THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
interest, and it will go far to determine the opinion of mankind as to the character of our government and institutions.” * * *
When I wrote that letter, I had, of course, in mind the trial of Jefferson Davis and of the late Senator from Alabama, Clement C. Clay, who, when he found himself charged with complicity in the murder of Abraham Lincoln, voluntarily surrendered himself to General James H. Wilson and was incarcerated with Jefferson Davis in Fortress Monroe. The immediate accomplices of Booth were tried by a Military Court appointed for the purpose and met their fate on the gallows. But as to Jefferson Davis, it soon became painfully clear how correct Abraham Lincoln's instinct was when in his quaint way he expressed the wish that, “unbeknownst to himself,” the Confederate chieftain might escape. As an exile from his country who had sought personal safety in flight, he would have been unable to do any harm to this republic abroad, and his power would have been greatly lessened to exercise a mischievous influence at home. His prestige as a statesman and as a popular leader had necessarily suffered much by his disastrous failure in the conduct of a war which at various times inspired the hopes of his people with flattering promises of success. While in power he had provoked bitter criticism on the part of many important men in the Confederacy by what was called his self-conceit, his favoritisms, his peevish personal dislikes and grudges, his vindictiveness—in one word his wrong-headedness,—and many of the misfortunes suffered were, not always unjustly, laid to his charge. As a fugitive he would therefore soon have been reduced to a minimum of significance. But now that he was imprisoned in a dungeon, as the great representative of the “lost cause,” the prestige of martyrdom was
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