house in Washington, exclaimed suddenly: “My God! the blue-coats!” turned and went rapidly through his house and out at the back door, saying to his wife: “Detain them at the front as long as you can.” Their daughter, Mrs. Du Bose, helped her. “Bob Toombs” was asked for. Mrs. Du Bose went to bring “Bob Toombs”; she reappeared leading a lovely boy. “Here is Bob Toombs,” she said, “Bob Toombs Du Bose, named for my father, General Toombs.”
Mrs. Toombs took them through the house, showing them into every room – keys of which were lost and had to be looked for. They would burn the building, they insisted, if General Toombs was not produced. “Burn,” she said, “and burn me in it. If I knew my husband’s hiding-place, I would not betray him.” They told her to move her furniture out. She obeyed. They changed their minds about the burning and went off. General Toombs escaped to the woods, where he remained hidden until nightfall. His friend, Captain Charles E. Irvin, got some gold from Mrs. Toombs, and carried the money to him, together with his mare, Gray Alice. From Nassau Island he crossed to England, where the doughty “rebel” was mightily liked.
Mr. Davis, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Clay, General Wheeler, and General Ralls met aboard the steamer at Augusta, all prisoners. The President’s arrest occurred the day before Mr. Stephens’, near Irwinsville. Picture it. Gray dawn in the Georgia woods. A small encampment of tents, horses, and wagons. Horses saddled and bridled, with pistols in holsters, picketed on the edge of the encampment. A negro watching and listening. Suddenly, he hurries to one of the tents: “Mars Jeff!” His call wakes a man lying fully dressed on one of the cots. “What’s the matter, Jim?” “Firin’ ’cross de branch, suh. Jes behin’ our camp. Marauders, I reckon.”
After leaving Washington, Mr. Davis had heard that marauders were in pursuit of his wife’s cortege, and turning out of his course, he rode hard across country, found his family, conveyed them beyond the present danger, as he thought, and was about to renew his journey south. Horses for himself and staff were ready, when he heard that marauders were again near; he concluded to wait, and so lay down to rest. At Jim’s call, he went to the tent-door, then turned to where his wife bent over her sleeping baby, Winnie. “They are not marauders,” he said, “but regular troopers of the United States Army.”
She begged him to leave her quickly. His horses and weapons were near the road down which the cavalry was coming. In the darkness of the tent, he caught up what he took to be his raglan, a sleeveless, waterproof garment. It was hers. She, poor soul, threw a shawl over his head. He went out of the tent, she keeping near. “Halt!” cried a trooper, levelling a carbine at him. He dropped his wraps and hurried forward. The trooper, in the dark, might miss aim; a hand under his foot would unhorse him; when Mr. Davis would mount and away. Mrs. Davis saw the carbine, cast her arms about her husband, and lost him his one chance of escape.
In one of her trunks, broken open by pilferers of the attacking party, a hoop-skirt was found. I shall refer to this historic hoop-skirt again.
I left Generals Johnston and Sherman discussing Mr. Lincoln’s death and arranging terms of peace, based upon what Sherman recognized as the object of the war – salvation of the Union; and upon instructions received from Mr. Lincoln’s own lips in their last interview when the President authorized him to “assure Governor Vance and the people of North Carolina that, as soon as the rebel armies will lay down their arms, they will at once be guaranteed all their rights as citizens of a common country; and that, to avoid anarchy, the State Governments now in existence will be recognized.”
“When peace does come, you may call upon me for anything. Then, I will share with you the last crust and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” Thus Sherman closed his reply to Calhoun’s protest against the depopulation of Atlanta. Now that war was over, he was for living up to this.
In soldierly simplicity, he thought he had done an excellent thing in securing Johnston’s guarantee of disbandment of all Confederate forces, and settling all fear of guerilla warfare by putting out of arms not only regular Confederates, but any who might claim to be such.
Stanton disposed of the whole matter by ordering Grant to “proceed to the headquarters of Major-General Sherman and direct operations against the enemy.” This was, of course, the end to any terms for us. As is known, General Johnston surrendered on the same conditions with Lee. Grant so ordered his course as not to do Sherman injustice.
General Sherman wrote a spicy letter for Mr. Stanton’s benefit: the settlement he had arranged for would be discussed, he said, in a different spirit “two or three years hence, after the Government has experimented a little more in the machinery by which power reaches the scattered people of this vast country known as the South.” He had made war “hell”; now, the people of “this unhappy country,” as he pityingly designated the land he had devastated, were for peace; and he, than whom none had done more to bring them to that state of mind, was for giving them some of its fruits. “We should not drive a people to anarchy”; for protection to life and property, the South’s civil courts and governments should be allowed to remain in operation.
“The assassination has stampeded the civil authorities,” “unnerved them,” was the conclusion he drew when he went to Washington when, just after the crime, the long roll had been beaten and the city put under martial law; public men were still in dread of assassination. At the grand review in Washington, Sherman, hero of the hour, shook hands with the President and other dignitaries on the stand, but pointedly failed to accept Mr. Stanton’s.
After Mr. Lincoln’s death, leniency to “rebels” was accounted worse than a weakness. The heavy hand was applauded. It was the fashion to say hard things of us. It was accounted piety and patriotism to condemn “traitors and rebels.” Cartoonists, poets, and orators, were in clover; here was a subject on which they could “let themselves out.”
CHAPTER IX
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 God 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 hoarse 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 Washington through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago – it wound its stately way to Springfield. Wherever it passed, 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 assassination 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 rushing 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