Dixie After the War Part 8

THE CHAINING OF JEFFERSON DAVIS

Strange and unreal seem those days. One President a fugitive, journeying slowly southward; the other dead, journeying slowly north and west. Aye, the hand of G.o.d was heavy on both our peoples. The cup of defeat could not be made more bitter than it was; and into the cup of triumph were gall and wormwood poured.

Hunters pursuing one chieftain with hoa.r.s.e cries of "rebel!" and "traitor!" For the other, bells tolling, guns booming requiem, great cities hung with black, streets lined with weeping thousands, the catafalque a victor's chariot before which children and maidens scattered flowers. Nearly a month that funeral march lasted--from Was.h.i.+ngton through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago--it wound its stately way to Springfield. Wherever it pa.s.sed, the public pulse beat hotter against the Southern chieftain and his people.

Yet the dead and the hunted were men of one country, born in the same State. Sharp contrasts in many ways, they were yet enough alike in personal appearance to have been brothers. Both were pure men, brave, patriotic; both kindly and true. The dead had said of the living: "Let Jeff escape."

Johnson's proclamation threw the entire South into a white rage and an anguish unutterable, when it charged the a.s.sa.s.sination to Mr. Davis and other representative men of the South. Swift on it came news that our President was captured, report being spread to cast ridicule upon him that, when caught, he was disguised in his wife's garments. Caricatures, claiming to be truthful portraiture, displayed him in hoops and petticoats and a big poke bonnet, of such flaming contrasts as certainly could not have been found in Mrs. Davis' wardrobe.

In 1904, I saw at a _vaudeville_ entertainment in a New York department store, a stereopticon representation of the War of Secession. The climax was Mr. Davis in a pink skirt, red bonnet, yellow bodice, and parti-coloured shawl, struggling with several Federals, while other Federals were rus.h.i.+ng to the attack, all armed to the teeth and pointing warlike weapons at this one fantastic figure of a feeble old man. The theatre was full of children. The attraction had been running some time and thousands of young Americans had doubtless accepted its travesties as history. The Northern friend with me was as indignant as myself.

When Mr. Davis' capture was announced in theatres and other places of amus.e.m.e.nt in the North, people went crazy with joy, clapping their hands and cheering, while bands played "Yankee Doodle" and "Star-Spangled Banner." Many were for having him hung at once. Wendell Phillips wanted him "left to the sting of his own conscience."

Presently, we heard that the "Clyde" was bringing Mr. Davis, his family, General Wheeler, Governor Vance, and others, to Fortress Monroe. And then--will I ever forget how the South felt about that?--that Mr. Davis was a prisoner in a damp, casemated cell, that lights were kept burning in his face all night until he was in danger of blindness; that human eyes were fixed on him night and day, following his every movement; that his jailer would come and look at him contemptuously and call him "Jeff"; that sightseers would be brought to peer at him as if he were some strange wild beast; that his feeble limbs had been loaded with chains; that he was like to lose his life through hards.h.i.+ps visited upon him! To us who knew the man personally, his sensitiveness, dignity, and refinement, the tale is harrowing as it could not be to those who knew him not thus. Yet to all Americans it must be a regrettable chapter in our history when it is remembered that this man was no common felon, but a prisoner of State, a distinguished Indian-fighter, a Mexican veteran, a man who had held a seat in Congress, who had been Secretary of War of the United States, and who for four years had stood at the head of the Confederate States.

When they came to put chains upon him, he protested, said it was an indignity to which as a soldier he would not submit, that the intention was to dishonour the South in him; stood with his back to the wall, bade them kill him at once, fought them off as long as he could--fought them until they held him down and the blacksmiths riveted the manacles upon his wasted limbs. Captain t.i.tlow, who had the work in charge, did not like his cruel task, but he had no choice but to obey orders.[6]

And this was in Fortress Monroe, where of old the gates fell wide to welcome him when he came as Secretary of War, where guns thundered greeting, soldiers presented arms, and the highest officer was proud to do him honour! With bated breath we speak of Russian prisons. But how is this: "Davis is in prison; he is not allowed to say a word to any one nor is any one allowed to say a word to him. He is literally in a living tomb.

His position is not much better than that of the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet, exposed by his captor, Tamerlane, in a portable iron cage." ("New York Herald," May 26, 1865.) The dispatch seemed positively to gloat over that poor man's misery.

A new fad in feminine attire came into vogue; women wore long, large, and heavy black chains as decorations.

The military murder of Mrs. Surratt stirred us profoundly. Too lowly, simple, and obscure in herself to rank with heroic figures, her execution lifts her to the plane where stand all who fell victims to the troubled times. Suspicion of complicity in Mr. Lincoln's murder, because of her son's intimacy with Wilkes Booth, led to her death. They had her before a military tribunal in Was.h.i.+ngton, her feet linked with chains.

Several men were executed. Their prison-life and hers was another tale to give one the creeps. They were not allowed to speak to any one, nor was any one allowed to speak to them; they were compelled to wear masks of padded cloth over face and head, an opening at the mouth permitting s.p.a.ce for breathing; pictures said to be drawn from life showed them in their cells where the only resting-places were not beds, but bare, rough benches; marched before judges with these same horrible hoods on, marched to the gallows with them on, hanging with them on.

One of the executed, Payne, had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Seward and his son; the others had been dominated and bribed by Booth, but had failed to play the parts a.s.signed them in the awful drama his morbid brain wrought out.

OUR FRIENDS, THE ENEMY

CHAPTER X

OUR FRIENDS, THE ENEMY

There was small interchange of civilities between Northern and Southern ladies. The new-comers were in much evidence; Southerners saw them riding and driving in rich attire and handsome equipages, and at the theatre in all the glory of fine toilettes.

There was not so much trouble opening theatres as churches. A good many stage celebrities came to the Richmond Theatre, which was well patronised.

Decorated with United States flags, it was opened during the first week of the occupation with "Don Caesar de Bazan." The "Whig" reported a brilliant audience. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant, who had been driving over the city, were formally invited by General Weitzel to attend the play, but did not appear.

The band played every evening in the Square, and our people, ladies especially, were invited to come out. The Square and the Capitol were at one time overrun with negroes. This was stopped. Still, our ladies did not go. Federal officers and their ladies had their music to themselves.

"There was no intentional slight or rudeness on our part. We did not draw back our skirts in pa.s.sing Federal soldiers, as was charged in Northern papers; if a few thoughtless girls or women did this, they were not representative. We tried not to give offense; we were heart-broken; we stayed to ourselves; and we were not hypocrites; that was all." So our women aver. In most Southern cities efforts were made to induce the ladies to come out and hear the band play.

The day Governor Pierpont arrived, windows of the Spotswood and Monumental were crowded with Northern ladies waving handkerchiefs. "I only knew from the papers," Matoaca tells, "that the Mansion was decorated with flowers for his reception. Our own windows, which had been as windows of a house of mourning, did not change their aspect for his coming. Our rightful governor was a fugitive; Governor Pierpont was an alien. We were submissive, but we could not rejoice." This was the feminine and social side. On the political and masculine side, he was welcomed. Delegations of prominent Virginians from all counties brought him a.s.surances of cooperation. The new Governor tried to give a clean, patriotic administration.

Northerners held socials in each others' houses and in halls; there were receptions, unattended by Southerners, at the Governor's Mansion and Military Headquarters. It might have been more politic had we gone out of our way to be socially agreeable, but it would not have been sincere.

Federal officers and their wives attended our churches. A Northern Methodist Society was formed with a group of adherents, Governor and Mrs.

Pierpont, and, later, General and Mrs. Canby among them. "We of the Northern colony were very dependent upon ourselves for social pleasures,"

an ex-member who now considers herself a Southerner said to me recently.

"There were some inter-marriages. I remember an elopement; a Petersburg girl ran away with a Federal officer, and the pair sought asylum at my father's, in Richmond's Northern colony. Miss Van Lew entertained us liberally. She gave a notable reception to Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and his beautiful daughter, Kate." Miss Van Lew, a resident, was suspected of being a spy during the war.

Our ladies went veiled on the street, the motive that caused them to close their windows impelling them to cover their faces with sorrow's s.h.i.+eld.

There was not much opportunity for young blue-coats to so much as behold our pretty girls, much less make eyes at them, had they been so minded.

That veil as an accompaniment of a lissome figure and graceful carriage must have sometimes acted as a tantalising disguise.

I heard of one very cute happening in which the wind and a veil played part. Mary Triplett, our famous blonde beauty, then in the rosy freshness of early youth, was walking along when the wind took off her veil and carried it to the feet of a young Federal officer. He bent, uplifted the vagrant mask, and, with his cap held before his eyes, restored it. That was a very honest, self-denying Yankee. Perhaps he peeped around the corner of his cap. There was at that time in Richmond a bevy of marvellously lovely buds, Mattie Ould, Miss Triplett's ant.i.thesis, among the number.

The entire South seems to have been very rich then in buds of beauty and women of distinction. Or, was it that the fires of adversity brought their charms and virtues into high relief? Names flitting through my mind are legion. Richmond's roll has been given often. Junior members of the Petersburg set were Tabb Bolling, General Rooney Lee's sweetheart (now his widow); Molly Bannister, General Lee's pet, who was allowed to ride Traveller; Anne Bannister, Alice Gregory, Betty and Jeannie Osborne, Betty Cabaniss, Betty and Lucy Page, Sally Hardy, Nannie c.o.c.ke, Patty Cowles, Julia, Mary and Marion Meade, and others who queened it over General Lee's army and wrought their pretty fingers to the bone for our lads in the trenches. To go farther afield, Georgia had her youthful "Maid of Athens,"

Jule King, afterwards Mrs. Henry Grady; in Atlanta were the Clayton sisters, and Maggie Poole, Augusta Hill, Ella Ezzard, Eugenia Goode, besides a brilliant married circle. In South Carolina were Mrs. James Chesnut, her sister, Mrs. David R. Williams, and all the fair troop that figure in her "Diary From Dixie." Louisiana's endless roster might begin with the Slocomb family, to which General Butler paid official tribute, recording that "Mrs. Slocomb equipped the crack military company of New Orleans, the Was.h.i.+ngton Artillery, in which her son-in-law, Captain David Urquhart, is an officer." Mrs. Urquhart's daughter, Cora (afterwards Mrs.

James Brown Potter), was, I think, a tiny maiden then. Beloved for her social charm and her charities, Mrs. Ida B. Richardson, Mrs. Urquhart's sister, still lives in the Crescent City. There were the Leac.o.c.k sisters, Mrs. Andrew Gray and Mrs. Will Howell, the "madonna of New Orleans." There was the King family, which produced Grace King, author and historian. A Louisiana beauty was Addie Prescott, whose face and presence gave warrant of the royal blood of Spain flowing in her veins. In Mississippi was "Pearl Rivers," afterwards Mrs. Nicholson, good genius of the "Picayune"; and Mary E. Bryan, later the genius of the "Sunny South." Georgia and Alabama claim Mme. Le Vert, to whose intellect Lamartine paid tribute, and Augusta Evans, whose "Macaria" ran the blockade in ma.n.u.script and came out up North during the war; that delightful "Belle of the Fifties," Mrs.

Clement C. Clay, is Alabama's own. Besides the "Rose of Texas" (Louise Wigfall), the Lone Star State has many a winsome "Southern Girl" and woman to her credit. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor is Virginia's own. Among Florida's fair was the "Madonna of the Wickliffe sisters," Mrs. Yulee, Senator Yulee's wife and, presently, Florida's Vice-Regent for the Ladies' a.s.sociation of Mt. Vernon. Mrs. Sallie Ward Hunt and Mrs. Sallie Ewing Pope lead a long list in Kentucky, where Mary Anderson, the actress, was in her tender teens, and Bertha Honore (afterwards Mrs. Potter Palmer) was in pinafores.

To Mississippi and Missouri belongs Theodosia Worthington Valliant; and to Tennessee Betty Vance, whose beauty's fame was world-wide, and Mary Wright, later Mrs. Treadwell. At a ball given Prince Arthur when in this country, a wealthy belle was selected to lead with him. The prince thinking he was to choose his partner, fixed on Mary Wright, exquisite in poverty's simple white gown, and asked: "May I lead with her?" In North Carolina were Sophia Portridge, women of the houses of Devereaux, Vance, Mordecai--but I am not writing the South's "Book of Fair and n.o.ble Women."

I leave out of my list names brilliant as any in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. DAVID L. YULEE

(Daughter of Governor Wickliffe, of Kentucky)

She was the wife of Senator Yulee, of Florida, Vice Regent of the Mount Vernon a.s.sociation of Florida, and was known as the "Madonna of the Wickliffe Sisters."]

Of all the fair women I have ever seen, Mary Meade was fairest. No portrait can do justice to the picture memory holds of her as "Bride" to D'Arcy Paul's "Bridegroom" in the "Mistletoe Bough," which Mrs. Edwin Morrison staged so handsomely that her amateurs were besought to "star" in the interest of good causes. Our fair maids were no idle "lilies of loveliness." The Meade sisters and others turned talents to account in mending fallen family fortunes. Maids and matrons labored diligently to gather our soldier dead into safe resting-places. The "Lyrical Memorial,"

Mrs. Platt's enterprise, like the "Mistletoe Bough" (later produced), was called for far and wide. The day after presentation in Louisville, the Federal Commandant sent Mary Meade, who had impersonated the South pleading sepulture for her sons, a basket of flowers with a live white dove in the center.

Slowly in Richmond interchange of little human kindnesses between neighbors established links. General Bartlett, occupying the Haxall house, who had lost a leg in the war, was "the Yankee who conquered my wife," a Southerner bears witness. "I came home one day and found him sitting with her on my steps. He suffered greatly from his old wound, bore it patiently, and by his whole conduct appealed to her sweet womanliness. His staff was quiet and orderly."

The beautiful daughter of one family and her feeble grandmother were the only occupants of the mansion into which General Ord and his wife moved.

The pair had no money and were unable to communicate with absent members of the household who had been cut off from home by the accidents of war while visiting in another city. The younger lady was ill with typhoid fever. The general and his wife were very thoughtful and generous in supplying ice, brandy, and other essentials and luxuries.

"Under Heaven," the invalid bore grateful witness when recovering, "I owe my life to General and Mrs. Ord." Her loveliness and helplessness were in themselves an argument to move a heart of stone to mercy; nevertheless, it was virtue and grace that mercy was shown.

We made small appeal for sympathy or aid; were too much inclined to the reverse course, carrying poverty and other troubles with a stiff-neck, scantily-clad backs, long-suffering stomachs, and pride and conscience resolved. But--though some form of what we considered oppression was continually before our eyes--our conquerors, when in our midst, were more and more won to pity and then to sympathy. Our commandants might be stern enough when first they came, but when they had lived among us a little while, they softened and saw things in a new light; and the negroes and the carpet-baggers complained of them every one, and the authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton could not change them fast enough.

Southerners here and in other cities who had Federal boarders were considered fortunate because of the money and protection secured. In such cases, there was usually mutual kindness and consideration, politeness keeping in the background topics on which differences were cruel and sharp; but the sectional dividing lines prevented free social intermingling.

In places garrisoned by soldiers of coa.r.s.er types and commanded by men less gentlemanly, women sometimes displayed more p.r.o.nounced disapprobation. Not always with just occasion, but, again, often with cause only too grave. At the best, it was not pleasant to have strange men sauntering, uninvited, into one's yard and through one's house, invading one's kitchen and entertaining housemaids and cooks. That these men wore blue uniforms was unfortunate for us and for the uniform. At that time, the very sight of "army blue" brought terror, anguish and resentment.

Our famous physicians, Maguire and McCaw, were often called to the Northern sick. Dr. McCaw came once direct to Uncle Randolph from the Dents, where he had been summoned to Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, and Matoaca listened curiously to his and her uncle's cordial discussion of General Grant, who had made friends at the South by his course at Appomattox and his insistence on the cartel.

A conversation occurring between another of our physicians and a feminine patient is not without significance. The lady and the doctor's wife had been friends before the war. "Why has your wife not called upon me, Doctor?" she asked. "Has she forgotten me?" "No, ma'am," he answered gently, and then in a low, kindly voice: "But she cannot--yet--forget all that has happened since you were girls together." "But she should not treasure it against me individually." "She does not, ma'am. But she cannot forget--yet. You would understand if you had been in the beleagured land.

If the good women of the North could only imagine themselves in the place of the women of the South during the last four years and in their place now!"