THE FEELING TOWARDS MR. DAVIS.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, June 9, 1865. Two questions chiefly occupy public attention here at present— what to do with Jefferson Davis, and what to do with the freed negroes. Both are difficult of solution. As to the latter, I shall have something to say; but like the decision of the question itself it can be well postponed a while. The other subject is felt by all to be of instant interest. Only last evening a lecture was deliv- ered at our largest hall for public meetings, the Cooper Institute, which had a direct bearing upon it. The lecture was by Mr. Ger- rit-Smith, a benevolent gentleman of large landed property, who has for many years been a leading abolitonist. And here let me add that Mr. Wendell Phillips, whom you have heard of as a very prominent abolition orator, is no mere political agitator or professional philanthropist, but a gentleman who inherited a fortune of about 600,000 dollars. Whatever may be thought of his oratory—and I confess that I have always regarded it as loose, weak, and wordy, mere agitation, which has no value or force beyond the moment of its utterance—there can be none as to the disinterestedness of his motives. I notice thus these two prominent abolitionists, because of the reiterated assertions in Europe that all people of property and stable position in society at the North have been until lately panderers to slavery, or at least indifferent about it. Many such men have occupied that position, but many have not. To return to Mr. Gerrit Smith's lecture upon the proper mode of dealing with the rebels. He was asked to deliver it in a letter signed by nine well-known gentlemen. But surely nine names representing such incongruous opinions upon public affairs were never seen before upon one piece of paper. Among them were such formidable anti-slavery champions as Horace Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher on the one hand, and on the other, such active supporters of the rebellion as Mayor Gunther and a gentleman who threatened that there should be " a Republican hanged at every lamp-post in Broadway." For you to see the Earl of Derby and Mr. John Bright pulling together would not be so marvellous a sight. This strange union was brought about by the desire of the gentlemen in question, and those whom they represent, to begin a very strong public movement against any punishment whatever of the rebels, leaders or follow- ers, except the disfranchisement of a few of them. Mr. Smith did not succeed very well in convincing even an audience brought together under such auspices. This is not surprising, since the argument upon which he chiefly relied was that as the Govern- ment had treated captured rebels as prisoners of war, had ex- changed them, and had recognized flags of truce all through the war, it was bound to treat its subdued enemies as if they were a foreign nation over whom we were victorious. This view of the
case is urged persistently on your side of the water, by those who are favouring us with so much advice and admonition upon this subject. We regard it as a very false view. We treated captured rebels as prisoners of war from mere necessity, because the rebels had within their lines prisoners taken from our forces upon whom they would have retaliated the execution of any sentence
which might have been pronounced by the courts of law or military tribunals. By none of its acts did the Government intend to recognize in the least degree or in any shape the status assumed by the so-called insurgent Government. Its dealings with the rebels were purely military dealings, and with the cessation of the hostile relations to which they solely were adapted they cease to have any effect. Only soldiers dealt with soldiers, and when any paroled prisoner is released from his parole, he becomes subject as a citizen to all the laws in force in the country where he lives which were in force before he took up arms against the Government. An ex post facto law cannot here be made. As to taking prisoners and exchanging them, that we in New York might have been compelled to do with our Irish rioters in 1863. Had they taken half a dozen of our policemen or other citizens prisoners, and threatened to put them to death unless we would receive them in exchange for certain of their party who were in custody, we should have submitted. The argument that when large masses of men take momentous steps it is just to conclude that they had a conscientious belief in the righteousness of those steps is much more forcible than this one, based on the taking and exchanging of prisoners ; and indeed is much the strongest argu- ment that can be urged for universal amnesty. But as to this it may be remarked that no one proposes or wishes to punish large masses of men, but on the contrary, that with general consent a very wide and general forgiveness has already been proclaimed. The question is whether the men who are not only legally and conspicuously guilty of treason by levying war against the Govern- ment, but morally guilty of having excited the animosity of those large masses against any Government except that by men of their own way of thinking, and of having done this by falsehood, and by stimulating and pandering to the wort passions during many years, and for inhuman, sordid purposes and selfish ambition, —whether these men should not be punished. Legally they are no more guilty than hundreds of thousands of others. Then why punish them, and not the others?—say, the submissive, but yet impenitent Copperheads, and the weakly good-natured among the loyal ? Simply because of their pre-eminence in moral guilt. If the prosecuting attorney of the Government chooses to enter a nolle prosequi in the case of nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand men who are indicted for treason, that in no manner impairs his. right of procedure against the millionth. I am not one of those who demand an inexorable execution of the law, and cry out for retributive justice. I do not demand that the leading rebels shall' be made to suffer even for the deliberate, heart-sickening cruelty which caused our men to rot, and freeze, and starve to death by the thousand at Andersonville, and which, to say the least, Jefferson Davis and General Lee could have prevented ; or for the hotel-burning, the yellow-fever plot, and the foolish plot to• poison the reservoirs by which the whole city of New York is- supplied with water, and failing that to destroy the reservoirs and leave the city a prey to flames and thirst ; or for the partly success- ful attempt toassassinate the President, the Cabinet, and the leading Generals, the recently-published evidence as to which, however it might or might not be shaken in a court of law, fully justifies the position assumed as to Mr. Davis and others named in President- Johnson's proclamation. I have no satisfaction in knowing that criminals get their deserts. I hope that I may never get all of mine. I believe that as a general rule it is true that the worst use to which a man can be put is hanging, and would gladly see capital punishment abolished, even for murder. But if ever men deserved to be exceedingly well hanged, those men are the leaders of the late insurrection. To compare their rebel- lion in any way whatever with those of " Cromwell, Washington, Larochejaquelien, Kossuth, and Garibaldi," as some of their ad- mirers and apologists among you do, is such an insult to the com- mon sense of the world that I at least will not notice it seriously.. It only reminds one of Fluellen's famous comparison of Macedon and Monmouth, " for the situations, look you, is both alike . . . . 'Tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is rebellions in both."
But although this is my appreciation of the heinousness of the crime which Mr. Davis and his chief supporters have committed; and my judgment of the punishment which it merits, do not suppose that I either wish to inflict that punishment, or that I am sure that it would be wise to do so. I, and those whom I include within the little pronoun into the over free use of which I have in this letter allowed myself to be tempted, find our state of mind on this subject well expressed by a large and striking caricature which I saw this morning. It represented a gentleman, with rather high features and stars on his trousers, sitting with a sadly puzzled look upon his face before a large wire trap. In the trap is a rat with a. human head—that head which Mr. Bereaford Hope compared so disparagingly on one occasion with Mr. Lincoln's. Perched near the trap is a large bird, looking not very benevolently at the rat. The gentleman with the stars says, as he leans his head moodily upon his hand, " What on airth shall I do with this pesky little crittur ? If I turn it over to my bird he'll make short work of it. After all, I am half sorry I caught it." The gentleman you may possibly have divined to be Uncle Sam, but you will probably be astonished to learn that the bird is that very eagle which, perched upon the highest peak of the Rocky Mountain, with one eye on the Atlantic and one upon
the Pacific ocean, watches vigilantly over the fortunes of this " gullorious " Republic, flapping his wings continually, and a screamin defiance to the universe. This design and its legend not inaptly express the general feeling, though not the general conviction, about Mr. Davis and his fellow leaders of the rebellion. We feel that justice, prudence, right, demand that they should suffer some signal punishment before the eyes of the whole country and the world, and yet we, remembering that circumstances greatly operated to make them what they are, and that it is not altogether their fault that they did not have a New England education, shrink from the thought of seeing them hanged. Mr. Davis must be condemned to death, but were I President John- son I would neither pardon him and send him into exile, nor allow him to be hanged. If he were pardoned on condition of exile, he would merely lead a comfortable, perhaps a luxurious life abroad, receiving much attention from certain people. He must be conspicuously punished, and yet not made a martyr either by his imprisonment or his death. Therefore upon his condemnation I would reprieve his sentence indefinitely, on condition that he gave his parole never to leave the country, and to report himself once a month to the judicial or military officer of the Republic nearest to his place of residence, and once a year to the President at Washington. From any position of public trust he is of course cut off. If necessary he should be comfortably supported at the expense of the nation. His only punishment should be that of owing his life to the clemency of the Government he sought to destroy, and the becoming humi- liation of publicly acknowledging its authority once a month while he lived. And such an example would be more instructive than a hanging. Thus would I do with the chief civil and military leaders of the rebellion.
Let me add one word to those who are giving us the advice and admonition upon this subject to which I have before referred. It is this,—that if they really do not desire to see Jefferson Davis and General Lee hanged, they will do well to cease their endeavours to teach our Government and our people what it becomes them to do in this matter. Only the other day a lady in whom I am somewhat interested, and who, although she looks not very like Mentor or Minerva, sometimes deems herself responsible for the daily revolution of the earth upon its axis, undertook to reprove a strange little boy for some peccadillo. Whereupon another little boy who was by, one in whom also I am supposed (but quite erroneously, I assure you) to be interested, began to fidget and to hop up and down like a hen on a hot griddle, and when the lady turned from her task he said, dropping out his words with a shy sauciness that relieved them of all disrespectfulness, "Mama, ma —ma, why—don't—you—mind—your—own—business? You're not that little boy's mama, and he'll only go and do it more." Now to be tempted by impertinent admonition to "go and do it more" may be a proof of great degeneracy, but still I confess to you that although we should not yield, advice such as that we are now receiving does offer us a temptation or provocation. You may think, however, that you are this little boy's mamma. And the term " mother country" applied to England may seem to give some support to such an assumption. A moment's reflection, however, will show you that our position is not that of parent and child, but of children of the same parent. You are all, I think, even those who are most considerate, apt to forget that although as an independent political body this republic is young, as a people we are exactly as old as you are, and with a wider diffusion among us of the very civilization of which you are justly proud. And I would say briefly to those gentlemen who are now endea- vouring to teach us humanity and what is for our interest, that we do not regard them as at all in a proper position to assume the office of Mentor to this people. We think that the events of the last four years have shown that we understand our affairs and our interests somewhat better than the gentlemen in question ; and as to humanity shown in tenderness to rebels, our memories are not so short but that we know where to turn for some conspicuous examples, to which they strangely refrain from
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