exchange would be a wise measure. That it may have been prudent, though inhuman, situated as the South was, he was not prepared to deny; but protested against being held responsible for evils which no power could avert, and to escape from which almost any concessions had been offered.

"Sunday July 11-Was sent for by Mr. Davis. Found prisoner very desponding, the failure of his sight troubling him, and his nights almost without sleep. His present treatment was killing him by inches, and he wished shorter work could be made of his torment. He had hoped long since for a trial, which should be public, and therefore with some semblance of fairness; but hope deferred was making his heart sick. The odious, malignant, and absurd insinuations that he was connected in some manner with the great crime and folly of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, was his chief personal motive for so earnestly desiring an early opportunity of vindication. But apart from all this, as he was evidently made the representative in whose person the action of the seceding States was to be argued and decided, he yet more strongly desired for this reason to be heard in behalf of the defeated, but to him still sacred cause. The defeat he accepted, as a man has to accept all necessities of an accomplished fact; but to vindicate the theory and justice of his cause, showing by the authority of the Constitution and the Fathers of the Country, that his people had only asserted a right-had committed no crime this was his last remaining labor which life could impose on him as a public duty."......

"Mr. Davis expressed some anxiety as to his present illness. He was not one of those who, when in trouble, wished to die. Great invalids seldom had this wish, save when protracted suffering had weakened the brain. Suicides were commonly of robuster class-men who had never been brought close to death nor thought much about it seriously. A good old Bishop once remarked, that 'dying was the last thing a man should think about,' and the mixture of wisdom and quaint humor in the phrase had impressed Mr. Davis. Even to Christians, with the hope of an immortal future for the soul, the idea of physical annihilation-of parting forever from the tenement of flesh in

which we have had so many joys and sorrows-was one full of awe, if not terror. What it must be to the unbeliever, who entertained absolute and total annihilation as his prospect, he could not conceive. Never again to hear of wife or children, to take the great leap into vacuity, with no hope of meeting in a brighter and happier life the loved ones left behind, the loved ones gone before!

"He had more reasons than other men, and now more than ever, to wish for some prolongation of life, as also to welcome death. His intolerable sufferings and wretched state argued for the grave as a place of rest. His duties to the cause he had represented, and his family, made him long to be continued on the footstool, in whatever pain or misery, at least until by the ordeal of a trial he could convince the world he was not the monster his enemies would make him appear, and that no willful departure from the humanities of war had stained the escutcheon of his people. Errors, like all other men, he had committed; but stretched now on a bed from which he might never rise, and looking with the eyes of faith which no walls could bar, up to the throne of Divine mercy, it was his comfort that no such crimes as men laid to his charge reproached him in the whispers of his conscience.

""They charge me with crime, Doctor, but God knows my innocence. I endorsed no measure that was not justified by the laws of war. Failure is all forms of guilt in one to men who occupy my position. Should I die, repeat this for the sake of my people, my dear wife, and poor darling children. Tell the world I only loved America, and that in following my State I was only carrying out doctrines received from reverenced lips in my early youth, and adopted by my judgment as the convictions of riper years.'".

....

"September 6-Called upon Mr. Davis once or twice, I remember between the interval of my last date and this, but have lost notes. Called today accompanied by Captain Titlow, officer-of-the-day, Third Pennsylvania Artillery, and found prisoner in more comfortable state of mind and body than he had enjoyed for some days. Healthy granulations forming

in the carbuncle.

"Mr. Davis said the clamor about 'treason' in our Northern newspapers was only an evidence how little our editors were qualified by education for their positions. None seemed to remember that treason to a State was possible, no less than to the United States; and between the horns of this dilemma there could be little choice. In the North, where the doctrine of State Sovereignty was little preached or practiced, this difficulty might not seem so great; but in the South a man had presented the unpleasant alternatives of being guilty of treason to his State when it went out of the Union, by remaining what was called loyal to the Federal Government or being guilty of treason to the General Government by remaining faithful to his State. These terms appear to have little significance at the North, but were full of potency in the South,and had to be regarded in every political calculation."

"Dr. Craven's record of the Prison-Life of Mr. Davis continues until November 1865, when his earnest efforts in behalf of his prisoner, so far excited the ire of the powers that be, that he was at first forbidden to hold any intercourse with the prisoner, and afterward removed entirely.

"But the treatment of Mr. Davis is now essentially changed. He has been removed to better quarters, is now supplied with adequate food, is allowed books, his family are permitted to see him, his friends have access to him; and his position in all things is now more nearly worthy the dignity of a great country, and suitable to his rank as an eminent State prisoner and not as convicted felon.

"He and the country now await with interest his approaching trial. Thanks to the firmness of the President, the efforts of certain of the Radicals to bring him to a mock trial before a Military Commission, in which the result would be only a foregone conclusion, has been thwarted, and he will undergo a Constitutional trial before the highest tribunal in the country. It is feared, however, by some that the trial will never come off, but by one pretext or another, will be postponed from time to time, until the prisoner, harassed by hope deferred, and carried into a fatal illness by his confinement, will die." (What a commentary is this upon the corruption of the officials!) "A

fair, searching, exhaustive trial, in which the doctrine of State Sovereignty shall receive ventilation and logical assertion it has never yet received in which the limitations and conditions of the Government, under the Constitution, shall be examined by an acumen and learning never yet brought to bear upon the subject, would be a trial not of Jefferson Davis, but of the Republican party and its acts; and this trial the leaders and controllers of that party dare not meet. They may feel some assurance in the fact, that a conspicuous member of this party will preside at the trial; but the doctrine of State Sovereignty, if once authoritatively asserted by the Supreme Court, would palliate, if it did not justify secession, would render the present attitude of the party towards the Southern States untenablewould thwart and check their scheme for centralization-would establish the unconstitutionality of many of their laws effecting the status of the citizens of the several States-would overthrow their whole theory of the Union, their platforms, their logic and their ambitions, and reassert the old Jeffersonian landmarks and principles. Will they dare stand this test? They may, relying on the partisan proclivities of the Chief-Justice; but men who have studied the Constitution of the United States and comprehend its real significance and meaning, need not fear to see the doctrine of State Sovereignty under which the seceding States acted, brought to the tribunals of the Court, need not fear for a moment the triumphant issue of the attempt to try Jefferson Davis for treason."

A few facts suggested by the foregoing should be emphasized. His bed was only a few feet above the water level, and on the damp side of the fortress, resulting in neuralgic disorders and rapidly failing health. The removal of the shackles was due to the activity of Dr. J. J. Craven, and not to locks having been put on doors. Davis was treated as a condemned convict while in the eyes of the law he was innocent till proved guilty.

THE FAILURE TO TRY DAVIS AND ITS

MEANING.

As an introduction to this sham trial a concise review of a few facts may not be out of order, as his crued treatment affirmed him many times guilty.

On May the 8th Gen. Minty ordered that every effort be made "to capture or kill Davis the rebel President." The next day Gen. Wilson notified Gen. Upton that President Johnson had offered $100,000 reward for the capture of Jefferson Davis," implicating him "upon indisputable evidence" in the assassination of Lincoln. Two days later, the 10th of May, Davis was captured at Irwinville, Ga., by Col. Pritchard, while surrounded by his family and a few friends thinking himself secure from arrest under the Sherman armistice. Some irresponsible person reported that he was arrested while attempting to escape disguised in female attire. Although the least investigation would have exposed its falsity, yet Gen. Wilson reported it to the War Department as a fact. It was a sweet morsel to Gen. Wilson, Gen. Stanton and his Assistant Secretary, Dana, Stanton displaying his pleasure by writing to the Rev. T. J. Breckinbridge of Kentucky that "Mr. Davis was captured while trying to escape in his wife's clothes," and Dana showing his keen pleasure by ordering Col Pritchard to send him "the woman's dress in which Mr. Davis was captured."

On the 19th day of May the William P. Clyde cast anchor in Hampton Roads. Jefferson Davis with other distinguished prisoners was on board. With his arm in the firm grasp of the gallant (?) Miles and surrounded by a strong guard Mr. Davis was escorted in style to his carefully prepared cell in fortress Monroe, the strongest fort on the American Continent. He was there incarcerated in a dungeon cnly a few feet above the water level of the bay. Such was the dampness that "mould covered his shoes," and such the darkness that a lighted lamp was necessary day and night; and as to ventilation the very conditions declared it the worst possible. In front of the pris