Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  Manuscript experts have pronounced that these letters are not in Wilson’s handwriting. The internal evidence, combined with Mrs. Greenhow’s published statement, awakens the suspicion that, if he did not write them, she intended them to be taken as his.

  Henry Wilson, the hero of an American success story, started life as a farm laborer, and learned the trade of shoemaking. He achieved his political eminence through hard work and driving ambition. With his set, scowling farmer’s face, his comfortable stomach, his ample yards of black broadcloth and his humpty-dumpty collar, he was not a figure of romance. Few of Mrs. Greenhow’s friends saw her after her arrest, but Wilson visited her room in the Old Capitol. It does not seem the act of a guilty or fearful man. If he was named as an informant in her treasonable dispatches, he must have been able to make a convincing explanation. The authorities had the letters signed H—and Wilson was a married man, whose reputation would have been blasted by an intrigue, even if the lady had not been a spy for the enemy. No cloud fell on Wilson’s political fortunes. Until the end of the war, he remained the zealous chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. In 1872, he was elected Vice-President of the United States.

  Mrs. Greenhow’s arrest brought her wide notoriety. Even a less theatrical woman might have fancied herself a heroine. Her house, nicknamed Fort Greenhow, was one of the sights of the capital, and tourists came to stare at it, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the famous female spy. For a short while, Mrs. Greenhow divided the honors with Mrs. Philip Phillips, who was moved from her own house to Fort Greenhow with her two eldest daughters and her sister, Miss Levy. This family was presently sent beyond the Union lines, and went to New Orleans. After the Union occupation of that city, Mrs. Phillips was accused of training her children to spit on Federal officers. In the summer of 1862, she stood laughing on her balcony while the funeral of a Northern lieutenant passed; and General Ben Butler, then commanding in New Orleans, ordered her sent to Ship Island, where she was confined for more than two months.

  The other women who came and went in Mrs. Greenhow’s cheerless house were, according to its deposed mistress, “generally of the lowest class.” She was much annoyed by the presence of a Miss Poole, arrested in western Virginia on the charge of corresponding with the rebels. Miss Poole was allowed the freedom of the house, and ingratiated herself with the Government by making reports on everyone, from little Rose to the soldiers of the guard. As her room adjoined Mrs. Greenhow’s, the latter was cut off from conversation, and obliged to receive “all knowledge of the outer world” in writing.

  Another objectionable fellow-prisoner, an elderly divorcée called Mrs. Baxley, reached Fort Greenhow at the end of December. She had been arrested on returning to Baltimore after a visit to Richmond. Her garrulousness on the truce boat had been her undoing. She had boasted to her fellow-passengers that she had obtained for Dr. Septimus Brown of Baltimore a commission as surgeon in the Confederate army. She also claimed to have “nuts from President Davis’s table” and a letter for Mrs. Greenhow. The latter disgustedly ascribed these vaunts to “a disordered imagination.” However, the United States authorities, after examining the papers found inside the lining of Mrs. Baxley’s bonnet, took a serious view of her Richmond excursion. The commission for Dr. Brown was among them, and the unfortunate physician was hustled off to Fort McHenry.

  Clamorous in her desire to be set free, Mrs. Baxley wrote Seward a series of letters, explaining that she was too insignificant to be detained. Her nature, she assured him, was “nervous, impulsive and frank,” and no one would entrust her with important papers. She had gone to Richmond merely to gratify “a pardonable curiosity . . . . to see Jeff Davis,” and carried back only “a few friendly letters” in her bonnet. In spite of these protestations, Mrs. Baxley made no show of loyalty to the Union, and refused to sleep under blankets on which “U.S.” was stamped. Mrs. Greenhow said that “she raved from early morn till late at night, in language more vehement than delicate,” and that her shrieks and imprecations were unfit for the ears of little Rose. Both Mrs. Baxley and Miss Poole were subject to fainting fits, signalized by a loud cry and a heavy thud on the floor. The sentinel would give the alarm. Soldiers would come running to the rescue, with the attentive Lieutenant Sheldon “bringing up the rear . . . . conspicuously flourishing a brandy bottle. . . .”

  In the midst of these distractions, Mrs. Greenhow remained aloof, and somehow contrived to keep up a steady communication with her friends on the outside. In her book, she vaguely alluded to a “vocabulary of colors,” introduced into the wools of her tapestry work. She also had an intermediary, known as “my little bird,” and under the noses of the guard she actually succeeded in sending dispatches to the Confederacy. The Federal authorities had evidence of the weakness of Fort Greenhow; for a copy of a letter which Mrs. Greenhow wrote to Secretary Seward, bitterly detailing the outrages of her imprisonment, was printed in a Richmond newspaper. No immediate repercussions followed, and late in December the lady wrote Colonel Jordan that she expected to be sent South. This communication also was successfully sent and delivered. At this date Mrs. Greenhow began to note a change in the attitude of her jailers. The press printed a story that a missive, containing plans for her escape, had been discovered in a cake sent to her at Christmas. In early January, after she had addressed a second angry letter to Seward, her library was searched, the window was boarded up, and all paper was removed from her desk. It was presently announced that the female prison would be closed. Of the inmates who remained, only Mrs. Greenhow and Mrs. Baxley were detained, and they were transferred to the Old Capitol.

  When, in July of 1861, the Old Capitol had become a makeshift jail, no effort had been wasted on the task of strengthening its decayed walls, broken partitions, or creaking doors and stairways. Wooden slats were nailed across the windows, and high board fences filled the spaces between the buildings which casually bounded the inner quadrangle of the yard. The obstacles to the prisoners’ escape lay not in the rambling structures, but in the military guard which paced the streets outside, and clanked and shouted in the corridors.

  But, if the Old Capitol wanted the character of a stronghold, in gloom and filth and discomfort it belonged to an ancient tradition. Lice and bedbugs abounded in the rooms, and spider webs festooned the soiled whitewash of the walls. Unsavory pork and beef, half-boiled beans and musty rice made up the bill of fare. The atmosphere of the whole prison was soured by the effluvia of the open, uncleaned sinks, situated behind the cookhouse in the yard.

  Some of the prisoners enjoyed special privileges. A few were admitted, by card, to the two enclosed sinks used by the officials. If they had friends in the capital, they were allowed to accept gifts of food. Indeed, when their means permitted, they were not obliged to partake of the miserable prison fare, but might form independent messes in their rooms. The food was sold to them, at profiteering prices, by the commissary of the jail, where tobacco and other luxuries could also be purchased.

  The Old Capitol had originally been intended only for prisoners of war, but, though Confederate soldiers continued to form the largest single group, the building soon housed a motley assortment of inmates. The political prisoners ranged from spies to persons vaguely suspected of disloyal sentiments. Rebel mail carriers, smugglers and blockaderunners were confined in the Old Capitol. There were also Federal military offenders. A large house at Thirteenth Street and the Avenue had been taken for an army prison, and later the Central Guard-house was used for the same purpose. However, the Old Capitol continued to have its quota of Union officers, many of them incarcerated for talking against the Government. The extraordinary number of offenses committed by the military in Washington was ascribed to the influence of bad liquor, illegally purveyed throughout the war.

  In the first months, a section of the Old Capitol was reserved for the Negro contrabands—former slaves of rebel masters. These destitute persons were kept in the jail as an act of charity. If they could find jobs, they w
ere free to leave. Otherwise, the Government employed the able-bodied men at burying dead horses and other heavy labor. Some worked as servants in the institution, and for a consideration prepared the food for the private messes of the prisoners.

  In spite of its dreariness, the jail was a sociable place. Save for the cells of the guard-house, to which recalcitrant inmates were sent for punishment, there was little solitary confinement. Separation of the prisoners was impossible in the crowded building, in which there were few small, single rooms. When their work was done, the Negroes skylarked with their women in the yard. The main occupation of the other inmates was card playing. Week after week, except on Sundays, the interminable games went on from early morning until roll call at nine in the evening. Bluff poker, with one-cent pieces for chips, was the favorite diversion. Muggins—or Old Capitol, as this game of dominoes was locally called—was also popular. Smoking, singing and horseplay enlivened the five large second-story rooms, formed from the chambers which had been used by Congress. One was occupied by Federal officers, while three were usually filled with Virginia farmers. The central room, Number 16, was allotted to political prisoners. Through the broken and dirty panes of the great arched window which had formerly lighted the proceedings of the Senate, citizens of the Union looked out on the skeleton of the Capitol dome, and cursed the Black Republicans beneath it. Like the neighboring rooms, Number 16 was equipped with a triple tier of bunks. It was furnished with a large cylinder stove, three or four iron bedsteads, some stools and benches, and two pine tables. The principal mess of the prison was in Number 16. There, the elite of the political prisoners devoured a ham bone or a piece of commissary beef, in sight of their less fortunate associates. The bunks were so infested with bedbugs that they were chiefly used to store a litter of belongings—valises, pots and pans, newspapers, pipes, empty bottles and remnants of food. At night, the tables were turned into beds, and the floor was strewn with shakedowns.

  The rebel officers were confined in rooms on the north side of the building. The unhappy lot of prisoners of war had many alleviating circumstances in the Old Capitol. There was a coal fire in each room. Whisky was easily procured through the contrabands or the guard. Like the other inmates, the Confederates had cards and newspapers. They enjoyed the additional advantage of being excellently fed, for a committee of Washington sympathizers provided them with every delicacy. For the most part, they gave little trouble, and submitted quietly to their confinement. In the early days, prisoners of war looked forward to a speedy exchange, and their psychological condition was far better than that of the political prisoners. Like hundreds of their kind in Fort Warren, Fort Lafayette, Fort McHenry and elsewhere, persons of suspect loyalty had no assurance of an end to their captivity. The guarantees of the Constitution had vanished since the President had tampered with the ancient privilege of the writ of habeas corpus by suspending it along the military lines between Washington and Philadelphia. Chief Justice Taney, sitting in the circuit court in Baltimore, had handed down the opinion that the President had no constitutional power to suspend the writ, nor authorize a military officer to do so. The venerable judge had become embroiled in the case of John Merryman, confined for treasonable activities in Fort McHenry. The soldiers at the fort would neither yield the person of John Merryman, nor admit the United States marshal to serve an order against their commanding general for contempt. Taney’s decision provoked much discussion, but he was an aged man of Southern bias. The conservative Attorney General, Mr. Bates, sustained the President. The majority of loyal men at first accepted the arbitrary arrests as necessary to the nation’s struggle for survival, even when in September of 1861 General Dix and General Banks rounded up secessionist legislators of Maryland, and clapped them into prison.

  Mr. Lincoln moved slowly in abrogating a cherished safeguard of the Constitution. In May, 1861, he authorized the suspension of the writ on a small section of the Florida coast; in July, on the military line north of Philadelphia, as far as New York; in October, for soldiers in the District of Columbia. Not until the autumn of 1862 did he deny the privilege to all persons imprisoned by military order. Still another year passed before, on authority given him by Congress, he found it necessary to suspend it throughout the Union. Yet the Bill of Rights had proved to be a fragile document, torn in pieces by the first rough touch. In 1861, the system of arbitrary arrests had already spread far and wide. Frequently they were made by the War Department or by some army officer, and the prisoners were always held in military custody. At first, however, all political prisoners were under the control of the State Department. The ambitious Mr. Seward, prone to meddle in the affairs of the other departments, had illogically assumed responsibility for suppressing disloyalty in the Northern population, and maintained a large force of detectives for that purpose. He was said to have bragged of the far-flung arrests he could order by touching his little bell, and was hated and feared for exercising the powers of a dictator. Suspects were carried off to military prisons, often secretly, by night. Their houses were searched, their valuables seized. In most cases, they were not even informed of the charges against them. They were not permitted to have legal advice, and no expectation of trial by jury mitigated the discomforts of their detention. The State Department had no intention of prosecuting the political prisoners, and did not even proceed to accumulate evidence against them. They could only hope that the pressure of their claims might call them to the department’s attention, and win them a special examination. Often when this was held, it developed that there had been insufficient grounds for the arrest. The worst misery in the Old Capitol was the helplessness and uncertainty which made the men in Number 16 dull their minds with endless games of bluff poker, and toss wakefully at night on their shakedowns on the floor.

  Washington saw a spectacular instance of military rule, exercised under the State Department, when one John Murphy tried to secure the release of his son, James, who had enlisted in the army under the legal age of eighteen. Judge William M. Merrick, a Marylander appointed by Buchanan to the United States circuit court, issued a writ of habeas corpus against the provost marshal, General Andrew Porter, just prior to the suspension of the privilege for soldiers in the District. Porter refused to respect the writ. Shortly after, the attorney who had served it was arrested on the provost marshal’s order, and placed in the guard-house. Returning home one evening, Judge Merrick found an armed sentinel stationed at his door by the authority of the Secretary of State. He did not appear in his place on the bench next day. His indignant associates issued a contempt order against Porter, but the deputy marshal was forbidden by the President to serve it. There had been no proclamation of military law in the District, and the circuit court had not been advised of the suspension of the writ. Possibly the surveillance to which Merrick was subjected for several days was justified in Mr. Seward’s mind by a report that the judge had written a disloyal letter to Chicago, but no accusation was communicated to Merrick himself.

  In singular contrast to the arbitrary arrests was the retention of many doubtful unionists in the Government departments. The House had found this situation so disturbing that during the special session it had appointed a Select Committee on Loyalty of Clerks. It was headed by John F. Potter, a belligerent Wisconsin Republican, who two years earlier had been challenged to a duel by Roger A. Pryor of Virginia, and had turned the affair into a joke by choosing bowie knives as the weapons. As an agency for secret accusations, the Potter Committee formed a sounding board on which every whisper of suspicion was magnified during the latter half of 1861. In the offices, clerks trembled for their jobs, and spied and tattled on their fellows. Some five hundred and fifty charges were made to the committee, which examined nearly four hundred and fifty witnesses under oath. Workers at the Navy Yard, the Arsenal and the White House were among those whose fidelity was challenged.

  Congress had passed an act requiring all Government employees to take a strong oath to support the Constitution, but many bureau heads
had been slack in complying with the law. After studying the evidence, the Potter Committee concluded that over two hundred employees were in sympathy with the rebel cause, and it contended that even the suspicion of disloyalty should debar a man from holding a Government post. Wanting in any authority to remove the suspects, the congressmen sent detailed information to the department heads, and a number of dismissals and resignations resulted. The Star said that much of the evidence appeared to be “a bundle of malicious perjuries.” The publication of the committee’s report, giving the names of the witnesses and the substance of their testimony, brought the ill feeling in Washington to a crisis. One of the witnesses was beaten up near the Capitol, and a number of talebearers hurried out of town, to avoid facing the persons against whom they had testified.

  In spite of the commotion raised by the House, the secessionist sympathizers of Washington were treated with remarkable leniency—they were “tolerated there,” declared the Democrat, Horatio King, “with a degree of patience . . . . scarcely compatible with the public safety.” Only in extreme cases were they subjected to arrest and imprisonment. Some of those on Potter’s black list remained in their positions, claiming that they had been unjustly accused. On taking office, Mr. Stanton found many “rat-holes” in the War Department, and stopped them by discharging clerks and officials and arresting army officers. The department mail pouch, which hung in the hall, had been freely used by rebel sympathizers for the transmission of information to Richmond.

  Soon after Stanton was made War Secretary, the jurisdiction over the political prisoners passed from the State to the War Department. If Mr. Seward had ever had a little bell, it tinkled no more. There were large-scale deliveries from the overcrowded bastilles of the Union. The most obvious victims of injustice—there were many cases for which the State Department had no record of the charges—were released on parole. A commission composed of two prominent New Yorkers, General Dix and Judge Edwards Pierrepont, was appointed to examine the prisoners who remained in custody. It was the fore-runner of many exclusively military commissions which would hold lengthy sessions in Washington and other cities. At the head of the Bureau of Military Justice, clothed in extraordinary authority, would rise the figure of a tall, gray-haired, courteous Kentuckian—Joseph Holt, Mr. Buchanan’s War Secretary, who was appointed Judge Advocate General. Like his fellow Democrat, Stanton, Holt would prove an eager convert to radical Republican aims. The tyranny of the State Department had been casually and incapably exercised. Mr. Stanton would bring to the suppression of disloyalty an efficiently organized ruthlessness. The arbitrary arrests and the military trials of civilians would develop into a vast and despotic system, productive of great hostility to the administration. Over thirteen thousand persons were arrested by the War Department as political offenders in the course of the war.