[
818]
the hands of the enemy.
The reader knows the rest of his history; how the enemy gloated over his captivity; how he was reviled, and insulted, by the coarse and brutal men into whose power he had fallen; how lies were invented as to the circumstances of his capture, to please and amuse the
Northern multitudes, eager for his blood; and finally, how he was degraded by imprisonment, and the manacles of a felony His captors and he were of different races—of different blood.
They had nothing in common.
He was the ‘Cavalier,’ endowed by nature with the instincts and refinement of the gentleman.
They were of the race of the Roundheads, to whom all such instincts and refinements were offensive.
God has created men in different moulds, as he has created the animals.
It was as natural that the
Yankee should hate
Jefferson Davis, as that the cat should arch its back, and roughen its fur, upon the approach of the dog. I have said that the
American war had its origin in money, and that it was carried on throughout, ‘for a consideration.’
It ended in the same way. The ‘long-haired barbarian’—see
Gibbon's ‘Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire’—who laid his huge paw upon
Jefferson Davis, to make him prisoner, was paid in
money for the gallant deed.
A
President of the
United States had degraded his high office, by falsely charging
Mr. Davis with being an accomplice in the murder of
President Lincoln, and offered a reward for his apprehension; thus gratifying his malignant nature, by holding him up to the world as a common felon.
All men now know this charge to be false, the libeller among the rest.
Gentlemen retract false charges, when they know them to be such.
The charge made by
Andrew Johnson against
Jefferson Davis has not been retracted.
Upon leaving the presence of the President, and Secretary of the Navy, I sought out my old friend, Captain Sydney Smith Lee, of the Navy, the Assistant Secretary, who had accompanied Mr. Mallory, and arranged with him, and afterward with General Cooper, the Adjutant-General of the Army, the transformation of my sailors into soldiers.
There were a great many other naval officers, besides those under my command, fugitives in Danville, and the President and Secretary had been kind enough to authorize me to employ such of them in
