articles were nearly all my children's clothes.
My boy
Jeff seized his little uniform of Confederate gray, and ran up to me with it, and thus prevented its being taken as a trophy.
A very handsome
Pennsylvania flag, which had been captured by
General Bradley Johnson in battle, was also taken out of my trunk.
Then
Captain Hudson valiantly came with a file of men to insist upon having my shawl, and said he would take everything I had if I did not yield it to him, though he offered to buy me another to replace it. It was relinquished, as anything else would have been to dispense with his presence.
We were anchored out a mile or two in the harbor, and little tugs full of mockers, male
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and female, came out. They steamed around the ship, offering, when one of us met their view, such insults as were transmissible at a short distance.
Some
United States officers visited the ship, of whom I have no clear memory, except of the “
Roland”
Mrs. Clay gave them for the “
Oliver” they offered.
Two or three of them looked into my sister's
state-room, with whom
Mrs. Clay was sitting.
She said, “Gentlemen, do not look in here, it is a ladies'
state-room.”
One of them threw the door open and said, “There are no
ladies here;” to which
Mrs. Clay responded, “There certainly are no gentlemen there.”
They retired swearing out their wrath.
The next day
General Miles and some other officers came on board, and summoned
Mrs. Clay and me. He was quite young, about, I should think, twenty-five, and seemed to have newly acquired his elevated position.
He was not respectful, but I thought it was his ignorance of polite usage.
He declined to tell me anything of my husband, or about our own destination, and said “
Davis” had announced
Mr. Lincoln's assassination the day before it happened, and he guessed he knew all about it.
All newspapers were forbidden, and the next day we sailed under sealed orders.
A letter to
Dr. Craven, but meant for my husband,
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quoted elsewhere, tells all that would interest anyone at this day. My first letter, which contained the same narrative, addressed to
Mr. Davis, had been intercepted.
Mr. Davis wrote: “After some days' detention,
Clay and myself were removed to
Fortress Monroe, and there incarcerated in separate cells.
Not knowing that the
Government was at war with women and children, I asked that my family might be permitted to leave the ship and go to
Richmond or
Washington City, or some place where they had acquaintances; but this was refused.
I then requested that they might be permitted to go abroad on one of the vessels lying at the
Roads.
This was also denied.
Finally, I was informed that they must return to
Savannah on the vessel by which they came.
This was an old transport-ship, hardly seaworthy.
My last attempt was to get them the privilege of stopping at
Charleston, where they had many personal friends.
This also was refused.
My daily experience as a prisoner only served to intensify my extreme solicitude.
Bitter tears have been shed by the gentle, and stern reproaches have been made by the magnanimous, on account of the heavy fetters riveted upon me while in a stone casemate and surrounded by a strong guard; but these were less excruciating than the mental agony my
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captors were able to inflict.
It was long before I was permitted to hear from my wife and children, and this, and things like this, was the power which education added to savage cruelty.”
