THE ACCUSATION AGAINST MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, May 6, 1865. PRESIDENT JOIINSON'S proclamation implicating Jefferson Davis and five other leading insurgents directly in the assassination of President Lincoln, and setting a price upon their heads, was re- ceived by the whole country with surprise. The least vagueness in the terms of the accusation would have been made the occasion of positive disbelief on the part of all but fanatics and sensation- seekers. But the precise and moderate words, "It appears from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice" that the completed and attempted assassinations "were incited, concerted, and pro- cured by and between" the parties named, seem to leave no doubt that there is at least a prima facie case against the leader of the late insurrection and five of his confederate. Words like these are not lightly uttered to the world under the signatures of the President and the Secretary of State of this Republic. At the first blush it appears to us incredible that men or a man of ordinary sense, and with even a moderate acquaintance with the strength of our Government and the temper and capacity of our people, could have supposed that the murder of any two, or three, or half a dozen public officers, no matter what their rank or their ability, would check or even embarrass the action of the administration, or produce any immediate change in the course of events. But then we were equally incredulous as to the intention of the slaveholders to resist the Government in the beginning. At the beginning, in the middle, as well as now, at the end of the rebellion, we knew that it was folly, leading surely to destruction ; and it took a long time and some experience of actual collision with the insurgent force to convince us that these men were actually in earnest in their belligerent declarations. It is almost equally difficult of belief, too, that these men, even if they looked to the complete success of such a murderous plot, and the conse- quent establishment of their Confederacy, would have been willing to incur the infamy which it is perhaps safe to say would have attached to them in the leading nations of Christendom. Still there is the very explicit assertion of the President and the Acting Secretary of State, not made in haste or in excitement, but after nearly three weeks of investigation, and in the formal and exact phraseology which pertains to law and to public affairs that there is evidence that these men did incite, concert, and procure this assassination. Forced, then, to look further into probabilities, we are brought at once face to face with the fact that the slave- holders of the South and the South-West, especially that class of them called fire-eaters, who incited and effected the late insurrec- tion, have been for a generation at least men of blood. Europe knows as well as we know the sad revolting stories of their savage duels, their bar-room "difficulties," their murderous street assaults, their frequent brutal violation of the very floors of Con- gress. This swiftness to shed blood, this recklessness of life when it belonged to one who stood in the way or made himself offensive, per- vaded more or less the whole slaveholding class. I shall never forget the impression produced upon me by a classmate from Virginia in my first year in college. Coming into my room, he saw upon my table a pair of pocket pistols with which I had been practising. I had borrowed them, by the way, of his cousin, who was our professor of mathematics, a West-Point man, a general officer in the late insurgent army. He asked me about my practice. I told him my shots and the distance. "Yes," he said,with a cool deadliness of meaning which there was no mistaking, "but those things are not big enough to kill a damned scoundrel who would insult you" And he laid down with a little fling of contempt the pistol that he had taken up. He was a smooth-cheeked boy of 16, a Virginia planter's son. I said nothing, but turned the topic ; for there was nothing to be said between us ; but I remember particularly noticing the prospective " would " in his speech. In considering the proba- bilities of the case presented by President Johnson's proclamation, it must be remembered that they are far from what they would be in the case of men of English race in correspondent positions in Great Britain or in the Free States of this country. As to the opinion of Europe, the leaders of the insurrection valued that not for itself, but only in so far as they could make it serve their ends. We must not forget that with unblushing effrontery, when they found that they must give up all hope of foreign interven- tion, they avowed their wish and their intention, if possible, to re-open the slave trade. I am sure that had they been convinced that the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet was the only and the sure means of paralyzing the Government, the leaders of the rebellion would not have been deterred from it by any respect for the opinion of the rest of mankind. It remains to consider any cir- cumstances which accord with and support such evidence 84 is mentioned in the President's proclamation. We know that the late President, the present President, Secretary Seward, and Secretary Stanton, and General Grant, if not others, were the intended victims of the confederated assassins. Now it is remark- able that the very time about which these five most important men in the country were to have been put out of the way, those very extraordinary negotiations were opened with Sherman which ended in a protocol which if carried out would have secured., amnesty to all rebels, from Davis down, complete recognition of the rebel State Governments, with the power of re-establishing slavery, and the possession of arms and disciplined troops by those States. These negotiations were proposed by the rebels, and were actually conducted by Breckenridge and inspired by Davis, who was then within Johnston's lines. Davis knew the terms which were exacted from Lee, and he knew as well as he knew that night would follow day that the five men above named, and the people whom they represented, would not listen for a moment to the terms of so-called surrender into the acceptance of which they had beguiled Sherman. They knew that Sherman in his position at that time was powerless, and yet they dealt with him as if his word would be accepted as law by the country. Is there no correspondence between these facts, which were so incomprehensible, so amazing on their first announcement, and the bloody business at Washing- ton that was going on at the same time? Had Davis and Brecken- ridge reason to believe that President Lincoln and his most important counsellors, civil and military, would not be in the way of the stupendously impudent proposition which they called a surrender, and that upon the final decision of the question General Sherman would be the most powerful man in the country? The production of the evidence can alone solve thisquestion, and satisfy the public mind as to the truth of this grave accusation.
Of the five individuals accused with Mr. Davis the personal repute is, with one exception, not such as to cause such a charge against them to be scouted. Mr. Thompson was Secretary of the Department of the Interior under President Buchanan. He absented himself from his post at Washington to go through North Carolina openly fomenting resistance to the very Government of which he was then a Minister. During his absence a defalcation of 830,000 dols. came to light in his department in which he was implicated. Secession, although imminent, had not taken place, and he was still within reach of the Government. So he returned to Washington, and an investigation was instituted, which did not clear him of the transaction or fasten it directly upon him. The outbreak of the rebellion left him with the stigma upon his name, and diverted the attention of the Government and the public to more serious matters. In June, 1861, he wrote a friendly letter to that political sycophant James Buchanan, in which he said, "As long as the Northern States propose invasion and sub- jugation so long will we fight, and when our ammunition is exhausted we will fight with stones, pitchforks, and scythe-blades. A people with such a spirit cannot be subdued." Mr. Thompson, it would seem, was not quite correct in his predictions. He has recently been involved in the raiding plots organized in Canada. So also has Mr. Clement C. Clay, another of the five alleged co-conspi- rators of Mr. Davis, and the step between a St. Alban's raid and the assassination does not seem too long to be taken by a fire-eating slaveholder: Mr. George N. Sanders, another of the five, may be best described as a reckless busybody of no particular account at any time. He also is a Canada raid-plotter. Mr. Beverly Tucker is a man who before the rebellion bore such a reputation that I am reluctant to believe that he could even countenance an assassina- tion. And it is with sincere pleasure and entire confidence in their good faith that I record that General Ewell and fifteen other rebel general officers and one commodore, now prisoners of war at Fortress Monroe, have addressed a letter to General Grant in which they speak in most becoming terms of the assassination as an "appalling crime," which has given them "a shock which no language can adequately express," saying that they are "no assassins, or the allies of assassins," and that they would be ashamed of their own people were they "not assured that they would reprobate this crime." This is the case so far as it is known outside the "Bureau of Military Justice,"—a new tribunal to us, and one which should cease to exist as soon as may be. It is always a part of the misfortunes of the vanquished that their portraits are painted and their history written by the victors. Bearing this in mind, although I know how reckless and red- handed these slaveholders have been in the defence of their "peculiar domestic institution," and that this rebellion has been wicked in its inception, wicked in its purpose, and horribly cruel in its conduct, I at least shall wait for very convincing evidence before I believe that Mr. Davis and his alleged co-conspirators ere implicated, except in a very general way, in so foolish as well as so base a plot as that which brought about the bloody work of the 14th of April.
Among the comments made by the leading British journals upon the defeat of General Lee before Petersburg, and his consequent flight from the so-called rebel capital, two are worthy of notice. As to a third, made in some quarters, that now the war enters upon a new phase, you and they who made it will have seen ere this letter reaches London of what ignorance or what perversity it was the exponent. There is no longer any semblance of the so- called Confederate authority, there is, thank God ! no longer any civil war. The two other comments in question are first, in the words of The Saturday Review, that "the first result of peace will be some external war, voluntarily undertaken for purposes of revenge or ambition ;" the second, which seems to be almost universally entertained, is that our greatest difficulties begin with our victory, and that the task before our Government, of ruling a turbulent and an implacable hostile population of 8,000,000, scattered over a territory of 560,000 square miles, will be beyond its powers. As to the first, in fact as to both, the preparations already made for reducing the army, and laying up a great part of the navy, and selling temporarily-armed vessels and transports, must carry some weight even to the most perverse or apprehensive mind. Be assured that we wish to go to war with no nation, least of all with Great Britain. We fight always with the utmost reluctance, although when we begin we are apt to go on, and only for our rights, our honour, or our national existence. Does Great Britain wish to attack either of these ? We have no ambitious projects except such as can be worked out within our own boundaries, which we feel are quite as extensive as is con- sistent with our well being. Henry Ward Beecher's saying, if the Yankee brag in it may be pardoned, is the best description possible of our attitude towards other nations :—" We are the most dangerous of people, and the least to be feared." As to the men themselves, "the soldiery," as you call them, all that they care about is to get home to their workshops and their farms. As, although we have a vast number of small landed proprietors who till their own ground, we have no peasantry* so, although we have trained and uniformed men who fight in regiments with rifle and sabre under educated officers, we have no soldiery. Our vast armies will disperse over the country with as little disturbance of our quiet routine of life as if the same number of men had been
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* This is the only English word we heve ever known our correspondent miens& A peasant in this country means " a small landed proprietor who tills his own ground:* The word "A Yank.." Is thinking OAIi Wearer. The mistake is import's', ei as Americans are annoyed by hearing their Presidents called peasants.
called out to mend the roads and many of them had been killed and wounded in the operation. The individual is never merged here in the citizen or in the calling.
As to the second notion, that we shall find it impossible to pre- serve the national authority over the slave or the late Slave States, there is some semblance of reason for that. But it is only a semblance. There will doubtless be occasion for the wise exercise of power on the one hand, and conciliation on the other ; but no difficulty worth much consideration in comparison to the end to be attained. I have learned, and without surprise, that even in Virginia four-fifths of the people were desirous many months ago of returning to their old allegiance, but-the other fifth had the power in their hands. The so-called Confederacy rested, even at home, only upon bayonets. And where are the bayonets ? What have I just said is no vague rumour or sur- mise. We shall have no serious trouble. The temper of the mass of the people south of the Potomac is sufficiently humble. Their defeat is so utter, so crushing, and their condition so wretched, that finding themselves treated kindly they submit quietly, and even with a kind of satisfaction. As to the rampant leaders of the slaveholdiug oligarchy, they will never be humble, but they will be humiliated and treated as of small account. Affairs at the South will soon begin to resume their old course as nearly as possible under the new circumstances, and within one year from this time it will not be necessary to retain 30,000 men under arms to ensure perfect order and respect for the National Government and flag from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. Before two years have passed the candid and courteous European traveller may pass through the country of the late confederated insurgents, and not find a trace of the nation which Mr. Gladstone said Mr. Davis had made, or of the noble and oppressed people over whose hard fate your Tory presses are shedding such disinterested tears of sympathy. The political struggle before us promises at present to be of far more importance than the question of the control of the South. I fear more the return of that clever political desperado Fernando Wood than I do all the rifles and bowie knives between Virginia and Texas. But we have learned some needed lessons during the last five years, and out of .the approaching bloodless conffict the Republic will also come peacefully victorious.
A YANKEE.
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