“I am directed by the President to say that an application for permission to visit Washington, made by Mrs. C. C. Clay, Jr., over her own name, will be considered by him.
R. MORROW, “Major and A. A. G., Secretary.”
In forwarding this communication to me, Mr. Green wrote:
“We think there is nothing to prevent your coming at once. To wait for permission may delay you weeks, and perhaps months. Your coming would not prejudice either yourself or your husband, and you can do more by a personal application to the President than by an application ‘over your own name.’”
Two months dragged by, however, ere I could complete arrangements for the journey and detach myself from our clinging parents, who, deprived of all of their other children, now placed their dependence upon me. Notwithstanding their hearts ached for some assurance of Mr. Clay’s safety, they were ill-disposed to look upon my projected trip with favour. Huntsville was in complete subjugation to the Federal representatives. We had numerous reasons to realise the pitiless and cruel policy that had been inaugurated by our conquerors, and few to lead us to look for kinder things at the hands of the powers at Washington. The reports that reached us of the treatment accorded to those Southerners who had already proceeded to the capital, even allowing for the prejudice of editors unfriendly to us, were not of a kind to encourage a hope for clemency or justice there. The efforts of the wives of other prisoners to communicate with their husbands, their applications to the Government to grant them the right of trial, not only had been of no avail, but, in some instances, had made them the direct objects of attack from those inimical to them. “I have had a weary time,” one wrote late in October, “but of that, if you knew how weary, you would cry out ‘No more an’ you love me,’ rather than bear the infliction of the retrospect, so I will not torment you.” ... President Johnson’s remarks to the South Carolina Delegation, concerning Mrs. Davis’s efforts, became the talk of the country. I was astonished when I learned that she had never written a line without consultation with Mr. Schley and his, in turn, consulting General Steedman upon the tenor of her letters, and receiving the approval of both on the manner of presenting the subject. It was the old fable of the lamb whose grandfather muddied the stream.