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CHAPTER V

UNE 9. Lieutenant Longly walked out with

JU

me. Day clear and hot; raised my umbrella,

the one I bought last year for $20, Confederate money. Saw the mowers cutting grass on the grounds. Thought of George and Vincent in our experiments in the same line last year and the year before on the bottoms at the Nunn and River places. Sniffed the pleasant odour of new-mown hay, and returned to my cell.

II A. M.

Got a letter from Joe Myers of Crawfordville, the same Lieut. W. told me of some days ago. Dated Augusta, 24th May; it gave me great relief and comfort. A thousand thanks to Myers for that letter! All well at home. Harry gone with Linton to the Jefferson place. I do not understand this. Who will take care of my affairs on the lot in Harry's absence? Good rains, and corn growing nicely. This is good news. Again, a thousand thanks to Myers for that letter! Answered it immediately. Hope he may get the answer. See in N. Y. Tribune that it was currently reported in Augusta that Mr. Toombs had committed suicide to prevent arrest by Federal forces. Can't give my assent to the truth of that! Breckinridge [Confederate Secretary of War] had escaped by ship from some point in Florida.

Another crowd of visitors, and music. A salute, of I don't know how many guns, was fired. I did not think to count when the firing began. A jar was felt in my cell. Heard broken glass falling in some place not

far off, and cry of children as if alarmed. My cell is under officers' quarters; some of these officers have families.

Great shouts and huzzas are heard from Confederate soldiers; those under the rank of major are about to be released and paroled under late order to that effect. Would that I were going with them!

Crowds of strangers, visiting men and women, peep into my windows, trying to get a look at me. I write at my table, and let them make the best observation they can. My only objection is that they stand so thick as to obscure my light in some degree.

Finished letter to the President. Wish Linton were here; should like to know what he would think of it. This is a copy.

HIS EXCELLENCY, ANDREW JOHNSON,

President of the United States;

Mr. President: You will, I trust, excuse if not pardon, this communication if it should be deemed obtrusive. It is under great embarrassment I make it, but I feel it to be my duty to myself, to my country, as well as to Your Excellency.

Several days have elapsed since your Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon, dated Washington the 29th of May, reached me in my present confinement, through the medium of the newspaper publications. Having been connected with the Confederate States Cause in the late armed conflict between the States, by accepting and holding a high though inactive civil position in their organization, and being now in prison on account (I suppose) of that connection, I come clearly within the 1st and 12th of the enumerated classes excepted from the benefit of that Proclamation, and, but for the terms of the Proviso, "that special application may be made

to the President for pardon by any person belonging to the excepted classes, and such clemency will be liberally extended as may be consistent with the facts of the case and the peace and dignity of the United States," I should have felt no inclination to do anything but silently and patiently as possible await results and meet my fate, whatever it might be, under the regular Judicial Tribunals, with that resignation, firmness, and fortitude which seldom fails to sustain, under all circumstances, those who have within them the consciousness of rectitude of motive and integrity of purpose.

The embarrassment under which I now address you arises from considerations of a twofold character, which, upon statement, you will doubtless readily perceive and, I trust, duly appreciate. First, it is due in candour to make known to you, as I now do, that I am perfectly willing to comply, and in good faith too, with the conditions and requirements of the Amnesty set forth as to all outside the excepted classes. But how a special application in my case for the benefits of the Amnesty liberally tendered in the Proviso, might be received or considered by you, even with the assurance expressed, is altogether uncertain to me. I am without grounds to form any satisfactory conjecture. If you should look upon such application as presumptuous in itself, or as implying any confession of a sense of guilt on my part for anything that I have done in the late most lamentable conflict through which our country has passed, this would be a source of deep regret and personal chagrin to me. Were I to remain silent and say nothing, might you not be led to construe this as an evidence of persistent defiance and a persistent disinclination to accept and abide by the issues of war as now settled and determined? Might you not look upon it as evidence at least of a disregard on my part for that liberal tender of Executive clemency without inquiry as to past, which you have been pleased so graciously to make? To be considered presumptuous in seeking to avail myself of what was

never intended for me on the one side; or on the other to subject myself, by silence, to the inference that I am indifferent and insensible to the clemency thus liberally tendered, would be equally hurtful to me. Hoping I am fully understood, I proceed briefly to make to you, however it may be received, a special application for amnesty in my case under the terms prescribed for others not embraced in the excepted classes, and to submit for your consideration some reasons why the promised clemency should be extended.

No man living, I think, exerted his powers to a greater extent according to his ability to prevent these troubles and the late deplorable war than I did; and no man in the United States is less responsible by any intentional act for the consequences than I feel myself to be. In Georgia, I opposed secession to the utmost of my ability, in private and public, in conversations, and votes. My appeal to the Legislature in November, 1860, may not be unknown to you. After that, I was in the State Convention that passed the Ordinance of Secession. I opposed and voted against that Ordinance. This I did, however, viewing the question solely as one of policy involving the peace, happiness, prosperity, and best interests of the entire country, and not one of Right on the part of the State. After Georgia had passed that Ordinance in the most solemn form by a Convention of her people, regularly and legally chosen and assembled, thereby rescinding her Ordinance, similarly adopted in 1788, by which the Constitution of the United States was adopted and her membership of the Union was enacted, my connection with the new Confederation of States that was formed, and my subsequent course and conduct has this explanation, if not excuse and justification: I was brought up in the straightest sect of the Crawford, Troup, and Jefferson States Rights School of Politics. The first lessons of my political creed from earliest youth were the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1778 and

1799, the former drawn up by Mr. Jefferson himself. In these Resolutions it is declared:

Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of rights to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to the Compact each State acceded as a State, and as an integral party, its co-States forming as to itself the other party: that the Government enacted by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers: but that, as in all other cases of Compact, amongst Powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

These principles were taught me in my youth; in them I was reared. In whatever party associations I have acted throughout life upon other questions or measures, these principles and their associates in these time-honoured resolves have stood forth as the polestar of my guidance on all questions referring to the true relations existing between the several States and the Federal Government under the Compact of Union set forth in the Constitution of the United States. My convictions were strong that under the Compact of Union of 1787, reserved sovereignty resided with the people of each State, not only to judge of infractions or breaches of the Compact by the other party to it, but to adopt such "mode and measure of redress" for any real or supposed infractions or breaches as they, in their sovereign capacity, might determine for themselves, subject to no authority for their actions in the premises but to that great moral law governing the

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