upon those charges, now abandoned, and as an expression of magnanimity toward the South. Commodore Vanderbilt, then but recently the recipient of the thanks of Congress for his superb aid to the Government during the war, was also represented there, and signed the bond through Mr. Horace F. Clark, his son-in-law, and Mr. Augustus Schell, his friend.
The apparent unwillingness of the Government to prosecute, under every incentive of pride and honor to the contrary, was accepted by those gentlemen and the others whom I have mentioned as a confirmation of the information given to me at Montreal, and of its entire accuracy.
These men—Andrew, Greeley, Smith and Wilson—have each passed from this life. The history of their efforts to bring all parts of our common country once more and abidingly into unity, peace and concord, and of Mr. Greeley's enormous sacrifice to compel justice to be done to one man, and he an enemy, should be written.
I will add a single incident tending the same way. In a consultation with Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, at his residence on Capitol Hill, at Washington, in May, 1866, he related to me how the chief of this "Military Bureau" showed him "the evidence" upon which the proclamation was issued charging Davis and Clay with complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. He said that he refused to give the thing any support, and that he told that gentleman the evidence was insufficient in itself, and incredible. I am not likely ever to forget the earnest manner in which Mr. Stevens then said to me: "Those men are no friends of mine. They are public enemies; and I would treat the South as a conquered country and settle it politically upon the policy best suited for ourselves. But I know these men, sir. They are gentlemen, and incapable of being assassins."[1] Yours, faithfully,
George Shea,
And now it only remains that we make a brief
SUMMING UP
of this whole question of the treatment of prisoners during the war. We think that we have established the following points:
1. The laws of the Confederate Congress, the orders of the War Department, the regulations of the Surgeon-General, the action of our Generals in the field, and the orders of those who had the immediate charge of the prisoners, all provided that prisoners in the hands of the Confederates should be kindly treated, supplied with the same rations which our soldiers had, and cared for when sick in hospitals placed on precisely the same footing as the hospitals for Confederate soldiers.
- ↑ Note.—This and the former statement concerning Mr. Stevens are confirmed to me by his literary executor and biographer, Hon. Mr. Dickey, of Pennsylvania.—G. S.
