Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis

by James L. Swanson

CONTEMPORARY SKETCH OF DAVIS IN HIS CASEMATE CELL AT FORTRESS MONROE.

  The night Davis was placed in his prison cell, Mary Lincoln moved out of the White House. She took with her a suspiciously large number of trunks. Benjamin Brown French was not sorry to see her go. He called on her before she left the presidential mansion: “Mrs. Mary Lincoln left the City on Monday evening at 6 o’clock, with her sons Robert & Tad (Thomas). I went up and bade her good-by, and felt really very sad, although she has given me a world of trouble. I think the sudden and awful death of the President somewhat unhinged her mind, for at times she has exhibited all the symptoms of madness. She is a most singular woman, and it is well for the nation that she is no longer in the White House. It is not proper that I should write down, even here, all I know! May God have her in his keeping, and make her a better woman. That is my sincere wish…”

  No government or military official in Washington regretted that Mary would be absent from the next day’s parade.

  Early on Tuesday morning, before the Grand Review got under way at 9:00, photographers claimed their positions on the south grounds of the Treasury Building, east of the White House. From there they pointed their cameras up Pennsylvania Avenue to capture the panorama of troops marching toward them, framed by the Great Dome rising in the distance. Other cameramen took photos of the huge crowds gathered in front of Pennsylvania Avenue storefronts. At the Capitol, one photographer aimed his lens at the North Front, where crowds had gathered to watch the troops march up East Capitol Street and swing around the Capitol building on their way down the avenue. When he removed his lens cap, he froze a wondrous, ephemeral moment: blurred figures in motion; a man carrying, on a pole, a sign reading WELCOME BRAVE SOLDIERS, and, strolling through the frame, a young girl wearing a hoopskirt and a straw hat, trailing festive ribbons.

  Gideon Welles delayed a trip south to witness the “magnificent and imposing spectacle,” and recorded in his diary:

  [T]he great review of the returning armies of the Potomac, the Tennessee, and Georgia took place in Washington…It was computed that about 150,000 passed in review, and it seemed as if there were as many spectators. For several days the railroads and all communications were overcrowded with the incoming people who wished to see and welcome the victorious soldiers of the Union. The public offices were closed for two days. On the spacious stand in front of the executive Mansion the President, Cabinet, generals, and high naval officers, with hundreds of our first citizens and statesmen, and ladies, were assembled. But Abraham Lincoln was not there. All felt this.

  General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who would receive the Medal of Honor for his defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, felt it too when he and his men came opposite the reviewing stand: “We miss the deep, sad eyes of Lincoln coming to review us after each sore trial. Something is lacking in our hearts now—even in this supreme hour.”

  From his front porch, Benjamin Brown French watched the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac march west, down East Capitol Street on its way downtown, and to President Johnson’s reviewing stand. French, who as commissioner had draped all the public buildings in Washington in mourning for Lincoln, including the Capitol, the Treasury Department, and the White House, now decorated his own house with symbols of joy: “I put a gilded eagle over the front door and festooned a large American flag along the front of the house, the centre being on the eagle, and above the eagle, in a frame placed in the window.”

  Then he went to the Capitol, climbed the narrow, twisting staircase to the Great Dome, and beheld the magnificent sight: “We went on the dome, from which we could see troops by the thousands in every direction…more than 50,000 in sight at one time, as we could see the entire length of Maryland Avenue west, Pennsylvania Avenue east, New Jersey Avenue south, and all of Pennsylvania Avenue west from the Capitol to the Treasury, and they were all literally filled with troops. It was a grand and brave sight.”

  While Union troops were marching in Washington, others at Fort Monroe entered Davis’s cell and told him they had orders to shackle him. Davis saw the blacksmith with his tools and chains. He told them all that he refused to submit to the humiliation and pointed to the officer in charge and said he would have to kill him first. Davis dared his jailers to shoot him. Soldiers lunged forward to grab him, but Davis, exhibiting some of the strength he had displayed decades earlier when wrestling slaves, knocked one man aside and kicked another away with his boot. Then several men ganged up on him, seized him, and held him down while the smith hammered the shackle pins home. This was supposed to have been done in secret, but like many of the events to unfold in the days to come at Fort Monroe, word was leaked to the press. The Chicago Tribune reported the scuffle, claiming in one headline that Davis was “On the Rampage.” Little did Davis know, his enemies had done him a huge favor.

  Dy May 24, Lincoln’s home in Springfield, viewed by thousands of funeral visitors during the first week of May, was no longer a center of attention. The delegations of dignitaries who had lined up in front of the house to pose for dozens of souvenir photographs had all left town. But on this day an anonymous photographer, probably local to Springfield, showed up to make the last known image of the Lincoln home draped in mourning. In the photograph, the black bunting, exposed to the elements for weeks, hangs askew, windswept and weather-beaten. No one poses for the camera, and the big frame house looks abandoned, even haunted. Green leaves—new life—sprout from the tree branches that frame the image. All across the nation, people could not bear to take down their wind-tattered, sun faded, and rain-streaked habiliments of death and mourning. Better, many thought, to allow time and the elements to sweep them away.

  The May 29 issue of the Richmond Times shocked loyal Confederates who had remained in the city. “Mr. Davis Manacled,” announced the headline. The news was several days old, but Davis’s humiliation was still raw:

  [He] has manacles on both ankles, with a chain connecting about three feet long. He stoutly resisted the process of manacling. Rather than submit, he wanted the guards to shoot him. It became necessary to throw him on his back and hold him until the irons were clinched by a son of Vulcan. He exhibited intense scorn, but finally caved in and wept. No knives

  WEEKS AFTER THE FUNERAL, THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF LINCOLN’S SPRINGFIELD HOME DRAPED IN MOURNING, MAY 24,1865.

  and forks are allowed in his cell; nothing more destructive than a soup spoon. Two guards are in his casements continually. The clanking chains give him intense horror.

  The Times did not know that by the time it published its report, public outrage, including in the North, had compelled Stanton to telegraph orders to Fort Monroe to have the shackles taken off on May 27 or 28.

  The newspaper report described other details of Davis’s imprisonment: “The windows are heavily barred, and the doors securely bolted and ironed. Two guards constantly occupy the room with him, while in the other room are constantly stationed a commissioned officer and a guard, all charged with the duty of seeing that the accused does not escape. Davis is not permitted to speak a word to any one, neither is any one permitted to speak a word to him. He is literally living in a tomb.”

  Feeling in the North was mixed about what should be done with the Confederate president. Some people favored execution. Others suggested mercy, if not for Davis’s sake, then the country’s. On May 29, the Richmond Times reprinted an article from the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican that warned Northerners of the danger of persecuting Jefferson Davis.

  Do we wish to finish the rebellion, to turn out its very ashes? Then make no martyrs. The wounds inflicted in cold blood are what keep animosities alive. At this moment there are a million women in the South who would give all they had to save Jeff. Davis’s life, who would conduct and shelter him…If his life is taken they are ready to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, to beg locks of his hair, and to perpetuate for a hundred years the sentiment of vengeance. Unless we present them their grievance, in five years he will be remembered only as t
he author of innumerable woes.

  On June 1, the North held a national day of mourning for Abraham Lincoln. Across the nation on the same day, communities remembered their fallen chief and the funeral pageant. Frederick Douglass praised Lincoln as “the black man’s president” in New York City at Cooper Union, and in Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison honored the Great Emancipator. The timing was not auspicious for Jefferson Davis. Given the bereaved and vengeful mood of the North, Davis was lucky not to find himself on trial before a military tribunal with the eight assassination conspirators locked up at the Old Arsenal. Although Davis did not sit in the prisoner’s dock beside Lewis Powell, David Herold, Mary Surratt, and the others, his reputation did.

  But zealous efforts by the government to implicate the Confederate president failed. Indeed, several witnesses who during the trial of the conspirators would give harmful testimony against Davis were exposed as imposters and perjurers. This was the first hint that it might not be so easy to prosecute Jefferson Davis for bloody crimes against the United States. But that did not prevent people from opining on what should be done with him. Through the spring and summer, President Andrew Johnson received many letters advising him to hang Davis or to torture him to death. Few correspondents urged mercy. Hate mail poured in to the Confederate president, taunting him about the terrible doom that must await him.

  Two men, one his jailer, the other his doctor, figured prominently in Davis’s imprisonment at Fort Monroe. The War Department appointed a Civil War hero, Major General Nelson A. Miles, to take charge of the state prisoner. Miles, only twenty-six, had fought in the battles of Seven Pines, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, had been wounded in each engagement, and would receive the Medal of Honor for his valor at Chancellorsville. He was not awed by or sympathetic to the rebel president, and he became Davis’s principal antagonist. It was Miles, acting under the discretionary authority granted him by Stanton, who ordered that Davis be shackled. He would regret that decision.

  The chief medical officer of the fort, forty-three-year-old Lieutenant Colonel John J. Craven, was a self-made physician, inventor, and businessman, and he immediately empathized with Davis’s plight. He requested an extra mattress and pillow for Davis’s iron bed frame, provided tobacco, and objected to the shackles. Craven saw his patient every day, and Davis charmed—even mesmerized—him. Soon they fell into the easy habit of conducting long conversations on a variety of subjects. They became friends, and Craven tried to improve the harsh conditions of Davis’s imprisonment in every possible way.

  The assassination conspiracy trial continued through June, and its coverage dominated the headlines all month long. Every day, newspapers published transcripts of the previous day’s testimony, and the public devoured each new, sensational revelation. The trial of the century stole attention from other events in Washington, including the first anniversary of the funeral for the victims of the Arsenal explosion and fire. On June 17, 1865, a monument to the women was erected over their common grave. The white stone sculpture by artist Lot Flannery depicted a mourning girl with clasped hands and downturned head standing atop a tall pillar inscribed on three sides with the names of the dead. On the front side was a panel carved in deep bas-relief that froze in time the laboratory building at the moment of the explosion, with rays of blinding light, fire, and smoke. Winged hourglasses ringed the monument to remind all viewers that life is fleeting. But no one was present on June 17 to heed that warning. The monument was erected without a dedication ceremony. The dignitaries and crowds who had thronged there one year earlier were absent that day. No reporters wrote stories. Perhaps the national capital was spent, its emotions drained. Perhaps there were no more tears left to shed.

  On July 6, the most thrilling news since the capture and death of John Wilkes Booth raced through Washington. All eight defendants in the conspiracy trial had been convicted, three had been sentenced to life in prison, and four would be put to death by hanging the next day. Many Americans, although disappointed that Davis was not the fifth criminal standing on the scaffold at the Old Arsenal on the blazing hot afternoon of July 7, relished the verdicts. By the end of the

  THIS FANCIFUL PRINT DEPICTS DAVIS AS A CAGED HYENA WEARING A LADIES’ BONNET. THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION CONSPIRATORS PERCH ABOVE HIM ON GALLOWS, FORESHADOWING THEIR EXECUTION.

  trial, sober government officials had to concede that no credible evidence linked Davis to Lincoln’s assassination. The Confederate president felt no empathy for his fallen foe, but would have considered it dishonorable to order his murder, and beneath his dignity to exult in it. If he was to be tried, it would be not for Lincoln’s murder but for treason and war crimes.

  Nonetheless, the hanging of the conspirators was an ill omen for Jefferson Davis. It showed that the War Department was ready to impose postwar death sentences, even upon Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the federal government. Soon a Confederate officer, Captain Henry Wirz, would go on trial for crimes committed against Union prisoners of war confined at Andersonville where, allegedly, soldiers had been murdered, starved, and torn apart by vicious dogs. By now Davis had been given access to newspapers, and he must have read accounts of the gruesome hangings—the snap of the rope had not broken the necks of all the condemned and some of them strangled to death slowly—and speculated whether a similar fate awaited him.

  On July 13, six days after the execution of the assassination conspirators, New Yorkers meted out symbolic punishment to the rebel chief when they hanged him in effigy. It began with P. T. Barnum. Back in May, when Stanton had refused to sell him the spurious “capture” dress, the brilliant entertainer was inspired to concoct a more exciting exhibit. He created a life-size wax figure of Jefferson Davis, dressed in a bonnet, hoopskirt, and boots, and displayed the mannequin in a tableau surrounded by other life-size figures dressed as Union cavalrymen in the act of apprehending the Confederate president.

  This was not the only wax Jefferson Davis that entertained Americans in the summer of 1865. Professor Vignodi, an ambitious talent of the paraffin arts, created a life-size tableau of Lincoln and Booth in the box at Ford’s Theatre, a presidential funeral hearse, and, for the benefit of those who missed the opportunity to view the corpse, a replica of Lincoln’s coffin with a life-size figure of the dead president resting inside it. He followed up these morbid, self-proclaimed masterpieces with a life-size wax figure of Davis. A third wax figure of the rebel president showed up at a Sanitary Fair in Chicago.

  On July 13, a fire broke out at Barnum’s huge, four-story American Museum. While flames engulfed the entire building, thousands of New Yorkers rushed to the scene and watched as the live animal exhibits, injured by hideous burns, fled the museum and died agonizing deaths in the street. The New York Times described desperate efforts to save the exhibits. “On reaching the main salon, where the wax figures stood, [a performer] found great confusion existing. A man was endeavoring to save a Swiss animated landscape, while others tried to get out various other articles, including the wax figures…the crowd rushed to the front windows, and speedily emptied their arms of the gimcrack articles, throwing them indiscriminately into the street.” Somebody in the museum tried to rescue President Davis, which amused both the Times and the crowd in the streets.

  One man had the JEFF. DAVIS effigy in his arms and fought vigorously to preserve the worthless thing, as though it were a gem of rare value. On reaching the balcony the man, perceiving that either the inanimate Jeff. or himself must go by the board, hurled the scarecrow to the iconoclasts in the street. As Jeff. made his perilous descent, his petticoats again played him false, and as the wind blew them about, the imposture of the figure was exposed. The flight of dummy Jeff. was the cause of great merriment among the multitude, who saluted the queer-looking thing with cheers and uncontrollable laughter. The figure was instantly seized, and bundled off to a lamp-post in Fulton Street, near St. Paul’s Church-yard, and there formally hanged, the actors in the mock trage
dy shouting the threadbare refrain, commencing the “sour apple” tree.

  WITHIN DAYS OF HIS CAPTURE, POPULAR PRINTS RIDICULED THE CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT.

  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: