GRANT AND SANTO DOMINGO -1868 -1871 155 



had the good fortune, at the house of his brother, the 

 eminent jurist, David Dudley Field, to pass a rainy even- 

 ing in company with Mr. Burton Harrison, who, after a 

 distinguished career at Yale, had been the private secre- 

 tary of Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern Confed- 

 eracy. On that evening a storm had kept away all but a 

 few of us, and Mr. Harrison yielded to our entreaties to 

 give us an account of Mr. Davis 's flight at the surrender of 

 Eichmond, from the time when he quietly left his pew in 

 St. Paul's Church to that of his arrest by United States 

 soldiers. The story was most vivid, and Mr. Harrison, as 

 an eye witness, told it simply and admirably. There had 

 already grown out of this flight of Mr. Davis a most 

 luxuriant tangle of myth and legend, and it had come to 

 be generally believed that the Confederate president had 

 at last endeavored to shield himself behind the women of 

 his household ; that when arrested he was trying to escape 

 in the attire of his wife, including a hooped skirt and a 

 bonnet, and that he was betrayed by an incautious display 

 of his military boots beneath his wife's flounces. The 

 simple fact was that, having separated from his family 

 party, and seeking escape to the coast or mountains, he 

 was again and again led by his affection for his family to 

 return to them, his fears for them overcoming all care 

 for himself ; and that, as he was suffering from neuralgia, 

 he wore over his clothing, to guard him from the incessant 

 rain, Mrs. Davis ' waterproof cloak. Out of this grew the 

 legend which found expression in jubilant newspaper ar- 

 ticles, songs, and caricatures. 



This reminds me that some years later, my old college 

 friend, Colonel William Preston Johnston, president of 

 Tulane University, told me a story which throws light 

 upon that collapse of the Confederacy. Colonel Johnston 

 was at that period the military secretary of President 

 Davis, and, as the catastrophe approached, was much 

 vexed at the interminable debates in the Confederate Con- 

 gress. Among the subjects of these discussions was the 

 great seal of the Confederacy. It had been decided to 



