As I Remember
important matter and I took advantage of the Frederick Female Seminary,
an institution that has since become a college, as an excellent place to
which to send my eldest daughter. It was during this period of
transition that it was my good fortune to meet for the first time the
wife of the Hon. Henry Gassaway Davis of West Virginia, who was a native
of Frederick and a daughter of Gideon Bantz. Her two older daughters,
Hallie, the widow of U.S. Senator Stephen B. Elkins, and Kate, who
subsequently became the wife of Robert M. G. Brown of the U.S. Navy,
were boarding pupils at the same school; and Mrs. Davis frequently
visited them while there. My daughters formed an intimate friendship
with Mrs. Brown, whom at a later day we often welcomed as a guest in our
Washington home. She has since passed "over the river," having survived
her mother for only a few months, and her memory is hallowed in my
family circle. Mrs. Elkins, the promising young girl of so many years
ago, is widely known in Washington and elsewhere for her womanly tact,
intelligence and fine presence. Grace, another of Mrs. Davis' daughters,
is now Mrs. Arthur Lee of Washington, but was born after my earlier
acquaintance with her mother in Frederick. Loved and admired, she
resides in Washington surrounded by an exclusive coterie, and devotes
much of her time and means to works of philanthropy.
The prominent authoress, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, was repeatedly our
guest while we were living in Frederick. A volume of her poems had
appeared as early as 1835, and she subsequently published quite a number
of books which were highly regarded. When she first came to visit us,
her "Women of the American Revolution" had just appeared and her journey
to Maryland was for the purpose of collecting data for a new work which
later was published under the title of "The Court Circles of the
Republic." Besides being a gifted writer, Mrs. Ellet had considerable
histrionic ability, and I have now before me an old newspaper clipping
containing an account of an entertainment given by me in her honor when
she recited from "Pickwick Papers", "Widow Bedott" and "The Lost Heir."
Another party at which music and recitations were a prominent feature
was given to Mrs. Ellet in Frederick by Mrs. Charles E. Trail, a gifted
woman who thoroughly appreciated intellectual accomplishments wherever
found.
My first acquaintance with the Hon. Joseph Holt, who at the time was
Judge Advocate General of the Army, began in Frederick in 1869. He was a
Kentuckian by birth and, after serving for a time as Postmaster General
under President Buchanan, succeeded, in 1860, John B. Floyd of Virginia
as Secretary of War. He made frequent visits to Frederick where he was
always the guest of the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. George Diehl. He was a typical
Kentuckian, over six feet tall, and in my opinion no one could have
known him well without being impressed by his intellectual ability.
After we returned to Washington to live, in 1873, Judge Holt was a
constant visitor at our home and I frequently attended handsome
entertainments given in his residence on Capitol Hill. Although I have
been in society more or less all of my life, I can say without hesitancy
that he more perfectly understood and practiced the art of
entertaining--it certainly _is_ an art, and possessed by but few--than
any other person I have ever known. His second wife, who was Miss
Margaret Anderson Wickliffe of Kentucky, had died in 1860 and, as he had
no children, he was living entirely alone.
From my earliest acquaintance with Judge Holt I was deeply impressed by
the cloud of sadness that seemed to envelop him, and I never learned
until I had known him many years and really called him my friend that he
was laboring under a deep sense of wrong and injustice. Without entering
into exhaustive details, the main facts are substantially these: In 1865
Mr. Holt was Judge Advocate General of the Army and as such was the
prosecuting officer before the Military Commission convened by order of
President Johnson for the trial of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt and others for
complicity in the assassination of Lincoln. The findings and sentence of
the Commission were accompanied by a recommendation signed by a majority
of its members in which they "respectfully pray the President, in
consideration of the sex and age of the said Mary E. Surratt, if he can,
upon all the facts in the case, find it consistent with his sense of
duty to the country, to commute the sentence of death, which the Court
have been constrained to pronounce, to imprisonment in the penitentiary
for life." This recommendation for executive clemency remained unknown
to the public until it was incidentally referred to by the Hon. Edwards
Pierrepont, counsel for the government in the trial of Mrs. Surratt's
son in 1867. This was followed in subsequent years, and after Andrew
Johnson had ceased to be President, by a controversy in which
reflections were made upon the personal and official integrity of Judge
Holt by the charge that he had never presented the recommendation for
clemency to the President. The matter finally sifted itself down to a
question of personal veracity between the ex-President and Judge Holt,
in which the latter affirmed that "he drew the President's attention
specially to the recommendation in favor of Mrs. Surratt, which he read
and freely commented on"; and was contradicted by the ex-President in
the assertion that "in acting upon her case no recommendation for a
commutation of her punishment was mentioned or submitted to me."
The enemies of Holt accordingly held him indirectly responsible for Mrs.
Surratt's execution, and against such a charge he naturally rebelled
until the day of his death. The most cruel feature of the whole affair,
however, and the one which probably did more than anything else to
sadden and becloud the remaining days of Judge Holt's life, was the
personal disloyalty of an eminent citizen of his own State, who had been
his intimate friend from youth. I refer to James Speed, Andrew Johnson's
Attorney General. In 1883, after most of the prominent actors in the
scene were dead and the animosities caused by the controversy were
largely allayed--at a time, too, when Holt realized that he was growing
old and recognized more keenly than ever the importance of leaving
behind a final refutation of the calumnies that had been heaped upon
him--he appealed to Speed, who, he believed he had reason to assume was
in possession of the exact facts of the case; but all that could be
wrung from him were evasive words to the effect that he saw the petition
for clemency in the President's office, without intimating whether it
was before or after Mrs. Surratt's execution, and that he did not "feel
at liberty to speak of what was said at cabinet meetings." An exchange
of letters followed between the two in which Speed excused himself for
six months on the pleas of bereavement and press of business, and that
he had lost his glasses, when he finally replied:--"After very mature
and deliberate consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I
cannot say more than I have said." It is no wonder, then, that Holt,
driven to desperation by such treatment, wrote to Speed:--"Your
forbearance towards Andrew Johnson, of whose dishonorable conduct you
have been so well advised, is a great mystery to me. With the stench of
his baseness in your nostrils you have been all tenderness for him,
while for me ... you have been as implacable as fate."
While spending the summer of 1888 in Princeton, Massachusetts, I read in
the _North American Review_ for July of the same year the correspondence
relating to the Surratt question between Holt and Speed in 1883. Knowing
Judge Holt as I did, having firm faith in his version of the
controversy, believing him to be a victim of gross injustice and
realizing withal how keenly through all these years he had felt the
sting of misrepresentation, I wrote him a lengthy letter. It was not
long before I received his reply, and I copy it here, as I believe it
casts an additional sidelight upon a subject which caused this brilliant
and high-minded gentleman bitter suffering from which he never wholly
recovered. I add several more letters written to me by him which are
beautiful in expression but pathetic in character.
WASHINGTON, August 26th, 1888.
Mrs. M. Gouverneur,
My dear Madam:
Your kind letter of the 14th instant was quite a surprise,
but a very agreeable one I assure you. My reply has been
thus long delayed from an impression that it would probably
more certainly reach your hands if addressed to you at
Frederick.
I have read and re-read your letter with increasing
gratification and thankfulness. Truly am I grateful for the
friendly spirit that prompted you to make so thorough an
examination of the Speed correspondence as your _resume_ of
it discloses. That _resume_ is in every way admirable. It
has the clearness and logical force of a first-class
lawyer's brief. Indeed, I was on the point of asserting that
you have a good lawyer's head on your shoulders, but prefer
saying that you have a head which obeying the inspirations
of your heart enables you to discern and _appreciate_ the
truth and extricate it, as well, from the entanglements of
chicanery and fraud. Be assured, my dear Madam, that I shall
treasure up your letter fondly, at once as a consolation and
as a powerful support of the endeavors which I have been
making for years to rescue my name from the obloquy of an
accusation, than which nothing falser or fouler ever fell
from the lips of men or devils.
It was a severe shock for my faith in human nature when
General Speed--with whom I had maintained relations of
cordial friendship for some fifty years--suddenly allowed
himself to become a compliant coadjutor of Andrew Johnson in
his diabolical plot to destroy me. The _role_ of suppressing
the truth, which he voluntarily assumed for himself and in
which--without explanation or defense--he persisted down to
his grave, amounted fully to this and to nothing less. Yet
during all of that time he _knew_ me to be innocent, as well
as I myself knew and know it, and this he never denied.
Alas, Alas! what a masquerade is human life, and amid its
heady currents how rarely do we pause to think of the
possibilities that lurk under the disguise of its spotless
reputations!
I should be rejoiced to hear that the Summer has strewed
flowers and only flowers on the paths of your "outing," and
that you will be able to return to Washington glad of heart
and reinvigorated for the social duties in which you find
and bestow so much pleasure. For my own isolated and infirm
life home was thought to be the best place, and hence I have
remained here happily finding under my own roof a
contentment that has left me without envy of those whose
more fortunate feet have sought the seashore and the
mountain slopes. You yourself, however, acted wisely and
well in going away, since the world is still pressing to
_your_ lips the sparkling cups, which for my own are now but
a dim, receding memory.
I congratulate you on Miss Rose's approaching marriage which
you have been so good as to announce, and sincerely hope
that all the bright visions which the coming event must be
awakening will have an abounding fulfilment. The invitation
with which you have honored me is accepted with thanks, and
I shall attend the ceremony with the higher gratification,
realizing as I shall how closely your own happiness is bound