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

by James L. Swanson

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.”

  After 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

  In 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.”

  From 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.

  In 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.

  Three months later, Miles would be relieved of his command. The fifteen-month assignment had not been to his liking, but he resented leaving his post under a cloud. His career survived the embarrassment, and he enjoyed future success in the west fighting Indians, and rose in rank until he commanded the entire U.S. Army.

  In the summer of 1866, two ghosts from the Lincoln assassination visited Fort Monroe. On June 5, Surgeon General Joseph A. Barnes called upon Davis. Barnes had watched Lincoln die. On August 12, Assistant Surgeon General Charles H. Crane visited Davis. He and Barnes had witnessed the autopsy and watched Curtis and Woodward cut open Lincoln’s head and remove his brain. They had come to evaluate Davis’s health and to ensure that he did not die while in Union captivity. Stanton wanted no martyrs. Did Davis know what they had seen? No records survive to indicate whether the doctors discussed the assassination with him.

  By the fall of 1866, the government had still taken no action to prosecute Davis for treason. He welcomed his trial, whatever its result. If he was acquitted, then the South was not wrong—it did have the constitutional right to leave the Union, and secession was not treason. If he was found guilty, he was happy to suffer on behalf of his people. His death, he believed, would win mercy for the South. The U.S. government wanted neither result. A federal court verdict declaring secession not treasonable would overturn the whole purpose and result of the war. Some of the ablest attorneys in America had offered to defend Davis, and a guilty verdict was by no means certain. And a guilty verdict, followed by Davis’s execution, would create a martyr and might inspire the South to rise up again. John Reagan said it would be best for all concerned to release Davis: “I urged that the welfare of the whole country would be subserved by setting him free without a trial; for the South it would be a signal that harsh and vindictive measures were to be relaxed; and for the North it would indicate that they were willing to let the decision of the right of secession rest where it was and not try to secure a judicial verdict…the war had passed judgment and that hereafter secession would mean rebellion.”

  While the government dithered, Davis lingered in legal limbo through the winter of 1867. But by the spring, the federal government finally decided that it wanted Davis off its hands. He would be released on bail, preserving the right to try him at some future time. By prearrangement, his attorneys would initiate proceedings to free him and the government would not oppose them. On May 8, 1867, former president Franklin Pierce visited Davis in prison and congratulated him on his pending release.

  On May 10, the second anniversary of Davis’s capture, a writ of habeas corpus was served on the commander of Fort Monroe. At 7:00 A.M. on May 11, Burton Harrison, Joseph E. Davis, Jefferson’s brother, and several others escorted the former Confederate president, not quite a free man yet, to the landing at Fort Monroe, where he boarded the steamer John Sylvester for Richmond. At 6:00 P.M. Davis reached Rocketts, the same place where, two years earlier, Abraham Lincoln had landed in Richmond to a tumultuous welcome from the city’s slaves. Now the white citizens welcomed Davis back to his old capital. As he passed, men uncovered their heads and women waved handkerchiefs. “I feel like an unhappy ghost visiting this much beloved city,” Jefferson told Varina. A carriage drove them to the Spotswood Hotel, where they were taken to the same rooms they occupied in 1861.

  On Monday morning Davis and his counsel appeared in federal court, in the same building once occupied by his presidential office. The $100,000 bond was signed by an unexpected list of names: Davis, Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Gerrit Smith, the famous abolitionist, and one of the “Secret Six” who had backed John Brown. Smith proclaimed that the war had been the fault of North and South: “The North did quite as much as the South to uphold slavery…Slavery was an evil inheritance of the South, but the wicked choice, the adopted policy, of the
North.” After Davis was freed on bail, he left the courtroom and was surrounded by a crowd of supporters; according to his principal legal counsel, Charles O’Connor, “poor Davis…wasted and careworn, was almost killed with caresses.” Davis returned to the Spotswood, where he and Varina received friends.

  On May 13 Davis posted bail, the court released him, and he walked out a free man. In 1867, the Lincoln assassination conspirators were either dead or in prison, Captain Wirz had been executed for war crimes and Jefferson Davis was allowed to leave custody as a free man, never having been tried, let alone found guilty of any crime. The man who led the campaign to divide the nation, the man who gave orders to fight and kill Union soldiers, was never tried. The importance of this cannot be overstated. To Davis’s partisans, this meant that no federal court had ever ruled that secession was unconstitutional or treasonous. Thus, they believed, Davis had done no wrong. To Northerners, whatever happened or did not happen to Davis in a court of law, he remained a traitor. If he was freed, it was for prudential reasons, to heal the wounds of war, not to achieve legal justice. His first act, one that would set the tone for the remainder of his life, was one of remembrance. He took flowers to the grave of his son Joseph Evan Davis at Hollywood Cemetery, and while there he also decorated graves of Confederate soldiers. A friend wrote to Varina Davis to assure her that in the joy over the president’s release, the people of Richmond had not forgotten their dead son: “Last Friday [June 1], Hollywood was glorified with flowers. The little one who sleeps here was not forgotten. Garland upon garland covered every inch of turf and festooned the marble that bore the beloved name, some with the touching words, ‘for his Father’s sake.’”

  On June 1 a Confederate officer who had served under President Davis sent him a heartfelt letter that described the “misery which your friends have suffered from your long imprisonment,” adding that “to none has this been more painful than to me.” The letter rejoiced in Davis’s freedom: “Your release has lifted a load from my heart which I have not words to tell, and my daily prayer to the great Ruler of the World, is that he may shield you from all future harm, guard you from all evil, and give you the peace which the world can not take away. That the rest of your days may be triumphantly happy, is the sincere and earnest wish of your most obedient faithful friend and servant.” The letter was signed by Robert E. Lee.