Volume II Part 41 (1/2)
Grant, and Secretary of State William H. Seward.”
President Lincoln had been shot, and Secretary Seward was badly wounded with a knife. The others were uninjured.
The sentence of the commission was that David E. Harold, G. A.
Atzerott, Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt, be hanged by the proper military authority, under the direction of the Secretary of War, on July 7, 1865. The others were sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for a term of years or for life. With only one day's delay, the sentences were carried into execution. John H. Surratt escaped before trial. He was sought for by the spies of the War Department half round the world, and after a long time was found serving as a soldier in the corps of Papal Zouaves at Rome. He was brought back to Was.h.i.+ngton, tried, and acquitted.
The insertion of my name with those of others, honorable gentlemen, as ”inciting and encouraging” these acts, served as an exhibition of the malignant spirit with which justice was administered by the authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton at that time. The case of Mrs. Surratt, at whose house some of these persons had boarded, awakened much sympathy. She was spoken of by her counsel, Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, as ”a devout Christian, ever kind, affectionate, and charitable,” which was confirmed by evidence and uncontradicted. On the day of the execution, her daughter, who was quite a devoted and affectionate person, sought to obtain an audience with President Johnson to implore at least a brief suspension of the sentence of her mother. She was obstructed and prevented from seeing the President by ex-Senator Preston King, of New York, and Senator James H. Lane, of Kansas, who were reported to have been at the Executive Mansion to keep guard over President Johnson. Each of these Senators at a later period committed suicide.
The trial of Major Henry Wirz was the next in importance which came before a military commission. In April, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation, stating that, from evidence in possession of the ”Bureau of Military Justice,” it appeared that I, Jefferson Davis, was implicated in the a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln, and for that reason he offered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for my capture. That testimony was subsequently found to be entirely false, having been a mere fabrication. The manner in which this was done will be presently stated. Meantime, certain persons of influence and public position at that time, either aware of the fabricated character of this testimony or convinced of its insufficiency to secure my conviction on a trial, sought to find ample material to supply this deficiency, in the great mortality of the soldiers we had captured during the war and imprisoned at Andersonville.[92]
Orders were therefore issued by the authorities of the United States Government to arrest a subaltern officer, Captain Henry Wirz, a foreigner by birth, poor, friendless, and wounded, and held as a prisoner of war. He had been included in the surrender of General J.
E. Johnston. On May 7th he was placed in the ”Old Capitol” Prison at Was.h.i.+ngton. The poor man was doomed before he was heard, and the permission to be heard according to law was denied him. Captain Wirz had been in command at the Confederate prison at Andersonville. The first charge alleged against him was that of conspiring with myself, Secretary Seddon, General Howell Cobb, General Winder, and others, to cause the death of thousands of the prisoners through cruelty, etc.
The second charge was alleged against himself for murder in violation of the laws and customs of war.
The military commission before which he was tried was convened by an order of President Johnson, of August 19th, directing the officers detailed for that purpose to meet as a special military commission on August 20th, for the trial of such prisoners as might be brought before it. The commission convened, and Wirz was arraigned on the charges above mentioned, and pleaded not guilty. At the suggestion of the Judge Advocate, Joseph Holt, he was remanded to prison and the court adjourned. The so-called trial afterward came on, and lasted for three months, but no evidence whatsoever was produced showing the existence of such a conspiracy as had been charged. Wirz was, however, p.r.o.nounced guilty, and, in accordance with the sentence of the commission, he was executed on November 10, 1865.
On April 4, 1867, Mr. Louis Schade, of Was.h.i.+ngton, and the attorney for Wirz on the trial, in compliance with the request of Wirz so to do, as soon as the times should be propitious, published a vindication of his character. The following is an extract from this publication:
”On the night previous to the execution of the prisoner, some parties came to the confessor of Wirz (Rev. Father Boyle) and also to me. One of them informed me that a high Cabinet officer wished to a.s.sure Wirz that, if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence should be commuted. He (the messenger, whoever he was) requested me to inform Wirz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told him next morning what had happened.
The Captain simply and quietly replied: 'Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything of him, I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else to save my life.' Thus ended the attempt to suborn Captain Wirz against Jefferson Davis.”
The following is an extract from a letter of Captain C. B. Winder to Mrs. Davis, dated Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Virginia, January 9, 1867:
”The door of the room which I occupied while in confinement at the Old Capitol Prison, Was.h.i.+ngton, was immediately opposite Captain Wirz's door--both of which were occasionally open. About two days before Captain Wirz's execution, I saw three or four men pa.s.s into his room, and, upon their coming out, Captain Wirz told me that they had given him a.s.surances that his life would be spared and his liberty given to him if he (Wirz) could give any testimony that would reflect upon Mr. Davis or implicate him directly or indirectly with the condition and treatment of prisoners of war, _as charged_ by the United States authorities; that he indignantly spurned these propositions, and a.s.sured them that, never having been acquainted with Mr. Davis, either officially, personally, or socially, it was utterly impossible that he should know anything against him, and that the offer of his life, dear as the boon might be, could not purchase him to treason and treachery to the South and his friend.”
The following letter is from the Rev. Father F. E. Boyle, of Was.h.i.+ngton:
”WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., _October 10, 1880._
”Hon. JEFFERSON DAVIS.
”DEAR SIR: ... I know that, on the evening before the day of the execution of Major Wirz, a man visited me, on the part of a Cabinet officer, to inform me that Major Wirz would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the cruelties of Andersonville. No names were given by this messenger, and, upon my refusal to take any action in the matter, he went to Mr. Louis Schade, counsel for Major Wirz, with the same purpose and with a like result.
”When I visited Major Wirz the next morning, he told me that the same proposal had been made to him, and had been rejected with scorn. The Major was very indignant, and said that, while he was innocent of the cruel charges for which he was about to suffer death, he would not purchase his liberty by perjury and a crime, such as was made the condition of his freedom. I attended the Major to the scaffold, and he died in the peace of G.o.d, and praying for his enemies. I know he was indeed innocent of all the cruel charges on which his life was sworn away, and I was edified by the Christian spirit in which he submitted to his persecutors. Yours very truly,
”F. E. BOYLE.”
In the other case of the fabrication of evidence by some of the authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton relative to myself, it will be sufficient here to present what others have said and done. The subject is noticed in these pages only to show the desperate extremities to which the agents of the Government of the United States proceeded in order to compa.s.s my ignominious death. Three princ.i.p.al measures were resorted to for the accomplishment of this object: the charge in the case of Wirz, above mentioned; the fabrications in the case now under consideration; and the cruel and inhuman treatment inflicted upon me while a prisoner in Fortress Monroe.
At the session of Congress of 1865-'66, a committee was appointed in the House of Representatives ”to inquire into and report upon the alleged complicity of Jefferson Davis with the a.s.sa.s.sination of the late President Lincoln,” or words to that effect. George S. Boutwell was chairman of the committee, and the majority of the members were extreme advocates of the war. The charge emanated from the ”Bureau of Military Justice,” as it was designated--a similar inst.i.tution to the ”Secret Committee” of the French Revolution. Of this inst.i.tution Judge-Advocate Joseph Holt was the chief. After an investigation continuing through several months, a majority of the committee made their report to Congress.
”That report not only failed to establish the charge, but the committee were forced to confess in it that the witnesses, on whose testimony Holt had affected to rely, were wholly untrustworthy.
Shortly after this report was presented to the House, Mr. A. J.
Rogers, of the committee, a very respectable member from New Jersey, made a minority report. He a.s.serted that much of the evidence was altogether suppressed, and that the witnesses, who had received large sums of money from Holt for testifying to the criminality of Mr.
Davis, recanted their evidence before the committee, and acknowledged that they had perjured themselves by testifying to a ma.s.s of falsehoods; that they had been tutored to do so by one S. Conover; and that, from him down through all the miserable list, the very names under which these hired informers were known to the public were as false as the narratives to which they had sworn.” [93]