Bloody Crimes (47 page)

The image of a cowardly Confederate president masquerading as a woman titillated Northerners but outraged Southerners. In Georgia, Eliza Andrews received letters and Northern newspapers from friends in Richmond and Baltimore that outlined the accusation. On August 18 she recorded in her diary her first encounter with the Davis caricatures:

I hate the Yankees more and more, every time I look at one of their horrid newspapers and read the lies they tell about us…The pictures in “Harper’s Weekly” and “Frank Leslie’s” tell more lies than Satan himself was ever the father of. I get in such a rage when I look at them that I sometimes take off my slipper and beat the senseless paper with it. No words can
express the wrath of a Southerner on beholding pictures of President Davis in woman’s dress; and Lee, that star of light…crouching on his knees before a beetle-browed image of “Columbia,” suing for pardon! And these in the same sheet with disgusting representations of the execution of the so-called “conspirators” in Lincoln’s assassination. Nothing is sacred from their disgusting love of the sensational.

If the first wave of Davis caricatures in newspapers and prints angered Eliza, then the sheet music artwork and satiric lyrics would have infuriated her even more. Davis was pilloried in popular song, many further perpetuating the widespread belief that he had been captured dressed in women’s clothing, wearing a bonnet while carrying a large knife and a bag of gold. Lyrics referenced with delight the circumstances of his capture on the run:

One bright and shining morning, All in the month of May,

The C.S.A. did “bust” up, and Jeff he ran away;

He grabb’d up all the specie, And with a chosen band,

This valiant man skedaddled, To seek some other land…

But good old Uncle Sam, Sent his boys from Michigan,

And in the state of Georgia, They found this mighty man;

He’d girded on his armor, his SKIRT it was of STEEL,

But when he saw the soldiers, Quite sick did poor Jeff feel…

So when this gallant SHE-ro, Did see the blue coats come,

He found he had business, A little way from home;

In frock and petticoat He thought he could retreat,

But could not fool the Yankees They knew him by his feet.

Another song repeated the accusation that Davis had fled dishonorably, with stolen gold:

Jeff took with him the people say, a mine of golden coin.

Which he from banks and other places, managed to purloin:

But while he ran, like every thief, he had to drop the spoons,

And may-be that’s the reason why he dropped his pantaloons!

For one song, “The Last Ditch Polka,” printed sheet music shows a rat with Jefferson Davis’s face pictured inside a cage within a prison cell surrounded by chains, guarded by an eagle. Some lyrics, more dark in tone, imagined with delight the punishments awaiting Davis:

And when we get him up there boys, I’m sure we’ll hang him high,

He will dance around on nothing, in the last ditch he will die.

Another, “Hang Him on the Sour Apple Tree,” described as a “sarcastical ballad,” has a cover engraving that pictures a noose on a tree and describes the traitor Jefferson Davis getting what he deserves, speaking in Davis’s voice: “Now all my friends both great and small, / A warning take from me. / Remember when for ‘plunder’ you start, / There’s a Sour Apple Tree!” In bars and public places all across the North, people gathered and sang the chorus from the most popular song that spring: “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.”

Varina Davis is a prominent character in the story of her husband’s capture, rumored to have spoken harshly, defiantly, to the soldiers who captured the president: “His wife now like a woman true, / Said don’t provoke the President / Or else he may hurt some of you. / He’s got a dagger in his hand.”

A
fter several weeks of silence, Varina received her first letter from Jefferson since his capture. It was the beginning of a moving jail-house correspondence under difficult conditions.

Fortress Monroe, Va.,

21 Aug. ‘65

My Dear Wife,

I am now permitted to write you, under two conditions viz: that I confine myself to family matters, and that my letter shall be examined by the U.S. Attorney General before it is sent to you.

This will sufficiently explain to you the omission of subjects on which you would desire me to write. I presume it is however permissible for me to relieve your disappointment in regard to my silence on the subject of future action towards me, by stating that of the purpose of the authorities I know nothing.

To morrow it will be three months since we were suddenly and unexpectedly separated…

Kiss the Baby for me, may her sunny face never be clouded, though dark the morning of her life has been.

My dear Wife, equally the centre of my love and confidence, remember how good the Lord has always been to me, how often he has wonderfully preserved me, and put thy trust in Him.

Farewell…Once more farewell, Ever affectionately your Husband

Jefferson Davis

I
n October, the conditions of Davis’s confinement improved. He was removed from his damp cell in the casemate wall and relocated to private rooms in Carroll Hall in the fort’s interior. Better treatment was a sign that he might be staying awhile, and that he would not be leaving soon for trial.

The familiarity between Davis and Craven did not go unnoticed by Miles, and in the fall of 1865, it was rumored that Craven would be replaced. Davis wrote him a letter: “With regret and apprehension
I have heard that you are probably soon to leave this post. To your professional skill and brave humanity I owe it…that I have not been murdered by the wanton tortures and privations to which my jailor subjected me. Loaded with fetters when but little able to walk without them, restricted to the coarsest food, furnished in the most loathsome manner…and confined in a damp casemate the atmosphere of which was tainted by poisonous exhalations, you came to my relief…you have alleviated my sufferings and supplied my wants…you have been my protection.”

In November, Henry Wirz, the commander of the Andersonville prisoner of war camp, was found guilty of war crimes and hanged at the Old Capitol Prison, across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Photos taken of the execution show Wirz standing on the scaffold, the rope around his neck, with the Great Dome as the backdrop. Davis may have seen woodcuts of the hanging in
Harper’s Weekly.
This was the first postwar execution by the federal government for crimes unrelated to the Lincoln assassination. It set an ominous precedent for Davis.

The next month, Davis was allowed his first visit from Rev. Minnegerode. Both men had traveled far since that beautiful April Sunday morning in church nine months ago. The War Department warned the minister to limit his conversation to spiritual matters. The department was possessed by a paranoia that rebel daredevils might break Davis out of prison, and that any visitor might be transmitting secret messages of the plot.

In December, after Craven had one of Davis’s tailors send a fine and warm winter coat, Miles and his superiors became incensed. Who was this rebel chief to enjoy such luxuries, and who was this doctor so eager to supply them? Craven was removed as Davis’s physician on Christmas Day, and a month later he was mustered out of service and returned to private life. But he had the last laugh. Unbeknownst to Miles, Craven had kept a diary about the conditions of his patient’s imprisonment.

Christmas was a hard time for Davis. A year ago, his family had sat around their dining room table in Richmond, feasting on turkey and a barrel of apples that an admirer had sent them as a gift. Now all Varina could offer was a sad letter: “Last Christmas we had a home—a country—and our children—and yet we would not be comforted for our ‘little man’ [Joseph Evan Davis, who had fallen to his death several months before] was not—This Christmas we have a new child, who has seen but one before.” Overcome, she thought of dead sons and cemeteries: “That little grave in Richmond, the other in Georgetown [for Samuel Emory Davis, 1852–1854] is ever fresh to me.” Perhaps realizing that her letter had turned too morbid, Varina told Jefferson that her love for him was stronger than sad memories: “But fresher—more enduring still is the love which at this season nearly twenty two years ago filled my heart, and has kept it warm and beating ever since.”

As the new year came, the U.S. government still had not decided what it wanted to do with Jefferson Davis. Would 1866 bring him life? Or death?

On January 29, 1866, a young girl in Richmond, Emily Jessie Morton, wrote to Davis to cheer him up:

I hope that you will not think me a rude little girl to takeing the liberty of writing to you, but I want to tell you how much I love you, and how sorry I feel for you to be kept so long in Prison away from your dear little children…I go to school to Mrs. Mumford where there are upwards of thirty scholars all of which love you very much and are taught to do so. When we go to Hollywood [cemetery] to decorate our dear soldiers graves on the 31st of May your little Joes grave will not be forgotten.

She told him she loved him so much that her teasing schoolmates called her little “Jefferson Davis.”

F
rom the time of Davis’s capture in the spring of 1865 to the winter of 1866, Varina Davis waged a relentless one-woman campaign to obtain better treatment for her husband, to visit him in prison, and, ultimately, to gain his freedom. She had been a popular and well-liked figure in antebellum Washington, including among important Northern politicians, and now she used every social and political skill she had learned since her Mississippi girlhood to save her husband. She wrote letters, secured personal meetings, and influenced newspaper coverage.

Six months later, on April 25, 1866, Varina Davis sent a letter to President Andrew Johnson: “I hear my husband is failing rapidly. Can I come to him? Can you refuse me? Answer.” Her note alarmed Johnson, who asked Stanton to advise him immediately. The secretary of war, who had kept Jefferson and Varina apart for one year, relented. Miles warned his superiors what a dangerous foe she could be, and a few weeks after she arrived at Fort Monroe, several newspaper articles accused him of punishing his prisoner with inhuman treatment. Enraged, on May 26 Miles forwarded the articles to General E. D. Townsend at the War Department: “It is true I have not made [Jefferson Davis] my associate and confidant or toadied to his fancy…[but] the gross misrepresentations made by the press infringes upon my honor and humanity and I am unwilling to let such statements to go unnoticed.” The newspaper stories were nothing compared with what was coming. Dr. Craven had written a book.

Varina received permission to visit Jefferson. She arrived at Fort Monroe on May 3, 1866, and brought her little girl with her. She had left the rest of her children in the care of others, deciding her first duty was to save her husband’s life. But before she was permitted to see him, the War Department had demanded that she promise in writing that she would not help him escape, or smuggle “deadly” weapons—including pistols, knives, or explosives—into his cell: “I,
Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis,” she agreed, “for the privilege of being permitted to see my husband, do hereby give my parole of honor that I will engage in or assent to no measures which shall lead to any attempt to escape from confinement on the part of my husband or to his being rescued or released from imprisonment without the sanction and order of the President of the United States, nor will I be the means of conveying to my husband any deadly weapons of any kind.”

The former first lady of the Confederacy might have bristled at the language—she considered it her right, not a “privilege,” to see her husband, and she viewed their one-year separation an outrage, but now was not the time to argue. President Johnson had yielded to her will. She signed the document and gave her parole. Now nothing would stop her from reuniting with her beloved “Banny.”

This visit was followed a few weeks later when Davis signed a parole that gave him liberty to wander the fort with Varina during the day.

FORT MONROE, May 25, 1866

For the privilege of being allowed the liberty of the grounds inside the walls of Fort Monroe between the hours of sunrise and sunset I, Jefferson Davis, do hereby give my parole of honor that I will make no attempt to nor take any advantage of any opportunity that may be offered to effect my escape therefrom.

JEFFERSON DAVIS

Varina had won the first round. She had been reunited with her husband. Soon she won another victory—the right to move into the prison and share Jefferson’s quarters. If she could not take him home to live, then she and their daughter would live with him at Fort Monroe. Now she prepared for the next stage of her battle with federal authorities—her effort to win his freedom.

I
n June 1866, a New York publisher released Craven’s book under the long-winded title
Prison Life of Jefferson Davis, Embracing Details and Incidents in His Captivity, Particulars Concerning His Health and Habits, Together with Many Conversations on Topics of Great Public Interest.
It caused a sensation and created nationwide sympathy for the imprisoned fallen president, just as Craven hoped. Even most of Davis’s enemies did not want to see him languish and die in captivity. As a literary effort,
Prison Life
was riddled with exaggerations and errors. Indeed, when Davis obtained a copy he penciled corrections in the margins of almost two hundred pages. Some critics said that the book was a fraud. It did not matter. As a piece of political propaganda, the book was a work of genius. The month after its publication Joseph E. Davis wrote to his brother: “The prison life by Dr. Craven is I think exerting an influence even greater than expected.” In Europe, public opinion favored Davis. The Pope sent him an inscribed photograph and a crown of thorns.